Rise & Fall of Nokia
NOKIA. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you saw the word Nokia? Do you think of a classic snake game you used to play with your siblings on the phone? Or the legendary soap looking cellphone that is indestructible which you could use as a self-defense weapon if you’re chasing by a dog that you can just throw the Nokia 3310 at the dog and it would go straight to coma but the phone would still be in great shape and unbothered? Or do you think about the good old days texting your crush without looking at the screen because your fingers memorized the keypad so well? Now I want you to empty your mind and try to remember your first phone, not the smartphone but the classic cellphone with screen and keypad. If you are 30 years old and above your first phone probably something made by Nokia. Where did they go?
Nokia still exists today if you Google those up they are still pretty-much alive but they just are not as big as they used to be but still pretty big and they still make phones. Nokia is a Finnish company; it was once the biggest company in Finland. The name Nokia itself is actually a small town in Finland where it all started 154 years ago which in the year 1865 but of course they were not making phones at that time, their expertise was in paper-making for the next 100 years. In the 1960’s, Nokia diversified when the company merged with a rubber company and a cable company. At this point Nokia continued expanding into new industries as they entered mobile phone market in 1981 when they obtain a Finnish mobile phone company so by the late 80’s Nokia was all over the place; they are making papers, phones, rubber and consumer electronics resulting unclear vision in which industries they should focus on. Nokia became a large company with high sales but unfortunately, they were not making good money, as all these businesses were not very profitable. Imagine Nokia is like a student that took 22 credit hours but failed in every subject, the solution is dropped a few subjects and start focusing on the remaining. That is what Nokia did, they started to realize they could not carry that much burden so they cut down a few stuff on the early 90’s such as consumer electronics and they let the rubber business go completely but they gradually increased their focus on cellphones at the meantime.
Nokia predicted the popularity of the market and spent a bunch of cash on research and development that led to innovative new phones with cool designs and caught the public’s attention. In 1992, they introduced the first-ever GSM (global system of mobile communications) digital mobile, the Nokia team had great vision and intuition. They begin to find the groove; Nokia knew they could do more than meek transmitter and receiver connected over a network and sure the forthcoming was all in the software. Around then, mobile phones were still giant and bulky with huge batteries yet they still have tiny practically unreadable displays, Nokia launched 2110 in 1994 and people were mind blown! It had text indicators, missed call, and address books and it was the first phone to feature the Nokia legendary ringtone also the earliest phones to be able to both send and receive text messages. Nokia was just getting started; software becomes fully realized with the born of Nokia 9000 communicator by adding QWERTY keyboard, email, web browsing, fax, spreadsheet and word processing. In 1997, Nokia released 6110 the first-ever phone to ever feature the greatest well-known mobile game ever created; snake. The 6110 has the progressive user interface that was to become the industry average, it is as important as the home screen on your present smartphone these days.
Nokia was on fire! The sales now more than doubled, they are turning profits now and the market value grew 10 times larger as the results by 1998 they were the chart-topping mobile phone brand in the world. The way society would describe Nokia within a decade is dominant, this is definitely their golden period. They are ruling the cell phone market as Nokia made 7 out of 10 best-selling cell phone by having Apple iPhone 6, Samsung E1100, Motorola RAZR V3 along on the list. The year 2008 was absolutely the best year for Nokia as they successfully sold 472 million units of cell phones holding 38.6% of market share. For comparison, in 2018 Samsung and Apple cellphone sales were 295 million units and 209 million units holding 19.0% and 13.4% of market share respectively.
