Kodak Analogy is not Nokia, it is Motorola; Nokia analogy is not Kodak, its IBM

Alan wrote a great blog article here about Kodak last week (and its so delightful to come to the CDB blog and find a new article by Alan, isn't it? I always learn so much). His story was about the big picture disruption in the world economy and showed where a classic giant global corporation and brand like Kodak might die in the disruption but another giant global corporation and brand like Lego might survive. An excellent article about disruption.

In the article Alan quoted Om Malik who then mentioned Nokia vs Apple & Google in smartphones. I see a lot of that from mostly USA based writers. We also have some debate in the comments here on this blog. So let me make this observation about the Kodak death how it applies to mobile, where the right analogy is and why Nokia is not the right analogy. Similarly, where is the right analogy for Nokia now.

So Kodak was the world's biggest camera manufacturer at one point in time and for almost its whole existence, the Kodak corporation was the world's largest camera film manufacturer. Kodak actually invented the digital camera, which we now all know, has cannibalized more than 95% of the planet's photography business. And most of those digital cameras are now on mobile phones, ie cameraphones, no longer on stand-alone digital cameras although they too are still selling in large numbers. Film based cameras are a very tiny niche industry now, for the professionals and semi-professionals and some other industries like the movies and some medical instruments (X-ray machines) etc.

The point is, that Kodak was the world's biggest camera and photography company at one point in time. That industry has shifted almost totally to a new technology not compatible with film, and it is called digital photograpy. And Kodak actually invented that digital camera. Why isn't Kodak today the world's biggest digital camera maker or even one of the big camera or photography brands. Because Kodak did not pursue its invention and only made a very token attempt at digital cameras. So the issue here is that the shift in the camera industry was invented by Kodak but it did not significantly attempt to capitalize on it.

KODAK ANALOGY IS NOT NOKIA IN PHONES

The analogy Om Malik makes is about smartphones. That is not a valid analogy. Yes, just like Kodak invented the digital camera, so too Nokia invented the smartphone. But unlike Kodak, Nokia had pursued rigirously a shift in its handset prodcution from dumbpohnes to smartphones. Of all the mobile phone handset makers in existence when the smartphone was invented by Nokia, its major rivals all had to embrace this shift as well, into smartphones. It is not valid to compare Nokia's journey to someone who is new who only makes smarpthones (like Apple) or who only makes the software part of smartphones (like Google). That is not the correct analogy to Kodak. Kodak's migration to the digital camera world is correctly compared to Nikon and Canon and Polaroid and Minolta and Carl Zeiss and Vivitar and Takumar etc. The incorrect comparison is to compare Kodak to those companies that never made cameras before the invention of the digital camera like Sony or Samsung or Apple or Nokia etc. 

And of Nokia's biggest rivals in the dumbphone industry a decade ago, most of the big makers did not survive the transition. Motorola? Gone. Siemens? Sold its handsets unit. Ericsson? Tried partnering with Sony but quit that attempt just a few months ago. The only Big 5 handset maker from 2001 in the world who is still alive and now making smartphones, apart from Nokia, is Samsung.

Apple did many things in mobile and disrupted the world utterly, but Apple did not kill Nokia in smartphones. A year ago, Nokia was massively bigger than Apple in smartphones, massively. Nokia only in smartphones, was not only bigger than Apple, it was bigger than Apple and Samsung smartphones - combined. And Nokia's smartphone sales - contrary to myth - was growing strongly in 2010 - by 45% from the year before - and Nokia's diminshing profits in its handset unit, had been turned back into strong growth of profits by year-end. Nokia was not anywhere near its death-bed due to the smartphone revolution, nor because of Apple. And as to Google, yes, the Android OS did catch up to Symbian by the Spring of 2011 and is today bigger, but again, Symbian didn't die due to Android. Symbian was still growing (again by 45%) in 2010. Not growing as fast as the industry, so Symbian was losing some market share, but Symbian was nowhere near any threat of extinction.

