Ondertussen, bij Nokia….

“The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.” Engadget heeft het over “the most exciting and interesting CEO memos we’ve ever seen” en dat is het misschien wel. De CEO van Nokia, Stephen Elop, stuurde een boosaardige brandmemo naar al het personeel, en natuurlijk lekt zo’n memo uit, dus het zal bewust zijn (FD, NRC doen mee). Het gaat niet zo goed met het marktaandeel en met de concurrentiepositie. Nokia moet…. iets anders. “Nokia, our platform is burning,” schrijft Elop in de memo van 1300 woorden.

Over de concurrentie

“While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.”

Over Symbian

“At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.”

Over ecosystemen

“The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.”

Wow. Dat is heftige spierballentaal. Heeft Elop ook een oplossing voor alle ellende en misere? Op 11 februari zitten ze bij Nokia tezaam over de toekomst. Deze memo dient vast een doel als eye-opener. Toekomst? Elop schrijft:

“We are working on a path forward—a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future. The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.”

Bijna historisch…..