Tag: Nokia

The Trouble With … Nokia

~ asdmather ~ 1 Comment
A little over two years ago I wrote a prescription for Nokia. I said they should do many things, some of which were very wide of the mark versus what’s actually happened and some of which were reasonably close.
One thing I thought was really important was that Nokia:
Develop a brilliant and obvious naming convention. Years ago when I
started using Nokia I understood the convention … There was the 6210
which was replaced by the 6310; not long after came the 7210 which I
understood to be better still. It all went wrong with the 8xxx series –
the 8250 was small and sexy, the 8800 was shaped like a banana. Now, I
couldn’t tell you how it works with C, E and N series.
On hearing that Nokia had chosen “Lumia” to lead their branding, I was impressed.  Lovely word.  But how confusing does the range look now:
Not yet two years old, the Lumia range already numbers 12 models (albeit with two coming soon and, apparently, only one marked as “best seller”).  Looking at the pictures above, taken from the Nokia website, I struggle to figure out what’s what (not aided, I think, by the overwhelming similarity of the screen images on each).
The 625 … “lets you see more of everything” …
… the 925 has eye catching design and Smart Camera …
… the 920 has a Carl Zeiss lends and PureView technology (but perhaps not a Smart Camera?) …
… the 520 has a 1Ghz processor (I’ve always wanted one of those, it’s right after “ability to make calls” on my list of user needs) …
… the 820 has colourful and wireless charging shells (is that what makes it a best seller)? …
… and the 620 packs a punch (which presumably means it has none of the above, or perhaps all of it?)
Confused?  Yes, thought so.
Is a 6xx better than a 5xx?  Is a 925 better than a 920 but not as good as a 1020?

I’m told that there are other variants, such as the 928 which is exclusive to a US carrier and even a “Model T” which is exclusive to a Chinese carrier.

It begins to look like Nokia need to publish a simple key, as Which? does for Samsung TVs:

• ‘D’ is an LCD TV
• ‘E’ is a plasma TV
• ‘EH’ and ‘ES’ are LED TV models
The
final four numbers signify the series – a ‘4000’ model is from Series
4, a ‘5000’ model from Series 5 and so on. The higher the number, the
more premium the model is – ie it has more gadgets and better features.
• Series 4: Entry-level range and all HD Ready (720p)
• Series 5: Just above entry level. All are Full HD (1080p) and offer additional features – some are 3D and smart TVs
• Series 6:
Mid-range. All are Full HD (1080p) and offer additional features. All
come with 3D and smart TV capability, plus Freeview HD and Freesat HD
tuners
• Series 7: Premium models with a dual-core
processor. In addition to the key features of the series below, there’s
also a built-in camera and voice and motion control
• Series 8:
Flagship premium model. In addition to the features of the series
below, this range features Samsung’s premium image processing and a
touch-sensitive remote

Nokia also need, in my view, to introduce new brands to make it easier to choose between phones – they can stick to derivatives of Lumia if that’s where their heart is (how about Lumila for cheaper phones? Lumaxa for the high end, flagship phone?) though I don’t like those much.  Maybe Photia for the phones that focus (ha) on the camera. Or maybe they go for Lumia P for the multi-megapixel phone? 

Or perhaps Lumia Z for the Zombie phone … because I think they might get there soon if they don’t do something to make it easier for the customer to choose.

Mobile Monopoly #RIM

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Governments don’t like monopolies.  Except when they have no choice (at which point they usually, but not always, bring in constricting regulation).  Windows on the desktop might be considered an example where governments have had little or no choice. Today, though, there is a real option of moving to a Bring Your Own Device model though I think this is still rare in government (even the Government Digital Service which is perhaps the most relaxed about these kinds of things still buys Macs for its staff).

There is, though, a complete monopoly in the mobile world.  Every single central government department that wants to allow on the move access to email supports only one device, a Blackberry.  This is because, today, it’s the only device that is accredited to run at Restricted (otherwise known as IL3) level.  All central government departments (and many that connect to those) run at this level, mostly because they connect to the GSI which kind of forces you there.  That said, most emails sent and received to or from these devices are, of course, not about important matters of state – doubtless 20% are about what’s for lunch, a further 20% about whether the squash court is free, 40% about information that is already subject to FoI and the remaining 20% might be considered to be sensitive in some way, thought perhaps only a quarter of that is truly restricted.