No. Nokia did not die (or start to die) because of Apple and Google. Nokia's strong growth turned into catastrophic collapse of sales on February 11, 2011, when CEO Stephen Elop torpedoed Nokia's brand and sales and future. Kodak died because it did not capitalize on the invention. Nokia pursued its invention rigorously and remarkably successfully - remember, Nokia was bigger than Apple and Samsung smarthpones combined! That is not failure. 

KODAK ANALOGY IN PHONES IS MOTOROLA

No. Nokia analogy is something different. But before we go to that, let me show you the true Kodak analogy in mobile phone handsets. This will make you cry. Its Motorola. So in mobile phones (cellular phones) we have seen two full generations and the birth of the third. The first generation ie 1G cellular phones were on an analog technology basis launched first in Japan in 1979. The second generation ie 2G was digital and was launched in Finland in 1991.. The third generation 3G networks were launched in Japan in 2001; Motorola invented the portable cellular phone handset (while it did not launch the mobile industry, earlier mobile phones on cellular networks were carphones and briefcase phones). But Motorola did invent the digital wireless communications.

You didn't know that? Yes, Motorola had a very large part of its early business from the military. The original 'walkie talkie' military portable radios that the US army and marines used in World War 2, were made by Motorola. And then Motorola continued to provide ever more sophisticated and portable communciation gear for the military. They then found that wireless communciation was being spied on, so they came up with a way to disguise radio communication and make it undetectable, and safe from decyphering. They did it with a technology called CDMA. That is yes on the basis of the 3G technology we use in our 'UMTS' or WCDMA based GSM-compatible 3G smartphones used in all countries; as well as on the CDMA based 2G dumbphones and 3G smartphones used in the USA, Canada and some parts of Asia and Latin America.

So Motorola was truly inventing digital wireless communication technology, well before consumers were using mobile phones even on the 1G standards. This is VERY much like Kodak's invention of the digital camera. Motorola did produce digital radio gear for various armies of the world, and later that military technology was adapted for civilian use. Here is where Motorola lost the plot. It was Nokia who launched the world's first digital cellular phones, while being a tiny rival to Motorola. Motorola had invented the technology (in another unit) and didn't rush to bring it to mobile phones. Then, like Kodak, Motorola saw its rivals deploying this technology and was very late to get onboard.

In 1997 Motorola was by far the world's biggest mobile phone maker, and most of its phones were analog 1G phones. Nokia was rising on digital mobile phones. By 1998 Nokia passed Motorola. By 2006 Samsung had passed Motorola. By 2008 LG had passed Motorola. By 2010 Motorola was so bankrupt, it sold its networking unit to Nokia, and the rest of Motorola was split in two. Its handset unit tried to fight it alone, and continued generating losses, and was bought by Google last year. Motorola is the analogy to Kodak, in that it invented the new technology, but did not pursue it rigorously from early on, and when it finally did, it was too little and too late, and excepting for a last heroic hurrah with the Razr, MotoMoto is gone.

NOKIA ANALOGY IS IBM

The nearest tech analogy for what Nokia actually did in smartphones, is IBM. This is not a perfect analogy, but let me make it as close as possible. IBM once towered over its rivals as a computer maker, so much that in the 1970s and early 1980s the computer industry was called IBM and the BUNCH - with Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data and Honeywell all essentially the five dwarfs on the feet of the global giant IBM and this is like Nokia was in the mid 2000s towering over its rivals as big as the next 4 biggest rivals combined (in terms of units of mobile phone handsets sold per year). 

Like IBM, also Nokia made both its mobile phone handsets and the software for it, both in dumbphones and smartphones. Same for IBM mainframes. Then came the PC. IBM didn't invent the PC and early PCs were seen by IBM management as toys not fit for proper business use. Apple came along and sold more actual computer units than IBM which shook the company (this was Apple 2, long before there was a Mac) and IBM decided they should get into the PC market. They created the IBM PC which was introduced with iconic advertising using an actor portraying the Charlie Chaplin character of the tramp. What IBM did however, was to still dismiss the relevance of the PC so much, that they didn't bother to develop their own OS software for the PC, they outsourced that to Bill Gates's little start-up company called Microsoft. 

