There is this bc making the rounds on Whatsapp about Nokia. The message starts out along the lines of:
Nokia CEO ended his speech saying this “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”.
During the press conference to announce NOKIA being acquired by Microsoft, Nokia CEO ended his speech saying this “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”. Upon saying that, all his management team, himself included, teared sadly.
The message then goes on to list “lessons you can learn”.
I personally followed the Nokia story for many years before they finally sold off their handset division to Microsoft (Read that carefully, handset division! There is still a tech company named Nokia that is working on many other things including development of 5G connectivity). I have enough information to comment.
My comments on this whole “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost” stuff is this: Nokia actually did everything wrong and when they finally accepted failure, it did not surprise anybody.
Over the years, Nokia ruled the handset business, their area of expertise was hardware design. Nokia built the strongest handsets in the market, nobody could compete with Nokia on hardware grounds. However, as a tech commenter explained the problem: “When you see a Nokia product, you love it and want to have it, but once you switch it on, you feel like smashing it against the wall”
The Nokia software sucked.
Sucked as in sucked!
Their operating system was not end-user friendly at all! The multitasking left much to be desired, there were known bugs in the product at every turn. Did Nokia really didn’t do anything wrong?
Then, the social race started, BlackBerry had BBM and Nokia started losing grounds to BlackBerry, yet they didnt make the obvious move of acquiring one of the thousands chatting apps that were coming up and integrate it with their various devices. Nokia could have bought Whatsapp before Facebook did, if only the CEO was actually thinking. They did nothing… Or what exactly stopped Nokia from cloning BBM? Did Nokia really didn’t do anything wrong?
Finally, when Nokia decided it needed to get a third party software to run on its phone, they picked the most curious option. They decided they would ONLY build devices for WIndows Phone!
This move was a shocker!
This was at a time that iOS and Android were already established in the market. This what at a time that Windows Phone was just looking for hardware partners. Samsung, at that time was building devices for various operating systems; they had Android devices, Bada devices and I think they were working on “Tizen” at that time too.
Nokia picked ONE platform, Windows Phone!
Why on earth did Nokia sell its soul to Microsoft?? Did Nokia really didn’t do anything wrong?
Nokia excelled (and still excels) in making powerful hardware, but they picked a terrible software platform to run on (after years of ignoring the problem). When they finally sold off their handset division to Microsoft and bundled off the CEO to Microsoft in the same deal, nobody was surprised.
Did Nokia really didn’t do anything wrong?
They actually did everything wrong and nobody was surprised they failed.
I strongly recommend you read this article: Nokia Under Elop – His 3 Years: Performance Review – Worst CEO of All Time – All the Facts