If you’re curious about IL3, for something to be classified at that level it needs to demonstrate any one of the following:

– Risk to an individual’s personal safety or liberty
– Minor loss of confidence in government
– Make it more difficult to maintain the operational effectiveness or security of UK or allied forces
– Cause embarrasssment to diplomatic relations
– Disadvantage a major UK company
– Damage unique intelligence operations
– Hinder the detection or impede the investigation of low level crime

You can see, I think, how hard they are to assess for any given email and so perhaps understand why it’s easier for everything to be classified as restricted rather than to assess any individual mail.

The Blackberry has achieved the hallowed status of IL3 because Research In Motion (RIM), the parent company, actively focused on it – and then ran away with it whilst everyone else just watched.  It was a genius move made all the more astonishing as they then failed to capitalise on it and offer more services – after all, their servers were on the inside of the government firewall; you couldn’t ask for a better position.  They would have gone through a lengthy process of review and certification, submitted their code for review, agreed to provide tools that disabled the camera, Bluetooth, web browsing and pretty much everything that actually made the device useful.  And so they monopolised the market – in the UK, the USA and, I imagine, pretty much everywhere.  Even though all of the emails wing their sweet way to Canada and back, no state is worried because the encryption is all at the device end (hence the panic when nations such as the UAE and India asked to be able to see emails composed on Blackberries).

RIM is now facing all sorts of problems (how fast it has come – in 2007 I certainly didn’t see the big switch.  Within weeks it may look nothing like it does now.  It could, perhaps, be owned by a Chinese company such as Huawei (something that would probably not bother the British or the Canadians but would certainly both the US government), it could be broken up into several pieces (with its patents going one way, its BBM service another and its hardware division being offered on eBay).  RIM claim to be readying a new operating system (and hardware device ranger) based on an operating system that has never previously been used on mobile devices (the Playbook excepted, though I think that really doesn’t count) and that lacks a comprehensive set of published APIs that developers could access so as to speed production of applications.  They announced only the other day that this new release would be much delayed – certainly into 2013.  It’s easy to speculate that it will never see the light of day because RIM, by then, will realise that they just can’t catch up with iOS6 or Jelly Bean or whatever is on the market by the time they do think they’re done.

So with RIM fading (and perhaps already finished as I’ve written before), it must be time for government to open up to alternatives – potentially ones that would allow even greater productivity rather than shutting down all of the interesting features in today’s mobile devices.  After all, the Blackberry has been ensconced in this monopoly position for nearly 10 years – a time in which the mobile market has turned itself inside out perhaps 3 or even 4 times.

UK government is now doing one thing that could blast this market right open – looking at moving away from the current IL0 to IL6 to a far simpler model.


Some have entirely misunderstood what this move is about and labelled it has halving the number of impact levels.  In fact – and this is by no means confirmed yet but it looks that way – within the next few weeks we will see guidelines published that move much of Government’s day to day traffic (perhaps as much as the 95% I suggest above) to a new level of accreditation which would be roughly equivalent to IL2.  Suddenly, vast numbers of new entrants could bring products to market (collaboration, email, social networks, project planning tools etc) and a new set of mobile devices would be eligible for government use, including Apple, Android and Windows.  This change in impact levels need not reduce security or increase the risk of data loss – devices would still be protected with various types of management software and could be wiped remotely (with plenty of choices available on the market).

At the same time, I hear talk that other device manufacturers are investing in the accreditation process to bring their device security up to the current IL3 level – not a daft move given that other countries or are not as progressive as the UK are also monopolised by Blackberry and would like alternatives.

Surely it is then a short step away from Windows pervasively on the desktop to other computers, whether they be iPads, Macs, Linux or whatever?

Twenty Years Of Nokia Phones

~ asdmather ~ 2 Comments
A picture paints a thousand words.  And here’s a picture of a thousand phones – from an interesting Wired article on Nokia.
One word leaps to mind though when I look at the picture – #fail.  The phones highlighted in green are the ones I used to own.  From 1992 to 2003, I owned a dozen Nokias.  From 2003 to 2012, precisely none.  Over a ten year period when their portfolio roughly quadrupled in size (just from this picture), they sold none to me. And they still aren’t selling to me.
On a day when they announce a further 10,000 job losses – bringing the total to 40,000 – as well as the sale of 90% of Vertu (see my Prescription), it’s sad to look back and see a company that once dominated the market continuing to fail.   Nokia’s own Kodak moment continues on a very slow exposure (note: I still believe Nokia will survive, propped up by Microsoft’s absolute need for a partner in mobile but there is still plenty of trouble ahead).

