Fogg believes Nokia’s current set of problems with Windows Phones are
not explained
by a failure of execution; now it’s their strategy that’s the
problem. While Elop “rightly saw” that mobile was becoming a “war of
ecosystems,” choosing Windows Phone to fight the dominant players of
Android and iOS has simply dragged Nokia down, he argues. “Now it’s
Windows Phone that is holding Nokia back. Windows Phone is proving a
hard sell because of the success of Android and iOS.”
Adopting Windows Phone also means Nokia is now reliant on Microsoft’s
execution — and Redmond continues to lag behind the pace of development
on the dominant smartphone platforms. “Microsoft has been slow to
innovate with Windows Phone, which has held Nokia back,” says Fogg. “The
current version, Windows Phone 8, is little different in consumer
features to Windows Phone 7 of two years ago. In the meantime, Apple and
Google have piled on numerous more features to iOS and Android.”
“Elop chose Windows Phone also because he could reduce costs by
lowering the number of Nokia staff working on content and services.
Ironically, Nokia is having to stimulate the Windows Phone ecosystem by
content deals to attempt to get the platform moving,” Fogg adds.
Choosing Windows Phone was of course not the only option open to
Nokia: There is one more lost opportunity to add to Nokia’s case file.
With the benefit of hindsight, Leach believes it’s possible to say that
Nokia should have adopted Android — and that by not doing so it missed
the opportunity to be the company Samsung is now. Ironically that is
also the company Nokia used to be: the dominant force in the mobile
industry.
Also ironic: Google’s Android could have saved Nokia, instead of
helping to bleed the company of its blue blood. Nokia was mobile royalty
– now it’s just Microsoft’s foot soldier.
“Samsung has been the victor over Nokia more than Apple has,” Leach
argues. “Success for Nokia now would be being Samsung – if, at that key
point in 2008, 2009, they’d made that step to adopt Android. It wasn’t
really clear at the time that was the right thing for them to do — at
that time they really needed to be on their next-gen platform; that was
clear. They needed to have MeeGo ready and in the market. But, if we put
on our hindsight vision, we could say that rather than MeeGo, probably
the best thing to have done would have been Android… With hindsight it’s
a lot clearer.”
Fogg hammers this point home by arguing that differentiating its
smartphones on Windows Phone has actually been harder for Nokia than it
has been for its rivals to make a success of adopting Android. “Elop
argued that Windows Phone would make it easier for Nokia to innovate and
differentiate its phones than if Nokia had adopted Android. Ironically,
Microsoft’s UI rules have made it hard for Nokia to do this while Sony,
Samsung and HTC have successfully built custom user interfaces and
applications on top of Android.”
Success for Nokia now would be being Samsung – if, at that key point in 2008, 2009, they’d made that step to adopt Android.
It’s hard to beat Nokia up for not predicting how successful Android
was going to be; few would have predicted how swiftly Google would take
over the smartphone space. But it’s easy to accuse Nokia of complacency
at a time when there were plenty of warning signs the winds of
technology change were whipping up a storm. Nokia even saw what was
coming — what smartphones were becoming — sooner than most, but they
failed to realise how quickly they needed to change, or that the time
they had to prepare for their next business leap was shrinking
exponentially.
And, finally, when they did realise they needed to turn their
business upside down, choosing Windows Phone over Android was a flawed
strategy that kicked the company into the long grass. No matter how well
they executed, Windows Phone could not turn their business around
because the race for smartphone dominance was being run by Android OEMs
and Nokia wasn’t even in the running (leaving the field clear for
Samsung to
rise and
rise).
What’s even worse for Nokia is that the story of its long-drawn-out decline is
not a new tale. And the lesson it teaches is not original. Put simply it’s this: Innovate or die.