Share This
When you hear the company that has led the major breakthroughs in mobile is in the process of getting acquired from Microsoft for less than half of the price of Whatsapp, you think the world is not spinning in the right direction. It seems the value that millions of users bring is more “valuable” than years of experience that now have ended in bad “hands”.
Management, Vision and Innovation are three main factors that should drive a massive corporation such as Nokia, but as we have said hundred times, this is not the case of the Finnish company. Today I was sitting and thinking about the future, while a friend of mine came and told me that Nokia had just released an Android phone. I smiled, thinking, this is it. They finally got it, years of failures have made them realise that they were executing in the wrong way.
That’s why I checked the news on my laptop and I finally got the truth; yes, Nokia has just announced its latest product, the Nokia X at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and no, it doesn’t run what it should be supposed to run. There is a reason why Nokia adopted the Windows Phone strategy and that reason has got a name, Stephan Elop.
As Wikipedia reports:
From January 2008 to September 2010, Elop worked for Microsoft as the head of the Business Division, responsible for the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics line of products, and as a member of the company’s senior leadership team. It was during this time that Microsoft’s Business Division released Office 2010.
The math is simple and even a three years old child is able to understand what the power of connections and relationships can do, if you want to destroy and then sell an entire business division. While the world was looking at iOS and Android, Stephan Elop didn’t choose the innovators of the mobile market, but went for those who were late. The result was a total disaster, which ended up with Microsoft, acquiring Nokia later this year.
The Nokia X is just the mere result of a company that has completely lost its vision. It will run a forked version of Android. This version won’t be able to run Google Play, by not giving the users the power of an ecosystem with millions of apps, but it will run Nokia’s own Android app store. The company has added that they have changed just “three” APIs from the main core, which still means that some apps won’t be able to run at all.
When you want to introduce a paradigm shift in a saturated market, you need to be able to show something different in terms of software and also design. As we all know what users see is what counts the most and design is fundamental to create a beautiful product. By looking at this Android forked version, I keep seeing Windows Phone, same design, same failure. It seems Nokia has forced its employees to design something by looking at what they had before.
When I analyse companies like Nokia, I see a lack of creativity and innovation, which means something is not working. In a stage where Apple is releasing the most powerful phones on the market and Google is playing smart with a cheap and powerful solution, such as the Nexus 5, Nokia seems to be on Mars, waiting for something. At this stage, the only hope is that they can quickly finish the transaction to Microsoft and start following what Satya Nadella has to say about Nokia.
It’s funny to see that the company who has destroyed another company is acquiring this one, but it actually makes more sense that you could imagine. I believe we might expect something really interesting from the duo Nadella & Gates and that’s why Nokia has still a future in Microsoft’s hands.