Nokia / Research In Motion Update

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I wanted to take another look at how Nokia and RIMM are doing.  The graph below shows their stock prices compared over the last 3 years – the candlesticks are RIMM, the brown line Nokia.  I’ve annotated the chart with just a few key events – Nokia in orange, RIMM in black (of course), Apple in green.
The two stocks have largely tracked each other over the period, with both down about 85%.  That’s a staggering loss of value:
In December 2007, Nokia was worth $150bn and RIMM worth $64bn
In June 2012, Nokia is worth $9.8bn and RIMM is valued at $5bn.
That’s $199bn of value gone in less than 5 years (though Facebook is certainly trying to make a dent in that value loss over as little as 4 weeks)
I wrote up my “prescription” for Nokia in March last year, not long Stephen Elop had made the decision to go with Windows. I didn’t write a similar prescription for RIMM.
From here, I see Nokia surviving – without Nokia, Microsoft’s mobile strategy is dead in the water. Maybe Microsoft will buy them or, more likely, maybe they will keep pumping money into them to help them deliver.  The Lumia is a good first effort (though they should have thrown them away and started again as I suggested), but it it’s far from enough when compared with the latest Galaxy from Samsung or the iPhone 4S let alone what’s coming next.  They still need to do more – get rid of NSN, embed new features in their phones, make some smart acquisitions, cut more people (sadly) and so on – but it’s achievable.
But RIMM is, I think, done.  They have no one to save them.  They are still to get their product transition going to the new o/s (and Nokia is down over half since even starting that process).  Microsoft, Nokia and all of the other rumoured buyers won’t step in for RIMM – they don’t want blackberries.  Perhaps a PE company will step in and run the company for cash, but that would be a lot like buying Nokia’s Symbian business – it’s declining fast, faster than most (including me) expected.  To turn them around from here, even with the relatively large cash pile that they have, just doesn’t seem likely.

As Went Nokia ($NOK), So Goes $RIMM

~ asdmather ~ 1 Comment
It’s about 7 months since I last wrote about Nokia.  Since then I’ve been transfixed by the total slamming that Research in Motion (aka RIMM aka the maker of Blackberries) has had.  The graph below compares Nokia and RIMM over the last 5 years.  Whilst RIMM largely outperformed NOK, the last year has been brutal for them.
Zooming in and Looking at year to date, NOK has outperformed RIMM (not that you’d have wanted money in either of them).  RIMM is down around 70% this year.  What a stunning fall from grace. The latest fall was triggered by a write-off of their planned iPad competitor, the Playbook. The write-off amount is staggering, at $485m, suggesting that RIMM had pre-bought many hundreds of thousands of units (it’s probable that it was more than that, and that there are actually millions of the things sitting, gathering dust, in a warehouse or two), expecting them to sell by the truck load – that would seem to go against the long since in vogue “Just In Time” manufacturing process.  It’s also possible, I suppose, that this isn’t a write-off of just inventory but actually a write-off of the entire product.  RIMM’s results are out soon and we’ll perhaps find out then.
Nokia has new product with its Windows Phone-based Lumia range; new blackberries are on the horizon and RIMM, like Nokia, has also to execute an operating system shift (moving to QNX).  Such moves are fraught with risk, especially in a world where your corporate customers have already been hit by email outages.  Making QNX work – keeping old apps working, making the UI consistent enough (but allowing new capabilities to feature highly), zeroing in on the bugs and getting the security accreditation right (for the many government customers) will all be hugely challenging.  And remember, the Playbook is powered by QNX.  Uhoh.
My guess is that RIMM won’t pull it off and further falls are on the way (although they will be interrupted by rallies as the market hopes that the tide has turned).  So where does that leave RIMM?  An acquisition target? It’s hard to see an industry player stepping up, but private equity houses have plenty of money now.  Bankrupt?  That seems unlikely too – they are still selling millions of devices, and it’s a long way to zero.  A CEO change?   That seems likely before either of the above – new CEO cleans house, reverses some wrongs and tries to get it all back together.
Rumour has it that RIMM will name their new operating system “X”.  It might mark the spot.  But I think the spot is quite a lot lower than it is today.