I know the analogy to Nokia is not strong here, Nokia invented the smartphone but at least one could say that the early Symbian OS development was not done in-house by Nokia, Symbian was set up as a separate entity co-owned by the major handset maker rivals like Motorola, Sony, Ericsson, Panasonic, Samsung, Siemens etc - with Nokia only one of the shareholders.

But yes, to my analogy. IBM did use the PC to become the world's largest PC maker and passing Apple to take back the title as the world's largest computer manufacturer when measured by units sold. Then came the Apple disruption - the Macintosh PC, with its radical mouse and graphical user interface (what we think of as Windows style PCs today) and all its user-friendly innovations like displays that showed what the finished printouts would look like, and hypertext links (what enabled the WorldWide Web half a decade later) etc.

Microsoft was powering all IBM personal computers at the time. Microsoft set on to build a rival to the Macintosh OS, what became Windows. IBM could have remained with the Microsoft OS version - which was the world's bestselling OS platform both on DOS and Windows, the Mac never passed either in scale. But IBM departed from the leading Microsoft platform, suddenly, and decided to develop its own rival to the Mac, called OS/2. IBM had been on the world's bestselling OS platfrom for PCs while it was the world's bestselling PC brand. Then it decided to abandon that platform, and try to create a new rival inhouse.

Now look at Nokia. Nokia's Symbian platform was still in Q4 of 2010 the world's bestselling smartphone OS according to all analyst houses but one (and that one was ridiculed by the industry for an obvious blatant mathematical error). Nokia decided to abandon the world's leading OS platform, and replace it with the smallest of the seven in production at the time in February 2011, Microsoft's Windows Phone.

Since that decision was made, Nokia has so far lost half of its market in half a year (we will see how much worse the damage is in a few days when Nokia Q4 results are released). This is a world record collapse of global market share in any industry ever. Now Nokia's path looks very similar to how IBM suffered with OS/2. They struggled for several years attempting to sell premium IBM PCs using OS/2, and found their market share in terminal decline - until they abandoned OS/2 and shifted back to the Microsoft world which now was obviously Windows. The journey was so costly, IBM would later see its PC business become so unprofitable it was sold to Lenovo.

Like I said, this is not a perfect analogy, but this is the nearest. IBM did have a world-leading market share in its PCs over all rivals, using the world's best-used OS. So was Nokia last year using its own world-leading OS in smarpthones. IBM decided to abandon that platform to switch to what was definitely no better than 4th biggest OS at any one point in time. Nokia did the same abandoning the leading OS for what seems to still today be the 7th best (might be 6th best for Q4 when the final numbers are out). And just like IBM, Nokia has already seen its global market leadership position collapse last year, falling from by far the biggest smartphone maker to only third biggest by Q3. 

Kodak lost because while it invented the digital camera, it did not pursue the opportunity from the start, and when it finally did, it never did it well enough to recover the leadership position. This is not the analogy to Nokia, which also invented the smarthpone, but Nokia did pursue leadership in smartphones and did that successfully for every single quarter smartphones have ever been sold up until Q2 of 2011.

The correct mobile phone handset analogy to Kodak is Motorola. They did invent digital wireless telecoms but did not pursue that opportunity in consumer oriented cellular phones until too late and never regained their leadership in it. They ended up losing to the rivals who went digital faster.

The correct analogy for Nokia is IBM, where both companies had the global hardware leadership position in their respective industries. As the software side of the business was disrupted, both companies held at one point the world's bestselling OS but in both cases, management moved away from the leading OS to the smallest in the market. This caused hardware sales to fall and in the case of IBM led to a highly profitable PC company reporting losses and being forced to sell its PC unit to Lenovo. Similarly Nokia turned into losses and now there are rumors that the smartphone unit (or indeed all of Nokia) might be sold.

