Mr. Nokia- Your enemy is my enemy, so we must be friends!

There will be a lot written about the appointment of the new Nokia CEO. Here are our thoughts.

It appears MS and Nokia will now have a very strong alliance to develop an OS for Nokia phones that will stand up to the Android menace. We guess this would be a pretty important reason this recruitment happened from Microsoft.

MS will dedicate thousands of engineers to this, Nokia will offer its mind blowing market share of phones for this noble purpose.

Question- Nokia still has a hardware design problem, and its devices dont really have the wow factor. How will Nokia address this?

Question- Why does MS need Nokia for its engineers to get inspired and make the next level of portable OS?

Question- How will this counter the Chinese threat?

Sure, it appears Stephen Elop is more eloquent, understands the US market and technology.

Question- the US market is not the growth engine for the world. India and China are.

Question- Sure the Finns are reserved, but cant believe they dont understand technology.

Sure, Nokia it appears had become slow and bureaucratic- so a shake up of the culture is in order? Who better than a North American to get this happening fast.


Nokia is a great company and its mission of 'connecting people' has put phones in the hands of billions. And it is time for a change. A time to move from product to services. A time to give away killer apps 'free'- a time to make the Apple model of application stores, irrelevant. The focus has to be all phones, not just smart phones. Or a clear statement from Nokia saying, we will not shed tears if the Chinese reduce our market share at the bottom end to single digits.

Nokia, with its huge market share, has the potential to bring application based 'life changing experiences' across all price points. That, in our view is the real game. Will they play it? Or stay focused on the competition- Apple.

Will Nokia recreate the business landscape?

If Mr Elop is able to address this challenges effectively, it will be the most incredible business transformation. Good luck.


Else we will close with this quote from research firm Garter:
In spite of his experience, some focus Elop’s background at Microsoft and worry. Research firm Garter is in “two minds” about his appointment, with vice president Nick Jones pointing out that Microsoft “has many of the same problems as Nokia in terms of innovation, especially in the smart phone business.”

Ritu and Venkat.