Imagine, the Lennon Imagine Lyrics, applied to Nokia CEO and strategy?

So, in a Friday sort of frame of mind. Lets re-write some John Lennon lyrics, to consider an imaginary world without burning platforms? A 'better' world if you will..

IMAGINE
(original lyrics by John Lennon, adapted for comic purposes)

Imagine there's no fire
It's easy if you try
Nokia can still hire
programmers, oh my
Imagine all the people
Working for today

Imagine there's no Windows
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill platforms for
No Microsoft there too
Imagine Symbian phones
Growing strong in.. O'vi

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be one

Imagine no Steve Elop
I wonder if you can
No need for burning platforms
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all Nokias
Connecting half the world

You may say I'm a MeeGo
But Intel's the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the phones will live as one

The above for comic purposes only, no smartphones were injured in the making of this joke.

Comments

[XYZ]

I feel your pain, because I feel a bit the same way about Nokia as well (and I am not even Finnish). This morning it occurred to me that Nokia might be, and has been from say 2010, in the hands of so called activist shareholders already. Not the hip sixties and seventies kind of activist, but the nasty neo-liberal post eighties kind: the kind that is having banks for breakfast. If this is true -and there are certainly signs that it is- @elop might be doing exactly what they want: run the company to the ground en split it up. And if that is true @elop should, as you tweeted a few weeks ago, be brought to justice for insider trading. It would be a small consolation for the people who loved this once great company, but any consolation is better than seeing him destroying it and double (or triple depending on the takeover bid) his personal assets while doing so.

Interesting times ahead :S)

[Matthew Artero]

Tomi,

You are still forgetting to admonish the board; haha. I did not find your last post hostile at all. Thanks for sorting out who said what and when; very informative and very relevant. I felt you kept strictly to the facts and did not gloat; very professional.

We can talk until we are blue in the face about what the board should have done and what they should do. The causal problem is why they didn't and why they don't. The board's first mistake that hinders all future decisions/actions is that they failed to put the needed skills on the board.

The board may be quietly looking to replace Elop as you have surmised but they probably also find themselves frozen in their own tracks, not knowing how to do it without making things worse.

I offered Nokia ownership in my technology which would cause an immediate jump in their share price. But I am not willing to entrust it to Elop.

I disagree with the comments that state the days of a company being able to dominate the way Nokia once did are over. History shows us over and over again that a better user interface causes that kind of dominance; and that’s what I offer.

I expect to have my patent applications submitted this week. The party of the new user interface will start not very long after that. If it will be Nokia’s party or if Nokia will be just one of the attendees is not up to me.

[Matthew Artero]

What I find missing in a lot of tech industry discussions is the role of Intellectual Property. The industry has long ago evolved to the point where one must have the right IP war chest to stay in the game as a main player. What the right IP is, is always evolving.

What I see as the biggest mistake Elop has made was diminish Nokia’s ability to develop and acquire the necessary IP to stay in the game. Tech companies recover from low sales all the time; but not without the necessary IP.

The Ocean Tomo Patent Index, choosing stocks based on the patent portfolio of the companies, has outperformed the S&P 500 by 977 basis points. Therefore we can expect the smartphone companies with the best patent portfolio to remain in the game.

We can also expect a direct relationship between the value of a company’s IP portfolio and the company’s market share. If the value of the IP portfolio indicates a company should have a larger market share then it is definitely time to fire the CEO.

[Matthew Artero]

I found it very funny to listen to Elop talking exactly like Tomi, on that supposedly leaked video. Elop states the first and most critical priority of Nokia is to sustain its existing business/sales. He repeats and emphasizes the word “sustain”. Everything else is second to this.

It seems obvious to me that this video was intentionally leaked by Elop to show the world that he finally understands what it takes to succeed. It was not a video to showcase the product. It was a video to showcase Elop.

But I see him as still being dishonest. He is not interesting in admitting where he went wrong, how he went wrong, or what caused him to go wrong. In this feeble attempt to calm the users, employees, shareholders, and resellers, Elop has failed to give us any reason to believe he will not make big mistakes again.