The irony is that at least in the case of IBM, the company understood that Microsoft the subcontractor of the OS was like a vampire sucking all the profits out of IBM's box-mover PC sales. Microsoft saw the Macintosh shift in the industry as an opportunity to move away from Microsoft and try its own OS instead. With Nokia it is very sadly the opposite. Nokia had a highly successful OS development team, including Symbian, MeeGo and Qt, And Nokia decided rather than use its own world-leading OS platforms, it abandoned that control of its own destiny, to adopt Microsoft's OS and now has to pay a licence for every smartphone sold that uses the Microsoft Windows Phone software. The IBM decision was at least a reasonably logical one, that might have succeeded, and a worthwhile risk to take by management, that did not work out. The Nokia decision is simply an insane one.

So Kodak management had a treasure among their intellectual property, which they did not understand well enough and failed to exploit. That was bad judgement by management. This was the same at Motorola with digital communications. IBM management issue was a case of a gamble in switching its operating system platform away from the market leader to a small rival. The execution might have perhaps worked but did not. Nokia is doing something similar and its early signs show that the change is actually even worse for Nokia than what happened at IBM.

Thats my view on the Kodak analogies..

Comments

[AtTheBottomOfTheHilton]

IBM have been in business more or less ever since and Microsoft have dominated the PC world after IBM and Microsoft separated their businesses. Both Microsoft and IBM have been successful despite of this.

Now with Nokia and Microsoft, they are both losers. Nokia ditched all their in-house development for the benefit of Microsoft that will in turn fail because it has very low attraction. Microsoft try and try to get into the handset market, Windows Mobile (which was so far the most successful one), Zune, Kindle and now Windows Phone.

Analogy somewhat right but it is the result that is almost the opposite.

[Sander van der Wal]

IBM also had a couple of other businesses, mainframes, mini's and services. IBM's problem wasn't only that it did not sell a lot of PC's, it's problem was that PC sales and the move to client server programming was also killing its mainframe business.

IBM was saved by re-orienting the company doing more services and less hardware.

[Steve]

Ik looks like Nokia is already paying the price for getting in bed with the MS vampire. They are being pressured to lower their prices on the Lumia 710 so their margins will be squeezed further. So as far as WP handsets are concerned it looks like the race to the bottom is on:

"Nokia's upcoming Windows Phone handset, the Lumia 710, has been deemed too expensive by UK networks. And they have pressured the Finnish outfit to lower prices in order to compete more effectively with rival low-end smartphones.

While the Lumia 710 is more powerful than most budget handsets in question, sales of the Lumia 800 allegedly failed to meet network expectations, leaving carriers sceptical over just how popular the new model will be."

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/01/23/networks_nag_nokia_to_lower_lumia_levy/

[aguest]

"Microsoft try and try to get into the handset market, Windows Mobile (which was so far the most successful one), Zune, Kindle and now Windows Phone."

The Kindle uses a version of linux. You surely mean the Kin.

Well, I think while one might well discount Nokia at this point, it is still a bit early to write off Microsoft -- although its real punch will come with Windows 8.

The analogy with IBM is also debatable in another sense that IBM then was more diversified than Nokia today. The ship could be steered in another direction.

[Peter]

nokia's issue is Steven Elop. Get rid of this Wall Street Criminal, Nokia will be set free and recover easily.

[kan]

Microsoft forrays into mobile have not ended well. Windows Mobile was a mess because they were trying to shoehorn a desktop metaphor onto a phone with limited memory, processing and screen real estate.

The Kin was another disaster - developing a phone for teenagers and young adults - concentrating on a subset of the market rather than actually concentrating on user experience.

When all this happening Apple developed and improved the Iphone through its iterations. Microsoft to their credit realised they needed to have a total rethink of how to enter the market once again. Apple redefined smartphones as "app centric" with a touchscreen. Microsoft were not going to beat Apple at its own game so rethought their o/s around a "task centric" and integrations approach. This has become a hard sell due to Apple influence and marketing but also Microsofts inability thus far to communicate this to consumers.

