Nokia's Burning Platform

Nokia is expected to bring some radical changes to revive the fortunes of the company, says new CEO Stephen Elop in a memo to all his employees. The memo says, "The company's situation is that of a man standing on an oil platform in the North Sea and facing a raging fire on multiple fronts - who has no choice but to jump into freezing water to survive."

• "...there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem."
• "They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range."
• "Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core."
• "We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market."
• "...Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements..."
• "Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem."
• "We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally. Nokia, our platform is burning."

Nokia has become just another handset manufacturer from being the world leader especially in the Smart Phone category which is now being dominated by Android and Apple. Well, I was wondering what is W+K doing with the Nokia account? Couple of months back, I met someone from W+K Amsterdam office who works on the Nokia account and uses an iPhone. When I asked him why not the N5, he was utterly embarrassed. I guess, that's why I didn't get the job. Anyways.

Nokia needs a miracle to survive the onslaught launched by Apple IOS and Google's Android. God save them. This is a perfect example of how a market leader is reduced to nothing when they lose focus on competition. Apple and Google on the other hand has managed to create strong eco-system around themselves. Brands that manage to build stronger eco-systems around their core offerings will not only be successful but drive consumers along with them in the future.

More on Brand Eco-system coming soon. Cheers.

NOKIA N8 - Aiming to gain ground

The Mobile Category in India is going through lot of changes at the moment. 3G, MNP, Smart Phones, Mobile Internet, Mobile TV ... A series of trends, analysis, reports and meaningful changes that will affect the Mobile market in India. Watch this space, lots of interesting things coming up... Smart Phones and Mobile Internet will be the next big things in India. Nokia is not the market leader when it comes to Smartphones, will N8 be the cash cow?

Here's a review of NOKIA N8:

Discover the Nokia N8 - an amazing smartphone that lets you take stunning photos, capture true HD movies and play them all back on your HDTV! Nokia N8 is the first phone to have a large 12 Megapixel camera lens and Carl Zeiss Optics, for flawless photo quality. It also bosts a HD video recorder and HDMI out, so you can be the movie maker, and share movie time with family and friends on your HD TV. The brilliant touchscreen and sleek aluminium casing are just what you'd expect from such an impressive phone, and with apps, maps and more to delve into, the Nokia N8 is easily one of this year's most exciting phones.

The world's first Symbian^3 smartphone, Nokia N8 is full of exciting features, apps and innovations. It's incredibly easy to stay in touch, as the N8's Twitter™ and Facebook™ applications are connected all day long, keeping you up-to-date with all the latest happenings in each of your networks. You can stay signed in to multiple instant messenger and email accounts, have several IM chats at once, and see all your texts in conversations.

Nokia N8 is all about entertainment. You can browse the whole web and watch flash videos online, store your favourite HD movies on the 16GB internal memory or on a microSD card (up to 32GB), and even enjoy on-demand Web TV, on your mobile phone! The exclusively customised BBC iPlayer app lets you catch up on your favourite BBC shows, and you can access TV channels online, from CNN to Paramount, and never miss out on your favourite shows.

For all those who wants to pick up a new smartphone, check out the new NOKIA N8.

DIMK, SIMK and a phone

Sachidananda Murthy's article, 'The Precious Hour' on the last page of this week's THE WEEK magazine is really interesting. He wrote about how working couples are finding it increasingly difficult to spend time with their kids. How organizations are dealing with this problem by allowing families and kids of employees to spend time in their campuses. Late working hours and more time spent on commuting has left very little time for parents to spend with their kids.

Enough has been written on the subject of evolving societal changes happening from SIMK (Single Income Many Kids) to DIMK (Double Income Many Kids) to DINK (Double Income No Kids). Murthy writes, "Unlike the adage which says, 'Children should be seen, but not heard', working parents now see, hear and read their children on the screen, thanks to the mobile-internet marriage. Parents can keep in touch with children through mobile phones, though the mobile link can be a source of anxiety, if the child does not respond or if the child calls when one is attending to important work." He also mentions about an informal survey among college students in Delhi recently revealed that the maximum outgoing calls by the student were made to friends while the most incoming calls came from parents. This observation is nothing new, it's a simple relevant universal truth (SURT). Parents worldwide are anxious about their children and wants to keep track of them.

However what surprises me is that not many business tool brands like Nokia E Series, Blackberry or Mobile Services have explored it beyond a point. In the recent past, if I can remember, only "Blackberry from Hutch" and Airtel with it's kid commercial (The kid calls his dad to make him hear the sound of rain drops, who is working on an engineering project in a desert) explored this.

Now here is a bigger insight, "Parents have no time to spend with their kids" which allows you to go beyond a 30 second commercial. There is so much more to explore. A platform that Nokia E Series or Blackberry can own for good, occupy before someone else does it. It gives them the opportunity to explore avenues of bringing parents and kids together beyond communication, branding, advertising. A bigger ideal that create real bonding between real people.

Do discuss, if you have some more thoughts on this.