Rescuing Nokia? A former exec has a radical plan
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
"Essentially, Nokia has forgotten how to bring innovative products to market. This is despite a rich R&D base, which has pioneered many of the innovations competitors now feature. Instead, a risk-averse bureaucracy has grown up that stifles innovation – it makes progress slow or non-existent."
An old and familiar story.
"his diagnosis may be familiar, but the proposals quite radical. ... a bloodbath of middle managers – starting with 300 to 500 staff at senior VP, VP or director level. This he calls a GRO program, or Get-Rid-Of."
Yahoo had 300 or so VPs before its fall. How do companies end up with five hundred + VPs? What value do they provide exactly? (Genuine question, not snark. From what I've seen most people at VP level spend all their time in internecine politics)
Does anyone know how many VPs Apple has? or Google? (though I suspect , with no proof or numbers, that the latter would have relatively high numbers, given the "middle agedness" Google seems to demonstrate these days)
Someone with knowledge on corporate organization might want to chime in.
Good Question. At Yahoo (and other places like Intuit) these guys are about two rungs from the CEO. That is the sense in which I used it.
One other company that exhibits this nimbleness ala Apple despite its size is Goldman Sachs. From personal experience , among other things , GS gets this ratio right where it counts.
how much similarity there is between various countries I don't know, but it would surprised me if at least western military hierarchies are very different. (similarity between nations makes cooperation easier, but where there are differences there usually exist mappings. for instance between different systems of rank)
At least as long as the field they operate in is stable.
The problem is that it makes businesses vulnerable to disruptive change, and when disruptive change does occur companies usually struggle to re-evolve talents that they shedded when their business matured. The trick is to realize the necessity of restructuring what they do and how and to do so before loss of revenue makes it hard or impossible. The first reaction, though, is often to cut cost. Which is a great way to start the downward spiral.
It is almost like drowning: all your natural reflexes conspire against your survival.
I can't remember what this cycle is called, but I read about it in some textbook used at business schools, so it is probably part of a typical MBA curriculum. (The rest of the book was too dull for me to actually remember its title).
When Apple raised the standard for handsets and brought handset software significantly closer to state of the art of software in general, handset manufacturers were caught napping. Then they panicked. And now they are taking on water.
I think it is part of the deal with moving-chassis phones (hinges and slides) - it's very hard to make them durable and still light.
And I assume that this is major reason, why Nokia can pump out reasonable smartphones with size and battery life of dumb feature phone with price certainly bellow other smartphones. (Well I have E90, which certainly is not small or was not cheap, but battery life is unsurpassed by anything, except 10 year old high-end Nokia phones).
I could say the same of Motorola. However, Android hasn't been a saviour for them. The Droid X has been criticised for a bad UI skin (originally called, perhaps somewhat ironically, Blur), and pre-installed bloatware that can't be removed.
I want a cellphone that's also a computer. I don't need a small computer, I don't care that it has a touch screen.
If they'd launched the 770 with a cellphone+3G modem (or GPRS at least, don't remember when it was launched), Android might not have existed today. They really dropped the ball there.
Nokia should take a page out of the HTC playbook: Implement Android but have it's own flavor through TouchFlo.
Remember, there are much more folks who want phone than those who want pocket computer or toy.
If you like Macs you don't get a new computer, you get a new Mac. If you like Windows/Linux, you just get a new computer. It might be a Dell, a HP or a ThinkPad, you might have a preference, but in the end the specs matter much more than the brand.
If Nokia starts shipping Androids, they'll likely be the ThinkPads of smartphones. Rock-solid, reliable, great hardware, all boxes ticked, something of a following, but if you're in a pinch, there's an HTC that does the same for $100 less.
The only option for Nokia is figuring out how they can pivot their current smartphone market leadership into a niche that can compete with Android, the iPhone and BlackBerry.
I don't have the recipe, but it's going to require some very clear and bold leadership, that's for sure. Also, shipping three or four competing platforms isn't part of the solution, either (Symbian S60, Symbian 3rd gen, Maemo and MeeGo).
They actually have also S40, but that is for feature phones. I believe that they want to get rid of S40, put S60 on low end and MeeGo on high end phones.
But Symbian 3rd gen (aka. Symbian^3) is indeed different from S60 (which has 4 editions: 1, 2, 3 and 5), with 5th edition becoming Symbian^1. As a matter of fact, Symbian^4 (in which the current UI is replaced by the Nokia Qt SDK) is positioned for a 2011 launch according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_platform
It's the Qt SDK that I counted as a new platform in itself.
Long story short: Focus. Nokia can't have two promising and incompatible smartphone platforms.
"Apple simply isn't capable of producing a phone OS that is better than Symbian."
The fact that Nintendo was confident it could sell more Wiis because theirs was more fun and Apple confident about iPhone because theirs was more usable. Nintendo revealing a DSi-esque 3DS when Sony is trying to make PSP more iPhone like etc
It is this confidence that developers want to see when they want to invest in developing for that platform. You cannot lead others when you can't even be confident in yourself.
When asked about how they felt about their rivals, Iwata responded
"... rather than trying to identify a specific rival and to think about how to fight against it, it is more important for our unique business to always ask ourselves, and try to answer, such questions like "What does it mean to make people interested in something?", "What is worth spending people's time and energy on?", or "What do people find amusement in?" We would be glad if you understand that, as the basis, we are not conscious of any certain rivals."
from here: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/meeting/100629qa/02....
I don't know whether this is scripted or not, but it was certainly a good read.
Ouch. That sounds like a code base seriously out of control.
I don't see anyone beating Apple in the app phone market - maybe Google themselves might fare adequately with a new Nexus and some Android tweaks. I am not an Android person myself, but I am sure that others are.
I was actually thinking the other day that there could be a market for rock solid, no nonsense businessphones. Which makes phone calls. A week or two of battery life. Small but legible b/w display. Good, physical buttons. Solid construction. It couldn't be that pricey to make and if marketed correctly, it would probably manage to get its niche market.
Too bad that nobody is interested in niche markets these days.