Interesting article on Nokia “with flexibility the watchword of the revamped strategy”
Snip>>>
“This week we have seen Nokia’s ability to react swiftly to changes in its circumstances and refocus its business almost overnight. For a huge company and one that has been so set in the ways it has been used to imposing on those around, this is impressive and should be a very positive signal to investors. Now it needs to build on its new policies with all the determination and aggression that Ollila himself was demonstrating, in order to ensure that it can retain its old dominance, even if by other means.”
No mention was made of using Qualcomm’s chipsets, especially EV-DO, but that would certainly reflect some “flexibility”, a “revamped strategy”, a “refocus of its business”, and “new policies”.
It would not return NOK to its “old dominance” (nothing will, that’s over with the ushering in of 3G) , but it would at least allow them to get into the mid to high tier CDMA game now that EV-DV has become less relevant.
Anyone want to start a pool –
1. when NOK’s capitulates to using Q branded EV-DO chipsets?
2. the percentage impact (upwards, of course) on QCOM at the close, one week after the announcement?
The Article>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
rethinkresearch.biz.
Nokia comes out battling, with flexibility the watchword of the revamped strategy
Published: Thursday 17 June, 2004
Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila came out fighting at the Nokia Connect event this week, outlining changes designed to address its recent reversals of fortune in handset sales and in investor confidence. The keyword was flexibility, a theme much emphasized as if to convince the world that Nokia no longer seeks to impose its technological decisions rigidly on the world.
This was not just apparent in its much vaunted launch of midmarket, clamshell handsets – the phone design that Nokia has stubbornly shunned for years, only to discover in the first quarter of 2004 that the market did not agree with it. It was also clear in its more open approach to the Series 60 software platform, and in plans to support a wide range of networks within the infrastructure division. It is all about what the consumer, the software licensee or the carrier wants, not what Nokia wants, was the message – as long as the new humility enables it to achieve its targeted 40% market share and retain a lead that will enable it to keep setting the mobile agenda, if in a less blatant manner than in the past.
Ollila introduced five new handsets and said this year would see 35 additions to the portfolio, down from the 40 originally planned. Nokia conducted a thorough review of its range, he said, after the first quarter disappointments, and acclerated roll-out of some models, while killing off or postponing others. Perhaps the most significant model is the 6630, the smallest handset ever made for 3G networks. After W-CDMA roll-out has suffered from the shortage of compact and attractive phones, this new addition proves that the 3G device has grown up, and that Nokia can supply it. Vodafone – which excluded Nokia from its initial 3G plans, choosing to turn to more malleable partners like Sharp – is testing the device, as are Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Telecom Italia.
One of the unlucky models was the 7700 media phone, which has mobile television and visual radio features. This will continue to be used in pilots but will not be launched commercially yet. Its postponement shows an increased pragmatism in Nokia, contrasting with the experience of the N-Gage gamesphone. Like the N-Gage, the 7700 was a high profile project designed to support Nokia’s belief that the handset should evolve into the hub of entertainment and media. But on this occasion, Nokia has recognized that the device is ahead of the market and chief strategy officer Matti Alahuhta said there is a need first to “develop the business ecosystem - operator services, choice of content, and payment schemes - to support such a device”.
Ollila expects the global handset business to hit 600m units this year, up 20% from 2003, which would provide plenty of opportunity for growth – and Nokia’s reshuffle of its product plans for this year show how nimbly it can react when it needs to.
The days may be gone when Nokia could set the design agenda for all handsets, a lesson it has learned painfully this year, but at least has learned quickly. Now it must look to other areas for the industry dominance that a company of this scale and ambition requires, and perhaps the most important of these will be software. The Series 60 user interface and development environment is Nokia’s main weapon against the Windows interface and runs on SymbianOS. It is licensed by seven other mobile phonemakers, including Samsung, Siemens and Panasonic, and is dominant on the small but growing smartphone platform. Alahuhta said it would be extended to a larger portion of the Nokia range, with the aim being to make it as familiar and ubiquitous as Windows in the long run.
This will require Series 60 to be more open than it has been in the past, and Nokia has made several moves to increase the attraction of the platform. By the end of 2004, it says it will have radically increased the appeal of its Series 40/60/90 development environments to a broad base of programmers, using Java and other languages. It aims to simplify developer access to its technologies in order to stimulate the creation of applications and will support a wider range of languages on these platforms in order to make programming simpler and to fill gaps that Java leaves.
The new version, Series 60 Second Edition, will support both CDMA and W-CDMA-GSM devices, the first smartphone platform to do so, and it now allows developers to use multiple screen resolutions and scalable graphics. The release closes the features gap with both Microsoft Smartphone and the rival SymbianOS interface, UIQ, which is adopted by Sony Ericsson. New functions include some targeted at enterprise developers, such as push email and security, plus others oriented to Nokia’s multimedia push, such as video calling.
All this shows a new flexibility and willingness to listen to licensees in order to ensure that Series 60 gains the same uptake levels as Windows Mobile, with its inbuilt advantage of the familiar interface and huge developer base. Series 60 was previously a closed UI, supporting one screen size and a very standard set of features across multiple licensees. Now those licensees have far greater choice of which functionality to offer.
A company can be too flexible though, and in infrastructure Nokia’s changes of heart have just become confusing. Only a few months after it left the WiMAX Forum, the body it co-founded, it has now rejoined and is showing revived interest in the broadband wireless standard. Its coolness on 802.16 was widely seen as illustrating a fear that WiMAX would threaten 3G, which is core to Nokia’s Networks business plan for the coming few years and, of course, to its largest operator customers. However, it now seems that Nokia has realized the strength of the impetus behind WiMAX and wants to help direct that, particularly in the mobile arena, especially as operators start to consider dual 3G/WiMAX roll-outs, requiring integrated infrastructure.
In the spirit of its new flexibility, Nokia said it was also keeping a close eye on developments in the 450MHz band, spectrum that could boost mobile penetration in developing nations, since the CDMA450 technology is so cost effective to roll out (see separate story). Nokia has previously shows no interest in this, but as it looks beyond its GSM territory to CDMA, and builds a significant part of its business plan around emerging economies, it will be hard for it to ignore CDMA450 or WiMAX.
This week we have seen Nokia’s ability to react swiftly to changes in its circumstances and refocus its business almost overnight. For a huge company and one that has been so set in the ways it has been used to imposing on those around, this is impressive and should be a very positive signal to investors. Now it needs to build on its new policies with all the determination and aggression that Ollila himself was demonstrating, in order to ensure that it can retain its old dominance, even if by other means. |
