Nokia has a "contigency plan" if Windows Phone 8 fails
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 2nd Jul 2012 22:17 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless Nokia board chairman Risto Siilasmaa went on a Finnish television show, and stated that while he is confident in Windows Phone 8, the company does have a back-up plan if it doesn't work out. Speculation aplenty - what is this backup plan? The answer's pretty easy, if you ask me.
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RE[2]: backup plan
by cdude on Wed 4th Jul 2012 14:20 UTC in reply to "RE: backup plan"
cdude
Member since:
2008-09-21

They knew they had to do something with Symbian for about ten years. Nothing happened.


They bought Symbian, open sourced it, formed an alliance and heavily invested into it. I would not name that nothing. Do not forget that Symbian was number #1 OS having even more sales then its two closed competition together and Symbian did grow when Elop took over!

They had the Meego/Moblin option with Qt for development and they sat around and did nothing


They came up with an amazing strategy. Combining the ecosystem of its leading Symbian - but in terms of technical features outdated as in hard to maintain and adjust for new scenarios - with it's new Linux-based platform using Qt.

It's not only a upgrade-path as some would believe but it's a way to transition the eco-system between different platforms (Qt is not limited to Symbian and MeeGo but also does well on Android for example). Its a way to decouple the #1 ecosystem they had with Symbian to whatever other platform they may need to support or can chose to select next. Think of combining the Symbian-world with the S40-world (Qt on S40), with the MeeGo-world with the Android, Windows, OSX, etc worlds.

A great strategy especially once you realized that a) your current platform of choice may not stay competitive and b) you may need to switch to another platform and c) maybe even to more then one.

Elop was correct. Its all about the ecosystem. He just did not realize that Symbian was the mobile ecosystem #1 when he took over. He did not see the value in decoupling your ecosystem from the underlying platform. He did not understand the value of that. He rather decided to kill of the whole strategy, all the ecosystems Nokia had and start something completely new. Heck, he came into Nokia, killed everything that made Nokia huge and turned it into a WP-only reseller while burning 80% of the company's value in a little over a year!

Their response was to switch to an even more obscure platform in Windows Phone they had no say in rather than actually do some work and control their platform. At least with Android they can 'semi' control their platform.


The value of being independent from others and controlling the foundations your whole company is build up on is something Elop and the board heavily underestimated.

Now that the Lumia upgrade-disaster hit the news and resulted in future decline of Lumia sales (adjusted Q2/Q3 expectations) they maybe see the connection. But only maybe.

What makes me wonder is the timing. Just shortly before the news that the Lumia strategy got more hits and shortly before the Q2/Q3 quartely results where adjusted (to be more worse then worst expectations) they killed off plan B: Meltimi.

Why would you kill of an alternate strategy to your current strategy when your realize that your current strategy is failing? Why short before announcing that it is failing? That makes only sense if you need to make sure there is no alternate left to switch from the failing strategy to another.

If they stick with Windows Phone as they are they go down.


News after the announcement was that they focus even more on WP. Its expected Nokia has end of this year a marketshare of 3%. Close to the marketshare there Lumia have.

If they switch to a platform providers want to sell and people want to buy, with all the applications there are on Android, they just might survive as a shadow of their former selves.


They are already a shadow of there former self. ALL of the previous management that made Nokia a success left meanwhile. The most talented Unix-people are gone. They will need that talent when picking up Linux again with Android. They will need good management to make the strategy a success. They have neither of both left and it will take them time and money to restore that and execute the new strategy. I fear neither are the talents, nor the knowledge, nor the cash, nor the time left for that. It's to late.

Edited 2012-07-04 14:29 UTC

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