A pretty thorough article on the subject of "The Fall of Nokia"

A mostly incoherent mishmash of personal opinions in the form of a rant. I don't care for Tomi Ahonen's pieces when he defends Nokia and I still don't now.
 
though nokia is still moving a lot of symbian smartphones, 30 million, it could be argued that rather than letting android come swooping in with such an explosion, it should have been nokia that was the one who introduced a new OS that takes the world by storm. after all, so many times nokia has lead the industry in one way or another. so why couldnt they have been the apple iphone/android of today?
 
They tried that, or rather, gave it a very half hearted attempt, with the Symbian Foundation. The problem was, they wanted everyone else to do the work.
 
I read it. It's interesting, but totally, completely wrong.

Ahonen thinks Nokia has fallen due to hardware and that hardware can bring them back, when really, the game has moved on.

When all smart phones are essentially just touch screen slabs, it's really ALL about the software.

And as we all know, Nokia has 'issues' with producing quality, intuitive software.
 
He worked once for Nokia, as a strategist during its glory days.

As for the phone he is using, he tweeted a lot of praise about the Samsung Galaxy Beam, so I think that's what he is using now. Its like a Galaxy S, but its main draw is having a pico projector so I am guessing that's what he needs for his presentations. That's a rare phone, not easy to find around.

I like the fact that he uses numbers. And math. A lot of bloggers and so called journalists these days are afraid to go into numbers. Math illiteracy i bet.

Fact remains Nokia moved 28 million smartphones. That's a mighty big number in any terms. 5 million appears to be Symbian^3m and we know only three models have been shipped, the N8, C7 and C6-01. It was estimated on another source at least 3.5 million N8s were shipped, which leaves the 1.5 million to the C7 and C6-01.

That means the remaining 23 million is still good old S60. The 5230 constantly appears on another source I follow, which tracks Asia's best selling phones. So I guess the 5230 is Nokia's best selling smartphone followed by all the rest e.g. E3, E5, and so on.

You can see the profit squeeze here since only the N8 and C7 can only be described as over $400 phones here. The rest are pretty mid to low end.

Canalys counted 31 million Symbian smartphones, so the balance of Nokia 28 million and the total has to go to Keitas in Japan using Symbian. But even if Canalys considers these phones smartphones, it should be noted that Japanese carriers and the mobile industry there don't consider Symbian powered Keitais as smartphones. They are lumped into the feature phone category. To be frankly, a keitai is roughly around a Sidekick when it comes to "smarts"---smarter than your average feature phone---yes, as it relies mainly on push email and Cloud services. But lacking the large app stores of "true" smartphones. In any case, these phones are Symbian "forks" and are not compatible with your S60 apps.

The Japanese do consider Android and iPhone as smartphones, and that's how both are categorized on Japan's best selling phone lists. Since October, smartphones have been dominating that list---meaning overall, they are outselling the featurephone keitais---and the names are either iPhone or Android phones like the Galaxy S or Sharp IS03. So in a sense, even Android is outselling Symbian in Japan.

Should be noted that mobile Linux is also used with Japanese keitais, but like Symbian powered Keitais, Linux powered keitas are still considered featurephones. To put it in context, the Motorola RAZR2 is powered by Linux too, but we still consider it as a featurephone, not a smartphone.
 
Yes, nothing can prevent yet.. for another 1-2 years atleast. They are 2 years behind everyone, something mircale has to happen to pull back.
 
Ok, you people need to clarify "free fall".. They may be in a market share free fall, but, not a revenue free fall. Quite the opposite, they are shipping more handsets now more than ever.

I can 100% guarantee you that a company see's revenue as significantly more important that market share.




Holy Sh*T .. Get out of the way of this failing company..

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nokia-Increases-Sales-and-Revenues-in-Q4-2010-180978.shtml

"Today, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of the last year, and posted net sales of EUR 12.7 billion for the time frame, up 6 percent from the fourth quarter of the previous year, and up 23 percent from the third quarter of 2010."
 
Mobile industry is evolving rapidly, hence almost every manufacturer shipping more phones, not just Nokia.

