Nokia has released the first major software update for the Nokia X series of devices.
Key features of the update include:
- Enjoy improved ease of use with the new app switcher – switch easily between open apps, or close apps with a single tap.
- Instant access to your mail, calendar, and notes with Outlook.com and OneNote.
- Updated Nokia Store – new design to help you find content more easily, and better integration with third-party stores.
- New scrollable widgets, call reject with a message, contact search in the dialler, automatic uploading to OneDrive, and local calendar support.
- General performance and usability improvements.
Could very well be the last.
On the general subject of companies floundering, has there been much research into the chilling effect of companies not having a clear direction?
Said differently, if a company has a record of putting out products and discontinuing them, It makes me very wary to chose any products from them in the future.
While some consumers may buy whatevers cheap, or new and shiny on a shelf, surely this makes an impact on companies products success going forward.
I don’t know of any research like that, but I think most people buy most products without much thinking if it is a repeat purchase (supermarket).
When it is a recurring cost (car, subscription) they will probably research quite a lot.
When it is a one time thing or a disposable item (like smartphones are now) most people tend to buy what they heard about from a friend, is currently on sale, or gets recommended by the salesperson.
Almost all purchases are made by feeling instead of rational. But after buying it we often get the need to rationalize our purchase when discussing it.
In business it is different. Here “continuity” and customer relationship are actually still valid because the one buying the product and the one that will be using the product are often different people so feeling is much less involved.
^^All of the above is just common sense, life experience, and an education in commercial economics. No hard science!
ideasman42,
It could be, but I happen to think what’s happening today is a direct consequence of globalization. Companies who were at the top of their respective markets are now forced to take a rank on the global stage.
And since those at the top obviously aren’t going to stop growing for the sake of the others, it produces a situation where low ranking companies start loosing on their own turf and get squeezed into obscurity – to the point where they become prime targets for other companies to raid them for their patents, trademarks, and remaining customer base.
Globalization has produced some pretty decisive winners:
http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-v-android-market-share-2014-5
So I really think what’s happening was inevitable, the only question was “who?”
I don’t think Globalization had anything at all to do with Nokia’s downfall. On the contrary, Nokia succeeded as a result of it. They had a global supply chain including manufacturing facilities on multiple continents, and a plurality market share in the smartphone market as recently as 2011, everywhere outside of the United States.
As recently as two years ago while I was taking my MBA, the still-new textbooks still referred to Nokia as a positive example of how a company can succeed and dominate a volatile market. I am curious as to how those textbooks have been revised today. If I were writing the narrative, I would suggest that they lost by alienating their customers, going all-in on an untested “New Coke” without a clear backup plan. It certainly didn’t help when the CEO they hired had a private interest in their “New Coke” formula succeeding, damn the torpedoes. They had strong brand identity, and I suspect that is the only reason they were able to stay afloat so long after the plan backfired.
In the case of Nokia their success indeed came from globalization because they figured out how to sell in large quantities to markets outside of their local tiny Finnish one. Nokia was mainly about manufacturing; they used to have a wide range of consumer electronics, computers even, before they were known as a telecommunications company. Nokia succeeded in the cell phone market by being able to pump out tons of different physical iterations of what was basically the same product. The cellphone really was the same “thing” for about 10 years, some functionality like texting and taking pictures were added along the way, but most of the evolution/changes had to do with the physical form factor of the device. Nokia could pump out shitloads of SKUs in parallel and cover all sorts of demand.
However, Nokia’s eventual demise was also due to globalization. Why? Because they missed the next global wave. Even though Nokia had an early foothold in the smartphone market, they were approaching it just as an extension of their cellphone business model. Unfortunately Apple hit the sweetspot with the smartphone mainly because someone in that organization realized that with multitouch and a large enough screen allowed for a consumer telecommunications device which behaves like a programmable canvass. And there are lots of ramifications to that, which would take a 10 page post. But the thing to take is that basically you really really need to get the physical implementation/form factor right with a single product, or at least a very simplified product line. And shift the focus on the software driving the canvass, which you can then update/polish in the field. This reduction in product divergences means that you can really, really, really fine tune your supply chain and make bank big time if demand happens to be high enough.