[Tomi]

One thing in the Nokia-IBM analogy is completely incorrect. IBM tried to develop the OS/2 operating system together with Microsoft, but then Microsoft realized that their Windows 3.0 was selling very well and stopped developing the OS/2. However, IBM continued to develop and use the OS/2 and it proved to be a failure in the end. We can see a parallel that if Nokia would have continued to develop and use its own operating system MeeGo, the same thing that happened to IBM could have happened to Nokia. If IBM would have switched to Windows 3.0 early on, it would have secured the biggest market share in PCs. In your post you talk about continuing with Symbian^3. That was not the strategy. The strategy was to develop and use MeeGo that had even smaller market share than Windows Phone 7 and the MeeGo would have been kind of like OS/2.

[Reda]

It's been a long time since I commented here and I was hoping that after Apple gained the top position you would give up and take off your fanboy glasses. You didn't I'm afraid. I commend the effort but the result it's quite disappointing.
How can you not see now that the disruption was a mobile computer that everybody could use. Nokia like Kodak did not leverage what they had and developed for quite sometime (not symbian but what is today called Meego!). It's was the great Anssi Vanjoki (sarcasm here) that killed the product (by not adding a GSM module) to maintain the current Symbian install base (his loved NSeries)
Compare that to Apple who is currently cannibalising its iPod install base and its computer install base. I agree the computer install base is not a great sacrifice but the iPod was at the time and they risked it because they knew/know that innovation is the only way to keep the lead.

Please, please take off your fanboy glasses

[Alex Kerr]

@Baron
> "multi-touch mobile pocket internet computers, that also happened to make phone calls. Those devices, and the iPhone was the first and only one for 1 year plus"

That is simply not true. Nokia already had invented those devices some time before the iPhone, and EVERYTHING the iPhone had, and has had since, (hardware features, software features, ecosystem) already premièred LONG before on Nokia phones, and in the Nokia ecosystem. This is historical fact - look it up! (And Tomi has mentioned this multiple times in previous blog posts too). Furthermore for all those things iPhone had, Nokia was consistently better at them (apart from number of apps in appstore once iPhone store took off) - and still is.

What iPhone did was make those few elements that it did implement (i.e. copy from Nokia) APPEAR to be better to end users and developers (e.g. slick pretty UI for starters) and then absolutely marketed them as hard and as cleverly as possible. That's it.

Nokia's fall and a large part of iPhone and especially Android's success is purely due to Nokia's own action against itself, internal bureaucracy (which in some ways Elop has tackled) and mismanagement and missteps. Not because iPhone or Android were that great. Nokia stumbled, it's competitors rose as a result.

On a separate and more general note, the facts and history show very clearly that the mishandling of the Feb 11th announcement of Symbian's eventual end of line is what brought Nokia to the state it's in now - that and the lack of speed with which Nokia updated Symbian (it should have had the Belle release a full year or more ago).

The point is the WinPho devices could have been launched alongside, addressed at suitable markets (e.g. the USA) and then if they failed (as they probably will) it wouldn't have been too big a deal, just like a temporary experiment that never worked out. And not having Qt on them from the outset was a huge mistake too.

Amazing that easily the most expert and successful mobile company in the world (Nokia) decided to listen to the least expert and most incompetent of companies in the mobile space (Microsoft)...quite how one explains that without coming to some sort of conspiracy based conclusion involving the board and major shareholders of Nokia and Microsoft, I don't know. Elop couldn't have done anything without their backing and direction as I understand it.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi all, nice comments! Will respond in small sets

Hi At, Sander and Steve

At - good points and we agree obviously, especially your last point, that the result is dramatically different.

Sander - Very good observation about the fact IBM had several other related businesses - but so too has Nokia, in addition to smartphones, sells cheap dumbphones, super-expensive luxury phones (Vertu), telcoms networking gear, software and services led by Navteq etc. So again I think the analogy is still strong on this and what smartphones today are to Nokia, is similar to what PCs were to IBM.