Instead, toward the end of the video, at 18:45 into the video, Elop blames others for the bad news of the earnings release, saying it would not have happened if others gave him the information he needed earlier.

Elop is a joke. He was firing people left and right and telling those who remained where to focus their attention, and he refuses to take any responsibility for that while telling us in this video Nokia is all about accountability.

It’s very clear from this video that when Elop says Nokia is about accountability it really means Nokia is about blaming others.

[cycnus]

@Matthew

I agree on what you said about the video.
The video is not meant for gadget lover
it's a showcase about him.
about his answer on what Tomi said about the boycott sales of nokia.

And I don't think Elop is stupid.
Have you ever heard the word "trust your heart". It's like when you doubt about someone, he/she look nice, but you feel something wrong about he/she, then someone said "trust your heart".

What Tomi and a lot of nokians feel from the heart that Elop is a trojan horse is not wrong. What he did is really showing that. For example, no one would go to someone weeding and propose his fiance in the weeding and stealing the thunder. What elop did with WP7 video is stealing a thunder. Stealing a thunder from a company he work for.

What I think really happened in the back were,
Microsoft afraid the dominance of the linux that were on the rise.
And with Nokia backing QT, Linux have big $$$ on the their back.
If Nokia succeed transforming Symbian to QT,
and then Meego also become a success...

that's mean QT got more developer.
And Linux on desktop could got a boost,
the last boost that it need to became very competitive against windows
Developer Support!!! Developer Support!!! Developer Support!!!
Apps!!! Apps!!! Apps!!!

If the linux opportunity of pendulum swing past the current equilibrium
Microsoft will have a hard time to retain itself as the 'standard'
That's why Linux must be sabotage.
and it should start with the company that support linux the most.
.... Nokia...

And it also coincidence that Linux come from Finland
Linus is Finnish

It would be no surprise for me, if 20 or 30 years from now, CIA/FBI/NSA open a file and said that they plan elop to destroy nokia, because MS is the symbol of USA, and so forth and so forth.

[Matthew Artero]

@cycnus

Thanks for posting a very enjoyable read, and not just because you agreed with me.

The problem with thinking that this could be a government conspiracy is that the USA congress is currently deliberating a bill to weaken USA IP law. I have no argument against it being a conspiracy of private interests.

Another point worth making is that phones are definitely going to replace the home computer in the near future. More and more open-source and free-ware is inevitable. So Microsoft’s money is better spent developing new features that are difficult to duplicate. As long as they control their costs the profits per individual can remain high.

@everyone

The whole notion that it is about the ecosystem is nonsense. It is about the Intellectual Property. It always has been about the IP and will always be about the IP.

Walmart is the biggest retailer in the USA. We always hear people talk about Walmart’s economies of scale and the variety of products they offer under a single roof. Those things can be likened to the ecosystem.

But none of that would matter if Walmart didn’t first own the right piece of real estate on the right street. The right piece of real estate on the right street can be likened to the IP.

A computer can be said to have the ecosystem of computing, internet, music, communication, games, movies, and more. But that doesn’t stop people from buying high definition television sets. And now computers including smartphones have to support that capability in order to sell.

The companies that own the patents for the higher data rate technologies of 4G do not have to be concerned with which phone manufacturer does well, as long as they are doing it with a 4G license.

If you lose the IP war you never exclusively own the ecosystem. If you win the IP war you can recover from gambling with a bad hand (product) because you own the casino.

[cycnus]

@Matthew

Other than, this might be a microsoft interest, I think it's also possible that the US gov have something to do with it.

The U.S govt always try to protect the U.S interest.
One of the example what they always said is to split china. Why? because China is hurting U.S economic.
Iraq??? OIL???
and many more....

Nokia is also hurting U.S economic.
The CDMA vs. GSM war???
Nokia is one of the dominant factor in GSM.
Nokia throw a cold towel at CDMA by abandoning the symbian CDMA.
all in all.... leading to Qualcom not getting lots of money (in which becoming a U.S money through TAX).

Nokia is also make Motorola almost gone bankrupt.... by having a great success....
it's like the facebook movies.... you don't have million of friend without getting enemy...

