What happened to Nokia? Here's a simple explanation from a Finn, who knows a lot of crap about other Finnish companies, as well.
Explanation itself is rather simple. As the company was at its highest point, there was a change in leadership. The one truly capable person too see, what was going on with the cell/mobile phone market, decided that he had enough and wanted to retire to spend time with his family.
His successor, however, wasn't as talented in seeing the trends, that were forming up. He was - in relative terms - more of a closed system guy and although Nokia had already developed a working prototype of an Android phone, he cancelled the project, so Nokia could carry on with their own OS. This was the most horrifying mistake any company can make. Not seeing the whole picture, with open-source development. Obviously, in his defense, Android phones do have serious security threats these days, but working on your own operating system wasn't that great of a decision, really.
But what really was the real problem with Nokia? Fatness. There were so many people working in the middle management, most of them doing nothing, that it slowed down the decision making process in such ways, that all of it lacked the sharpness and reacting to the market was extremely slow. Even if Nokia had unfrozen the Android phone, they would have still been in the game. Perhaps not on the podium, but still... Too much middle managent is what really killed Nokia... And then... There's Elop.
Yeah, they decided - willingly - to let Stephen Elop, who had previously worked for Microsoft for years and years, to step up as the new CEO. We all know, what happened after that. Stupid.
His successor, however, wasn't as talented in seeing the trends, that were forming up. He was - in relative terms - more of a closed system guy and although Nokia had already developed a working prototype of an Android phone, he cancelled the project, so Nokia could carry on with their own OS. This was the most horrifying mistake any company can make. Not seeing the whole picture, with open-source development. Obviously, in his defense, Android phones do have serious security threats these days, but working on your own operating system wasn't that great of a decision, really.
But what really was the real problem with Nokia? Fatness. There were so many people working in the middle management, most of them doing nothing, that it slowed down the decision making process in such ways, that all of it lacked the sharpness and reacting to the market was extremely slow. Even if Nokia had unfrozen the Android phone, they would have still been in the game. Perhaps not on the podium, but still... Too much middle managent is what really killed Nokia... And then... There's Elop.
Yeah, they decided - willingly - to let Stephen Elop, who had previously worked for Microsoft for years and years, to step up as the new CEO. We all know, what happened after that. Stupid.