Steve - excellent point and thanks for the link. Yes, carriers are very disappointed with Lumia 800 sales and when they see the Lumia 710 and how much of a downgrade it is (and looks and feels cheap), its price is way too high. As the Lumia 710 price is lowered, that depresses the profits generated by the Lumia line. Same we hear with Lumia 800 that its prices have been slashed too because of disappointing pre-Christmas sales (and large inventories of unsold Lumia units).

Thank you all, keep the discussion going

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[nic]

@Baron95 "iPhone is outselling ALL OTHER SMARTPHONES COMBINED" where did you get that from? Apple was the top seller in 2Q2011, I think, only to be surpassed by Samsung later, but neither had more than 50%.

As for Nokia having all the good stuff already before the Iphone, if you really consider that making phone call isn't all that important, then please take a look at the N800. It was announced at a CES, a few days before the first Iphone was announced. The N800 had a touchscreen, had an app repository (like other Linux distros, the real innovators), makes video calls via IP, has quite capable browsers... It was supposed to be used along with a "featurephone" with a camera, GPS and GPRS, yes... Eventually it became the N900, which is great, and now the N9, which is awesome, and innovates in ways that certainly rivals the competitors.

[nic]

Great article, Tomi. Very true.

It would have been nice if you had mentioned the actual origin from Symbian, the British company Psion, if I am not mistaken. Android too was bought "ready". Not exactly the same thing, but there's a small resemblance there.

I have been thinking a lot about some graphics I saw the other day that show the sales curves of the first different personal computers. Then it shows smartphones. Symbian appears to be following a pattern seen previously of starting earlier, but reaching a peak then vanishing. It seems to be at a plateau right now. Let's see where the next point falls tomorrow, Jan 26.

[Jonathan]

@nic

As I wrote in a previous (interestingly missing) comment. N800 and N900 had resistive screens, styli and non-accelerated GTK graphics. They are not really comparable with iPhone or WP7.

N9 is comparable, but it came almost 5 years after iPhone. Too little too late.

I must be doing something right when my posts get censored constantly.

[Jonathan]

To sum up my censored posting

@alex kerr

It is not about innovation or ideas, it is about execution. Having the bits and pieces does nothing good, one must be able to put them in a great product.

Before N9 and Lumia, Nokia could not create a similar UX to iPhone. iPhone was also way better for developers. The exact same problem hit RIM, which saw it's unit sales decline first time in years in Q2/11. And the real problem is not market share or even unit sales, the real problem was Apple and Samsung stealing profits, and setting an UX benchmark. At the same time a league of cheap Android phones gave more bang for buck.

About Elop conspiracy: Board (chaired by Jorma Ollila) decided about the Microsoft deal, and if Elop does not perform as they wish, they can and will show him the door. If there is a conspiracy, it must go much deeper than Elop.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Just to Jonathan...

I don't recall why I have removed your comments, I remove several almost every day. I remove them when they break very clear long-standing rules on this blog - we don't get personal and nasty, the comment cannot suggest that the person didn't bother to read the original comment, and in some cases I specify on my blog article, that I will limit that discussion in rare cases where the topic is prone to be misdirected.

Your comments here just before this response to you are perfectly sensible and topical. If you post with that attitude, your comments will always be kept. Note that I have no interest in deleting comments that are against my view or call me crazy etc - hundreds of such comments remain years later on this blog. I keep them to illustrate what was the discussion at the time. You are entitled to your view and my readers greatly enjoy not only my blog postings, but the intelligent discussion here in the comments. Just stick to the simple rules.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Now second set or replies

Hi aguest, Peter and kan

aguest - thanks for responding to At. About IBM diversification, I think the degree of diversification with Nokia is similar in scale. IBM made mainframe and PC computers, their OS, software apps, and services. Nokia makes basic featurephones, smartphones, their OS, software apps, and services. But beyond those, one third of Nokia's total revenues comes from its networking unit - a degree of diversity IBM didn't have back then. But yes, the proportion of hardware/software/services with IBM was certainly at different ratios than at Nokia now.

