What’s up with Nokia?

Once the world’s most popular and loved mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia seems to have taken a serious beating in recent months.  After doing a couple of rounds with Apple; who tagged teamed with Android, the once arrogant and dominant mobile player is now battered and beaten, hanging from the ropes.  The financial crisis added insult to injury and poor Nokia saw their revenue and operational profits plummet by 19 and 76 percent respectively! Ouch.

I’m hoping, that just like a good-old Rocky movie, the old hero suddenly stands up again in the last ten minutes and bravely surprises the audience with a boost of energy and effort.

Apple vs Nokia in Rocky 38!

What this does show, is that the mobile industry is so fast moving and innovative, that the cliché ”you snooze, you lose” really applies!  The global mobile market was dominated by Nokia for about ten years until Apple arrived with a NEW idea – the touch screen on an iPhone.  Recently, Google decided that open source is key and put their efforts into supporting Android – which was quickly adopted by HTC, Motorola and other handset manufacturers (except Nokia). And Nokia? Well they were snoozing.

For the second time in 7 months, Nokia is restructuring their senior management team.  Their smartphone division will be run by Anssi Vanjoki and Mary McDowell will look after key mobile phones – both existing Nokia staff.  The reason for the frequent management change is supposedly to “keep management fresh” but it seems a little desperate to me.

Since iPhone launched three years ago, Nokia has not had a compelling smartphone in the market. They attempted an open source operating system (Maemo 5) which was launched on the Nokia N900 (http://maemo.nokia.com/).  However, within months after the launch of this device, Nokia announced a joint initiative with Intel to develop another open source platform called Meego (http://meego.com). Does this mean Maemo was a flop? Or does this mean Android was just better?  I wonder why they have to develop a different platform at all? Why not support Android?

Some people believe that the Nokia brand itself is strong enough to carry them through. Well a recent global study by Millward Brown shows that the brand value of Nokia dropped by 58 percent in the last year.  That is a devastating blow!

Nokia has made some good moves… let’s give them props. The OVI application store is great and competes quite nicely with iTunes but the real clincher is “comes with music”. This is where you get a specific model phone or contract special where you have unlimited music downloads for a certain period of time. GREAT idea!  Another good move on their part was offering free mobile navigation with turn-by-turn directions for all GPS enabled phones.  But is this enough or is this a case of too little too late?

There are still some die-hard Nokia fans who are hoping that their favourite phone manufacturer will make a comeback.  In my opinion, I’d say brands to watch are Samsung and anything Android. But let’s hope the old giant can bounce back from the ropes and give us great entertainment in the global mobile ring.