Lack of Effective Strategy and Leadership — Nokia’s loss in the Mobile Phone Market

“We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow we lost,” the CEO of Nokia said this tearfully in September of 2013 in their last press conference after the sale of Nokia to Microsoft. But we beg to differ. The CEO and his team actually did everything wrong.
They ignored the fact that in life, change is constant. Every individual and organization need to adapt to change to survive. Nokia had the technical competence, but they underestimated the competition and failed to adapt to change.
Adapt to the Market Conditions
Technology of yesterday will be replaced by tomorrow’s trend. While other phone companies concentrated on software, Nokia did not do anything with it. This was the new world order where the content is king. To download all the content, phones needed storage, bigger display, and other features.
When others focused on providing content, Nokia failed to adapt to the market despite taking a nosedive in sales. They invested in new technologies like touch screens, and internet enabled phones, but not the ones that customers needed.
Apple’s genius was not the iPhone, or the iPad, but the business ecosystem it built, full of software and applications.
Companies Must Not Rely on Past Performance
The past performance and the fantastic press a company gets does not guarantee future success. Market conditions will always change…read more
Originally published on Sabcons.