The US govt might thinks that if they want US company to success in this era, nokia should gone. because nokia is a pain in the ass for moto, qualcom, microsoft. and with nokia gone US will got money (through TAX and employment).

[peter]

Actually FBI/CIA is NOT working for USA but for a few of International Bankers.

[ejvictor]

Ha downloaded the Elpo flaming platform game... so funny!

[Mike Korman]

Tomi, you ought to write an eulogy for Nokia.

I still can't wrap my head around Elop/Nokia's strategy to go with Windows. WP7 has less than 2% market share so Nokia's not buying into this huge ecosystem by going with Microsoft. There's more Symbian phones out there than WP7 phones. I just don't get their strategy.

This whole Nokia saga is so depressing :(. They made few missteps and now they're a patient at a palliative care unit just waiting to die.

[Matthew Artero]

Lately I’ve been thinking that based on everything Tomi teaches the only hope for Nokia or any manufacturer is a new better user interface. We hear Tomi and others go on and on about the good things about Nokia. The wide array of technology they have and how Nokia was the first to do this and first to do that.

But in every industry it has always been the user interface first and the bells and whistles second. Even Tomi would comment on the user interface when talking about how well the Blackberry was selling in south east Asia.

When we look at all the data put together, doesn’t it all point to having the best user interface as the key to dominating the market? When the user interfaces of the various competitors reach a similar level two things are established:

1. A ceiling is set on market share that no single competitor can surpass. Beyond that level it becomes too expensive to gain additional market share.

2. The percentage of customers willing to switch products is drastically lowered. If the experience is roughly the same there is no reason to switch products.

Sure it sounds sexy to talk about a market size that is greater than 1.3 Billion sales per year. But the truth is there is a ceiling on how much of that one’s competitors will allow to be profitable and there is a limit on how many users will give a manufacturer the opportunity to sell to them. It’s this smaller number that the fuss is really all about. The higher number is just masturbation unless one offers a substantially better user experience.

A lot of people have commented on the successful presentation style of Steve Jobs. The fact that people like his presentations has nothing to do with his style. His focus is always on the user experience. Any style will do. When photocopiers were new, Xerox had a chimpanzee operate one, showing how easy it is for the user. That presentation got a lot of attention as well, and sells of Xerox photo copiers did well.

What’s missing from all the talk coming from Nokia, Balckberry, Motorola, and the others, is how the user experience is any better on their product as opposed to the others. Until they say that, the one thing they are saying loud and clear to both the consumer market and stock market is they are just fighting over the smaller amount of market share already available to them and shouldn’t be expected to substantially increase sells over their previous product.

The big swings in market share are thanks to:
1. A better user interface like the iPhone provided.
2. The giveaway that Nokia provided.
3. Reduced cost of service made it available to more people.

After these no longer provide rapid growth, discussing the market share of phone manufacturers will be as exciting as discussing the market share of car companies. There will be little change in market share and revenue growth from year to year.

We need a new user interface to get excited about again. Carriers are not going to substantially reduce their rates again so they are not going to give us another growth spurt. There are no more giants like Nokia once was so we are not going to receive another giveaway. The possibility of a new user interface is the only excitement we have to look forward to.

[konut projeleri]

It would be a small consolation for the people who loved this once great company, but any consolation is better than seeing him destroying it and double (or triple depending on the takeover bid) his personal assets while doing so.

[traverten eskitme]

Thanks for sorting out who said what and when; very informative and very relevant. I felt you kept strictly to the facts and did not gloat; very professional.

[beats by dre store]

very informative and very relevant. I felt you kept strictly to the facts and did not gloat; very professional.

[uf isis]

Walmart is the biggest retailer in the USA. We always hear people talk about Walmart’s economies of scale and the variety of products they offer under a single roof. Those things can be likened to the ecosystem.

[Cheap UGGs Boots Sale]

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[ugg outlet]

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[guccioutlet]

It is severely difficult for just about any product or provider to produce a lasting impression while in the ideas of possible customers and especially when there are thousand of makers of that products hovering while in the market.

[sepetli vinç]

Nokia was on the come-back trajectory. Not winning - I am not saying they were better now than Android or iPhone

[http://www.besiktasevdenevenakliyat.info]

thank