Peter - we agree. Nokia's fastest road to recovery is firing Elop, bringing MeeGo back fully online - promising carriers Nokia's future is not tied only to Microsoft - and the MeeGo and Symbian based smartphone sales will recover enough to bring Nokia to profits. Then Nokia needs to manage its transition to Qt supported platforms and perhaps limit the WP7 sales to North America (if they maintain success there)

kan - totally agree with WinMo and Kin. I also do agree, Microsoft did a total reset and WP7 is far more competitive, done in a 'post iPhone era'. But it now comes too late with Microsoft partner relationships all ruined except Nokia. With only one handset partner, Microsoft cannot win in this game and the other partners not only dislike Nokia, but they hate Microsoft. And the carriers now hate both. This partnership cannot succeed.

Thank you all, keep the comments coming

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Sander van der Wal]

Regarding Apple marketing its UI to developers, Apple did almost no marketing to developers. They said where you could sign up for the SDK. That's it.

I did saw Nokia market their Qt SDK at several non-mobile developer events. That became a bit embarassing as the demo's they showed did not change at all, mimicking the progress they made in porting Qt on Symbian.

[darwinphish]

Tomi:

I like the comparison between Kodak and Motorola. Motorola has become so irrelevant lately that its easy to forget their past glory. As for the Nokia-IBM comparison, well, it's hit and miss. There are some similarities, but there are lots of differences. The main difference is that IBM learned the future (and profits) are in software, not hardware. Nokia is ignoring that lesson and may never be in position to make the adjustment.

I think in the not too distant future, you will be able to make an analogy between Nokia and Motorola. Motorola was stuck in a 1G mindset when the world moved to 2G and they never caught up. In many ways, Nokia has been stuck in a 2G mindset as the world has moved to 3G. Nokia did a lot of great things in the 2G world, but they became less relevant in a 3G world.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

darwinphish

Good points. But again, in IBM case, IBM did clearly see the growing importance of the OS side to PCs and did try to move to own it. Nokia too saw the growing importance o the OS and built an empire around it - but then abandoned it.

Which brings me to your second point, I think history lessons and MBA case studies will retell the story of how Elop inherited a market leader which he destroyed. Nokia itself (prior to Elop) was on the right path, 100% the right path - from hardware to software, from dumbphones to smartphones, from phones to services, from devices to ecosystems - and on all of these Nokia was the market leader or in strong competition to be the market leader. Nokia's problem prior to Elop was execution, not wrong strategy or wrong direction. Elop was hired explicitly to fix the execution (so said Ollila when he announced Elop) but Elop instead decided its too hard to try to execute this strategy, and abandoned a potentially winning hand, and replaced it with the weakest option.

So I don't see the evidence proving that Nokia's case will be like that of Motorola (or Kodak) but I would not be surprised, if many make that correlation. Especially where the conventional wisdom starts to think the smartphone was invented by Apple in 2007 and that Nokia's fall started with the iPhone in 2007 (when in reality in 2007-2008 Nokia GAINED market share, not lost. The iPhone killed Palm and Windows Mobile, not Nokia nor Blackberry. It was Android which was cutting Nokia and Blackberry sales). But those views will no doubt become more common and widely believed. I will try to do my best to keep the truth alive haha..

Thanks!

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

(Sorry, I forgot we had previous comments)

Hi Tomi and Baron

Tomi - good point about co-development. But in that case, the analogy with MeeGo isn't valid, because Nokia wasn't developing MeeGo with Microsoft. Nokia co-developed Symbian with a broad partnership as well. Its now with Windows Phone that Nokia has no real role in the development at all. IBM analogy is not perfect, but its the nearest I can think of.

Baron - Ok, your point sounds reasonable, except it is NOT consistent with the facts. The original iPhone was yes a multi-touch pocket device, but it didn't allow apps. Nokia's Symbian devices allowed apps to be installed.

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