The Three Pillars of Nokia's Strategy Have All Failed

And Symbian? Jesus. To implement a "search as you go" feature for Symbian^3, something that would narrow down search results both on the phone and off as you typed (like iOS and Android devices do, so this was just achieving parity), we had to write our own keyboard because the Symbian keyboard took over the whole screen. You selected a text field and got the keyboard, then hit the keyboard dismiss button to see the screen again. But look on the bright side: in addition to the "Universal Search" team in San Francisco working on that, there were four other groups around Nokia, both employees and contractors, working on what was, essentially, the exact. Same. Product.

And this was de rigueur for Nokia. This was the problem that Elop had to fix beyond anything technical: massive duplicated effort on what, at any other company, were already solved problems, because Nokia had become a bunch of fiefdoms all fiercely protecting their own turf. I'm pretty sure this is why Symbian stuck around in essentially the same form for so long. I'm sure Tomi Ahonen loved it as a user, but the number of engineers working on Symbian who liked working on it that I talked to was, to the best of my recollection, zero. (Just getting the developer toolchain running on my machine made me feel like I'd time traveled back to the days of SLS Linux.)

If I ran the zoo, I'd have probably gone with Android rather than Windows Phone; Elop went the other way not because of his past connections with Microsoft, but because he wanted to keep using lucrative Nokia services (rather than Google counterparts, most notably Maps) and be allowed to use the Android branding, and Google said no. I wouldn't have cared about the Android branding--instead I'd have cared about porting Qt to Android and not burning bridges with Nokia's existing development community. They'd just spent a lot of time, money and effort convincing everyone that Qt was the Way Of The Future: instead of writing to Symbian or MeeGo APIs, you'd write to Qt APIs, and then porting would be simple. Losing that was a bad call.

But I'd say the most serious mistake Elop made had nothing to do with technology. Love Apple or hate them, one of the things they're really good at is not talking about products before they're ready. The rumor mill may be in high gear for months, sure, but when Apple makes their official announcement, it is nearly always in the form of "Here is our new Superlative Magical Thing. Here is a video of Jony Ive talking earnestly about it. It will be available for this price (two weeks from now|tomorrow|as soon as the band stops playing)." If Elop had been running Apple during the PowerPC-Intel CPU switch, he'd have leaked an internal memo describing the PowerPC in some colorful apocalypse-invoking metaphor, then three months later announce the switch, then six months after that introduce one laptop with an Intel chip that wasn't the most current generation and say they'd have more coming next year.

The lesson to draw from Nokia under Elop isn't that they should have stuck with MeeGo; it's that they should have kept their mouth shut, kept shipping Symbian phones through 2011, and started 2012 with their new devices ready to ship when they announced them. I wouldn't be surprised if Ahonen gets his wish within a year and Elop is canned by Nokia's board -- but I'd be very surprised if doing so improves their situation.

This feels ironically similar to saying Obama failed because he didn't fix Bush's mess fast enough. Nokia was heading for a slow decline. Elop's strategy accelerated that decline short term in hopes they could turn around. It's a risk he and the board fully knew existed. It hasn't gone the way they want fast enough, which sucks, but they had the guts to give it a shot.

Android would have been the safe bet. I don't think any can argue that Nokia would be a much more valuable company today if they took on Samsung for Android leadership instead of going down an empty road with Windows Phone.

Instead, they swung for the fences with WP7. They missed. But, they have a few more chances to try to make it happen, and they're now effectively bankrolled by a company with much deeper pockets and motivation to win then if they stuck with Meego or Symbian.

I can't say I'm confident, but I am optimistic. I wouldn't count them out yet.

This is obviously not the definition in any legitimate textbook or dictionary. When will smart people stop using this stupid cliche?

My opinion: Nokia is fine. They have a good business strategy in their new smartphone pillar that I strongly believe will work. Why? Because it's a two pronged strategy. They're selling performant inexpensive smartphone like the Lumia 510 in the developing world that will be retailing for $150 (off contract!). While they're doing this to increase their marketshare, they're making high end 'hero' devices like the Lumia 920 that will ship in the developed world and increase mindshare. Its unrealistic to expect a 'breakthrough' in western markets because many customers are entrenched into certain ecosystems and are difficult to move. That said, mindshare is easier to get, and if you can convince people that your stuff is cool, you can start to slowly nibble away at the western markets. Nokia is fine. Elop is fine. I'm tired of all of this doomsday predicting crap.

They have months left, not years, and no amount of 'mindshare' is going to pay their bills in the new era.

Anybody any idea of how the Lumia 920 is likely to go? It seems like their marketing division (apart from the fake pictures) and hardware division etc are all on their game, and i can't imagine the phone being a flop.

He goes through a lot of interesting analysis of the past, then asks THE KEY question about the future, and just dismisses it with a negative answer without any analysis and calls Elop clinically insane. Instead of a personal attack on Elop, I'd like to see more about why the strategy will fail going forward. Being that these are now occurring:

1. WP marketshare is increasing very very steadily.

2. WP reviews are great and user satisfaction is great.

3. WP8 and Windows 8 are both about to come out in a few weeks, and although Microsoft has taken some risks, there is massive potential.

4. Nokia's new phones look great, have several impressive unique points of differentiation, and in some ways are clearly superior to any other phone on the market (e.g. Pureview).

5. The news about positive WP phone sales in China and India. Taking into consideration the fact that they have great phones at several price points.

6. The existing reports of the new feature phone line are promising (Asha).

It is fricking amazing how a board of presumably tech savvy businesspeople cannot understand the network effect. So let me put it simply -- it is over there are no more smartphone operating systems in the present smartphone segment. Google barely got in with android and the door slammed behind them. Meego was too late and Windows Phone was far too late. It does not matter how good Windows phone is, their DOA based on the network effect.

There are so many apps made already, there is so much investment in app production for both iOS and Android, that any new OS in the same space has unsurmountable obstacles to overcome.

There is actually an opportunity to make a new breakthrough in mobile devices, but one has to reinvent the market, like Apple did. The opportunity is for cheaper phones in the third world. Right now everyone wants a smart phone but most people in the world cannot afford the 600-700 prices (and no they cannot afford the higher subsidized monthly fees either). If someone comes up with a lightweight OS, that has similar features to modern smartphones, but perhaps with worse performance, worse screen, etc., that will be succesful. It will be succesful mostly because it will appeal to people that are outside of the network effects of Android and iOS. But that is not Windows.

Elop destroyed the brand. It's very clear from the timing of his burning platform communication to the destruction of sales.

The game is over for Nokia. Pretty soon they'll be worth the collective value of their patent portfolio, and that's it.