Perhaps it was Nokia’s culture that made them miss this at all levels. Hell, even with the Lumias they couldn’t help themselves and they were offering a shitload of inconsistent SKUs and see if anyone sticks. But whatever the reason, Nokia went from a dominant player to bordering irrelevance in regards to market share of the highest profit/growth segment of the consumer telecommunications market. So that part of the corporation went “bye bye.”The main reason why they lasted this long IMO is because the inertia and amount of money they were making when they had a dominant position in the market. But their business model was over and done for. Unsurprisingly the first thing MS did after the acquisition was to get rid off as much of Nokia’s manufacturing as they could.
joekiser,
Ok, but do notice that I didn’t even mention Nokia and nor did the OP, he specifically said “companies” in the plural, we’re both speaking more broadly of the general trend with companies floundering. I acknowledged previously, this could be because a company doesn’t have a clear direction, that would certainly hurt their chances. However I was referring more towards the logical necessity of companies moving down the totem pole as the market grows globally.
Any given market can only hold so many leaders. But if there are a hundred different markets, then there can actually be hundreds of market leaders in a completely sustainable way. If the markets start to combine & grow into the same space (ie globalize), that necessarily reduces the number of positions for market leaders too. We know implicitly up front that some are going to loose their market leader position, though we don’t necessarily know who. It’s a bit like musical chairs
Read this paper, it explains the idea in great detail with nice examples. Here it’s called the “rule of three”.
http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/strategy/competitive-mark…
This article even applies the rule of three to the smartphone market, how lucky we are! Had I read it earlier I would have posted it in response to the OP:
http://www.zdnet.com/the-rule-of-three-explains-the-smartphone-mark…
As the market matured and market boundaries faded, it left fewer leading positions for companies to hold (termed “generalists” in the paper). Someone needed to go, and the market ejected Nokia from the lead, perhaps for the reasons you mentioned.
Yea, I still can’t comprehend how Elop’s contract was modified to contain clauses rewarding him for destroying the company. That’s exactly what he did. It’s all very shady, and tragic.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-admits-g…
Edited 2014-07-29 04:11 UTC
Nokia failed because it made virtually the same phones for over 10 years. The difference between models was trivial. [Apple seems to be following the same pattern.]
How so? They’ve always (in my limited experience as an American) had at least two very distinct product lines: Standard phones with Series 40, and “smartphones” with the Communicator series and Symbian phones. Later, they came out with the N900 and N9, and then the Lumia series with Windows Phone OS, and the Asha series as the follow-up to the old feature-phone.
I agree that there hasn’t really been any innovation with their standard Series 40 phones, but the Symbian phones are a different story. You had everything from a feature-phone style N71/N73, to the business-savvy Eseries, to the touchscreen based N95 and similar.
With the Lumia series, it seems there’s a phone for everyone. There’s the 5xx and 6xx for entry level (which still beat the pants off of entry level Android phones in both price and quality), the mainstream 8xx and 9xx series, and the top of the line 15xx. There’s even a “camera with a phone slapped on” in the 1020, for those who value such a beast.
I’d say that’s far more than a trivial difference between devices — again, Series 40 devices notwithstanding.
But Series 40 (and Series 30 before that, like in 3310) is what they/carriers were primarily pushing to consumers, what kept the company afloat. So yeah, in many strong Nokia markets it seemed like for a decade they kept selling almost the same thing…
I’m guessing that the ‘smartphones’ probably made up no more than 5% of Nokia’s overall sales. I’ve only seen a handful of S60 models. I’ve never seen a N series phones.
Before the iPhone came around and changed the scene, I used to see a lot of Symbian phones competing with Palm and WinMo around here. I never really cared for Symbian, but that may be because my first experience with it was on a slow and buggy device (N75). I actually somewhat enjoyed it on the 5230 Nuron, but that was a much newer version of the OS.
I’m sure it’s different in other markets, and yes, there wasn’t a lot of innovation in the Series 30/40 arena. But overall, there was a ton of diversity in Nokia’s full product line, certainly more than any other phone maker.
Well, I’m sure you know that the US was fairly atypical as far as Nokia markets went.
And… you liked S60v5?! O_o
Also, a lot of that diversity were basically the same model dressed differently.
So, this update was issued by Nokia proper or Microsoft? It’s getting quite confusing…
Edited 2014-07-28 18:21 UTC