Nokia, the world’s largest-volume cell phone maker, recently shocked the world by announcing that it would begin using Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform on its smartphones. Since 2008 Nokia has invested heavily in its own smartphone platform, the Symbian platform. Symbian was intended to power mobile devices and become the basis of an vast mobile device ecosystem. Symbian however found it increasingly difficult to be competitive new platforms such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Nokia responded by developing a new smartphone platform, MeeGo. During a joint announcement in February 2010, Nokia and Intel shared their partnership to develop the MeeGo platform. The goal was to have MeeGo power Nokia’s future smartphones and prove a worthy competitor of Apples iOS. Unfortunately, MeeGo failed to meet expectations and timelines. In fact, MeeGo has yet to ship in a commercially available product. This has left Nokia without a competitive product in the smartphone marketplace for a number of years.
In a surprising admission, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop stated that his company lacked accountability and leadership. He even went so far as to say Nokia struggled to deliver innovations quickly.
This lead to Elop’s announcement on February 11th,2011, that Nokia would use Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform in its’ smartphones.
Has Nokia made the right decision by abandoning its mobile platform?
Did Nokia make a mistake by choosing Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 instead of Google’s Android?
Can Nokia find its way to compete with the iPhone?
Will Nokia’s selection make them more competitive in the smartphone marketplace?
CNN: Nokia’s announcement
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-11/tech/nokia.microsoft_1_windows-phone-nokia-smartphone?_s=PM:TECH
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/
Nokia had a difficult decision to make with the impending failure of a product that had already been heavily promoted. This is also their third attempt at getting it right. At this stage I believe that Nokia did the right thing by admitting fault and moving on. It is evident however that the marketing and strategic planning process at the company is severely flawed. For future investments would be beneficial to ensure that the voice of the customer is understood. I believe that Nokia made the correct decision to abandon it's mobile platform. At this point only time will determine if choosing Microsoft as a business partner instead of Google will be beneficial. Google already has extensive market share but Microsoft's mobile platform has gotten some good reviews. I have not used either so I am not that familiar with all the benefits and disadvantages of each system.
ReplyDeleteTo be competitive in the smart phone market I believe Nokia needs to stick with their strengths, and this is obviously not software development. The company can compete with hardware style and integration but they will need to utilize business partnerships for software until they are able to develop capability in this area.
I think Nokia did make the right decision to abandon their OS. I think the true value they can deliver is making a device that is comfortable, optimizes space and battery life and is appealing to use physically. Given that Android is a free OS and growing rapidly (out-pacing Apple) I think they made the wrong decision in choosing their partner. Buying a licensed product that is a late entrant (I am completely ignoring their previous OS products because the new UI environment is completely different) makes no sense to me. I don't think, when is comes to a phone, that users require a similar platform between their phone and home PC.
ReplyDeleteAll in all I think they made an expensive mistake.
Yancy
ReplyDeleteThis admission of negligence in technology and innovation is an indication that the marketing function at Nokia was out of sync with the rest of the firm. The product manufacturing business unit should have been given the feedback from Marketing that the current strategy of staying with their platform was out of line with what the customers considered to be valuable. The platform is a factor in determining the applications that can be ran on the phone. Limited access due to incompatibility erodes your ability to sell the product. Nokia missed the point that smart phones are more than just a device to send emails and texts, perhaps too late.
Apple is on its usual course to maintain its OS/hardware exclusivity. Windows is coming into the cell phone market against strong, entrenched OS competitors. Nokia learned not to compete on an OS platform with Sybian, and it seems they are positioning themselves to play on their strength of cell phone manufacturing. The decision to build equipment for an off-the-shelf OS is the right decision for this firm. Furthermore,given the current differientation in Android handsets, Nokia would be just another player in an already-crowded Android market. Going to Windows 7 allows a clear choice for a new handset. Despite the current power of Android, perhaps Microsoft can pull off a late-entry switch in standards and Nokia can ride that wave to leadership once again in handset manufacturing in the U.S. Nokia and Microsoft working together is a team that will have to be watched closely . . .
ReplyDeleteI think Nokia made the right choice to abandon their mobile platform because the smart phone industry is so heavily influenced by the app world. Even if their OS was superior to the competition they should have used Android. Two years ago, Palm came out with an OS that was great, but only a couple phones used it therefore app developers did not produce enough apps to keep up/catch up with Apple or Android. If Palm could have somehow merged technologies with Google they may not have since exited the smart phone business. While Microsoft is much bigger than Palm and could influence app development, they have a reputation of system freezes, error messages and virus prone.
ReplyDeleteIn the past 3 years I have owned phones which used an OS from Windows, Palm, and now Android. So far, Android is the only one to compete with the iPhone. Therefore it is my opinion that unless the new Microsoft immediately proves Android inferior they will not threaten the iPhone.
Personally, Nokia has been living in the past. In addition, I believe that most or almost all companies have been continuously trying to follow Apple's lead. I truly feel that it will be difficult for any competitor to match the offerings of Apple. They might match their offerings, but they will almost always be two steps behind.
ReplyDeleteNokia seems to have made the right decision to concentrate on its core competency and move away from mobile operating system development. By partnering with Microsoft, it would now have the ability to differentiate itself from its major rivals, HTC and Samsung, who have adopted to the Android OS. Nokia can compete against iPhone if it can get settled with a stable OS and software features for the smartphone. Nokia has the advantage of hardware varity for its customers and the worldwide market share.
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