The first mistake that Nokia made begins in the year 2003; Nokia started experimenting with a multipurpose phone as, during that year, games in broad were hot; the PS2 and XBOX were just hitting their peak time and the Gameboy advanced blustered the portable game market open. Nokia wanted in, so they created the infamous N-Gage but it did not go well. In 2004, Motorola become a global hit with its very thin razor flip mobile and Nokia was being criticised for always aiming at the high-end smartphones. Nokia then start focusing more on old-fashioned phone, they went backwards but they did not forget to invent so N95 was born in 2006 as a multimedia computer that has Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and one of the first devices in the market supporting 3.5G signals. They were doing okay until the industry was shaken in 2007 when Apple launched the iPhone; a smartphone with a full touch interface. Apple top-secret to its success was the capacitive touchscreen display and desktop paths in its operating system (OS) and again, Nokia N95 did not look so exciting any longer. Following year, the game once again changes as Google launched their first Android phone and the battle of the smartphone had begun, Nokia did respond by introducing 5800 XpressMusic; touchscreen? Okay, the price? Low, but the camera and software? It is no.
Nokia former employee stated that Nokia was just a huge company that started to keep up its position more than invent for fresh openings. Nokia has a problem with their OS system as Symbian and MeeGo were fighting against each other to prove which one is better rather than spending time doing design. A chip company Qualcomm started to work with Nokia in 2008, his main criticism was that Nokia spent too much time when working on strategies. When a new technology that would seem like a huge opportunity were introduced, Nokia would spend six to nine months evaluating the opportunity rather than diving into it. As the months passed, the opportunity just often is gone. Nokia management biggest problem was actually; they were moving too slow. They continue tossing cash at the problem instead of innovating through it with wisdom.
In 2010, Nokia finally realized that they need a new OS so they had to choose between Android and Microsoft. Anssi Vanjoki, the head of Nokia’s mobile business rejected Android by saying “using Android is like peeing in your pants for warmth in winter” meaning that merging with Android is an only temporary solution, so they went for Microsoft. Nokia spent 5 billion dollars on research and development (R&D) yet they did not even close from debut a genuine challenger to the iPhone. They did release the N8 and N900, good attempts but it was clear that Nokia struggles on creating a useful R&D. Stephen Elop, the Nokia CEO had enough so he filtered through data and visited labs around the globe to personally terminate projects that were not the main concern. He later found out that the managerial structure of Nokia was also very complex. For example, in 2010 Nokia was hashing out some data of software that would make it easier for external programmers to write applications that could graft on any Nokia smartphones. Normal company would sit down and talk through at a conference for such decisions but not in Nokia. Inside resources stated that 100 engineers and product manager from different headquarters from all around the world were called in to a hotel venue in Germany and three days later Nokia staffs sat down together and jotted notes meanwhile the OS councils only trying to get themselves heard as each group was fighting over who delivers the most competitive phone. People were just trying to keep their job rather than trying to build the company, it was not a good working environment. In October 2011, Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 were born, the first Windows Phone 7 devices followed by the Lumia 900. Later in April 2012, Samsung overtook Nokia as the largest phone maker in the world. The very next year, Nokia introduced the 925; a slimmed-down version of the 920 and then there was 1020; this phone was all about the camera but still it being critics for its camera and overall design not to forget its performance and the applications. Keep in mind at this time; the Apple Apps Store and Google Play Store were already in the picture.
Nokia already losing money with revenues falling down during mid-2013, looking at the bigger picture, since 2011 Nokia persistent 4.1 billion euros worth of operating damages. The game was pretty much over, the ship was sinking and Windows Platform was not providing much of a lifeboat. In 2013, Microsoft broadcasted that it would secure Nokia’s mobile phone division for 7 billion US dollars. Stephen Elop would also resign as Nokia CEO and come back with Microsoft as the head of devices but there might be some dark secrets behind these. It was informed that Elop received 18.8 million euro advantage after he flogged Nokia to Microsoft and stepped down as CEO. What more suspicious was the procedure was completed on the same day as the announcement. Were all these just a part of Microsoft’s plan to go into the smartphone platform all along? We will never know. Lastly, during 2014, the official announcement was made, Nokia Lumia is now Microsoft Lumia and this sadly was the finale of the Nokia brand.
