[Interest] Semi-OT: What could / should Elop / Nokia have done differently?

[Pritam]

Hi

I would have gone ahead with android for the short term because lot of 
people were/are
looking to pickup android devices. Considering Nokia's strength in 
making phone that last and
over a wide price range. They could have snatched a big share from 
Samsung. Samsung customer loyality is no
where near that of Nokia's or atleast wasn't at that point of time.

And I will go ahead with Meego as my own platform with one device a 
year. I will make sure that device hardware is slightly
better than my android device. The hardware edge should give it some 
relevance despite the fact that
software feature wise it may be behind the other platform(Android).

Get rid of Symbian completely and stream line Nokia to the most critical 
operation. And I consider engineering effort critical. I am
sure Nokia had/has lot of other flab to cut.

I know none of what I said above is easy. But that is how I think it 
could have had some chances and I don't consider myself a business thinker.
Probably I think about business the same way I think about my code. 
Business/life is not as logical as code :-). And for the record I am still
open to the idea that "windows phone strategy might work for nokia". But 
at this point of time for selfish reasons I will hope that RIM succeeds 
with
its strategy. I no longer care whether Nokia lives or dies.



On Friday 22 June 2012 03:02 AM, karl.ruetz at ruetzdogz.com wrote:
> If I ran Nokia for a year I would analyze which mobile OS(s) is/are
> dominating the markets I want to penetrate.  Obviously iOS is
> proprietary so unless I want to write Apps for iStuff I have to look at
> Android and Windows (mostly Android).  It is possible that it would be
> best to make Android phones for the U.S., Windows phones for Asia, and
> Meego or Symbian phones for Europe.  Marketing analyses would answer the
> questions.  I may be wrong, but it does not appear to me that Nokia made
> its product decisions for the right reasons.
>
> What I would not do is worry too much about looking different than
> Samsung, HTC, or any other vendor.  Make the primary question, "How can
> sell the most phones at a profit?" rather than "How can I differentiate
> myself from Samsung".  What's wrong with getting a chunk of the success
> that Samsung has had?
>
> At one time, Motorola had the lion's share of the cell phone market.
> Then they got the Iridium bug.  I remember seeing the commercial of a
> guy walking at the north pole answering his satellite phone.  The
> question that popped into my mind was, "How many people are in this
> picture?"  Just how big is the market for $3,000 phones that cost
> $2.50/minute to use?  Can you really get a return on a $2 billion
> investment?
>
> Nokia, I think, made a similar mistake.  How many people in the world
> are out shopping for Windows based phones?  If the answer isn't "most of
> them", then why build Windows based phones?  Is the tech that much
> better?  Can you build them a lot cheaper than Android?  If the answer
> is no, then choose a different OS.
>
> Karl
>
>
> On 2012-06-21 15:06, K. Frank wrote:
>> Hello List!
>>
>> Most of us have been following and talking about this whole
>> Nokia / Microsoft thing.  A couple of recent discussions on
>> this list got me thinking about it again:
>>
>>     [Interest] Is Nokia officially done with Qt?
>>
>> http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2012-June/002454.html
>>
>>     [Interest] Qt on Windows Phone 8
>>
>> http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2012-June/002703.html
>>
>> I would like to ask a related, but somewhat different question:
>> Clearly Nokia and Elop were and are facing a big business challenge.
>> What might they have done differently?
>>
>> I'm hoping to avoid comments like this or that company is bad /
>> stupid / evil.  It's easy enough to say that some folks did the
>> wrong thing, but harder to say, okay, here's what they could have
>> done differently.
>>
>> I think that it's arguably the case that:
>>
>>     Nokia missed the iPhone revolution
>>     therefore faced a significant threat to their business
>>     therefore needed to make a dramatic (desperate?) move
>>     so they joined forces with Microsoft
>>
>> Now I like to hate on Microsoft as much as the next guy,
>> and so on and so forth, but what might Elop have done
>> differently?  It's his job to try to save Nokia (or as
>> much of Nokia as he can), and not his job to try to save
>> Qt in particular.
>>
>> It's not like Nokia could have partnered with Apple.
>> (Or maybe they could have.  If somebody thinks that
>> could have been the case, that's exactly the kind of
>> discussion I'm looking for.)
>>
>> It's easy but not very helpful to say things like
>> everybody's an idiot or so-and-so is a Microsoft
>> tool or Nokia should have invented the iPhone before
>> Apple did.  I would like to approach this like a Harvard
>> Business School case study: Let's say you were appointed
>> CEO of Nokia instead of Elop back then.  What -- in the
>> face of the very real challenges Nokia faced -- would
>> you have done?  And a follow-up question:  Let's say you
>> are appointed to replace Elop now.  What -- given whatever
>> water is already under the bridge, and in the face of the
>> very real challenges Nokia faces now -- would you do now?
>>
>>
>> Thanks, and best regards.
>>
>>
>> K. Frank
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest
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>


-- 
Regards,
Pritam


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