"At the same time, the company announced that, for the entire year 2010, its market share went down to 32 percent, compared to 34 percent of the market it accounted for in 2009. "

The above statement shows clearly that their market share is shrinking, that is worrying for the company.
 
I like this article. Something I can relate to:

- lack of dual SIM phones (lots of cheap Chinese phones has dual SIM, dual standby). It seems very easy to do. And it would appeal to specific markets.

- change of charger standard. I used to use the same charger for 10 years for all my Nokia phones. TEN YEARS. I don't understand why the charger has to change. It is not like they integrate it with some communication port. A charger powerful enough to charge a 15 years old phone got to be able to charge a new one.

Also, I want to say that Nokia is stupid for not utilizing the value of its N93's front facing camera.
 
One of the things Ahonen seems to mention is taking the same phone and repackaging it in different ways (targeting business, youth, etc). Nokia's tried this, notably with the E75, and it was a dismal failure. NOBODY wants artificially segmentation based on software limitations. Nokia needs to further reduce the number of phones they ship, and work on making what they do ship the top of the line in the segment it's shipping in.
 
Worrying YES.. Concerning? YES. Likely Nokia will start losing money eventually in this industry? Likely. Free falling? NO.


If a company gives everyone a free phone and gains 50% market share does that make them successful as a business? NO.

Economics dude.
 
another one...?

when we look back on all this 5 years from now Nokia and Samsung will still be number one and number two in the world....
more than likely, still in that order...

followed by ZTE....
yeah, I said it...
 
That's the old RAZR gimmick.

And honestly it still works. Practically the entire line of HTC, Samsung and Motorola is still based on this principle. Samsung's most successful smartphone model in its entire history by far, the Galaxy S, is a testimony to this principle. HTC? Take the Nexus One, turn it into the HTC Desire, Droid Incredible, and even WP7 phones like the Mozart, Surround and Trophy.

Of course, the negative side of this is it creates support or update fragmentation, like what happened to the Galaxy S where i9000s got updated first and US phones last.

The bright side on the other hand, is that it keeps new models in front. Phones have a product cycle and its always in the launch "honeymoon" phase where it sells the best. Gradually, sales of the model in one particular area starts heading down after the first month. In a way, phone sales are like movie ticket sales --- always best in the first week. Its a rare blockbuster when a phone can hold its rank week after week after week. Globally, for a phone to sustain its sales, it has to spread horizontally --- as in launch in new markets, as sales tend to head down on existing ones.

When a phone is being marketed horizontally, that's when you see it being repackaged and renamed for different carriers. Example HTC Desire HD (GSM international) -> HTC Thunderbolt (Verizon) and HTC Inspire (AT&T). Galaxy S -> Vibrant, Captivate, Fascinate, Mesmerize, Continuum. Even the Nexus S.

We also see vertical marketing (business, youth, low end, high end). The Droid 2 becomes the Cliq 2. Vertical marketing however, is limited by affordability, since you can't move high end phones into low end youth segment because you lose money. It happens with Nokia only because these high end architectures have aged long enough and has become very cheap by volume amortization, and newer high end architectures take the place of the old ones. With Blackberry, expect newer Curves to take on Bold specs while the newer Bolds go into a new generation of more powerful designs.

In any case, we must note that Nokia is also losing because it doesn't that much control of its supply chain like Samsung does. Everyone has lost potential sales the last six months or so because phones are delayed and they are delayed because there are not enough parts to make them. Except for Samsung because they manufacture every part of the chain from the CPU to the screens to the NAND, which are the three most critical parts holding up the phone. Ergo, Samsung overtakes even the much vaunted HTC as a smartphone maker, leaping over Motorola at the same time.

The screen supplies are the most particularly serious. The bigger they come, the harder they are to get. Especially if they are AMOLED. It was logistically, a big mistake on the part of Nokia to pick AMOLED as the basis for its X7 and E7 screens because it literally handed over their fate to Samsung.
 
Now is a good time to mention the pile of poop that is the E7: they gave it a great keyboard, only to arbitrarily gimp it with a below average camera. I know it shouldn't bother me, but it is just so -stupid- of them to do this when there is such an opportunity in the HW qwerty, smartphone segment. They honestly just don't get it.
 
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