How is Nokia Doing – Update

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On April 16th I wrote

“I’d like to see Nokia unveil a clearer plan – perhaps like my prescription or an entirely different one. Waiting until 2012 before we see Windows phones doesn’t seem like a good idea – and in the interim the only headlines will relate to lay-offs, budget cuts, sales of units and other negatives, all of which will drive away customers and so put the stock in negative territory. Mr Elop has a big job ahead of him. Let’s hope he’s not like the CEO of Microfocus who departed after less than a year on the job this week, with the stock pricehaving fallen 41%. Instead he’ll be hoping he’s more like Bart Brecht who say the shares of Reckitt Benckheiser lose $2bn in value upon the announcement of his departure.”

Yesterday the stock fell to a low of $6.79 before recovering, a little, to $7.02 (it was at $8.66 when I wrote the paragraph above). The headlines continue to be negative and the company isn’t putting out a good story – instead they know it’s going to get worse, withdrawing guidance for the rest of 2011 and only citing “increased confidence that the Windows Phone will ship in Q4 2011”.

Next week is WWDC with iOS5 at the very least (as well as iCloud) if not a new (or upgraded) iPhone; doubtless the Android team will put the boot into Nokia not long after that. It will, certainly get worse before it gets better. And maybe it won’t get better. That would be a shame.


How Is Nokia Doing?

~ asdmather ~ Leave a comment

In the 6 or so months since Stephen Elop was announced as CEO of Nokia the stock is about flat.


That’s not to say that the stock hasn’t actually budged – from the day of his appointment until the announcement of the partnership with Microsoft around Windows Mobile, it was actually up about 40%, to about $11.75. It’s now at $8.66, although it’s been under $8 as recently as the end of March. Nokia is down 16% year to date, 21% in the last 3 months and 42% in the last year.

Mr. Elop is already taking, or considering taking additional steps:

The Economic Times said yesterday that Nokia is considering selling a controlling stake in its money-losing JV with Siemens (my Prescription on March 26th suggested that they sell the whole thing). The Wall Street Journal reported the same story suggesting that one of the blockers will be an outstanding pension obligation. Nokia’s FD is quoted in the WSL as saying the story is “untrue”.

The Gulf Times reports today that as many as 6,000 Nokia employees are at risk of being made redundant, with a significant reduction expected in R&D staff as I suggested in the same Prescription.

This week Nokia announced its latest Symbian phone (v3.0, known as Anna I gather, of the operating system), the X7. Apparently it will soon be replaced by an equivalent Windows Phone, cleverly named as the W7. I suggested that Nokia come up with a new naming convention – I’m already baffled by the E6 (a business related phone apparently – e for Enterprise?), the X7, the W7, the C7 and the C6-01 not to mention the N-series. Another site promoted the rumour that there would be at least 12 Nokia/Windows devices in 2012.

IDC announced at the end of March that Windows phone would have the number 2 share of the mobile operating system market by 2015 (Android would have 45%, Windows 20%, iPhone 15%). This would all be driven by the Nokia partnership. No mention is made of tablets, revenues or, importantly, profitability.

Meanwhile a customer satisfaction survey by JD Power showed Nokia coming 4th behind Apple, HTC and Motorola with its best score on battery life – always a strong point of Nokia and something that it may perhaps struggled to maintain with Windows as its operating system.

Digital Trends floated the rumour that LG and China mobile may adopt Meego – an apparently dead end platform as far as Nokia is concerned. Meego is open source so they would, in theory, be free to do that (Digia bought the library on which much of MeeGo and Symbian are built in March).

Nokia publishes its interim Q1 report on 21st April so we will find out whether the announcement of the Windows move deterred any customers from buying phones.

Goldman Sachs thinks Nokia is a buy with a target above $12, Moody’s downgraded its long and short-term debt, Nomura thinks the stock will fall 30% or more from where it is today, HTC’s new Sensation phone looks to outperform Nokia’s X7 and the median stock price target is about $9.25 – above where it is now plainly, but not likely to be a stellar performance.

I’d like to see Nokia unveil a clearer plan – perhaps like my prescription or an entirely different one. Waiting until 2012 before we see Windows phones doesn’t seem like a good idea – and in the interim the only headlines will relate to lay-offs, budget cuts, sales of units and other negatives, all of which will drive away customers and so put the stock in negative territory. Mr Elop has a big job ahead of him. Let’s hope he’s not like the CEO of Microfocus who departed after less than a year on the job this week, with the stock price having fallen 41%. Instead he’ll be hoping he’s more like Bart Brecht who say the shares of Reckitt Benckheiser lose $2bn in value upon the announcement of his departure.

Prescription for Nokia

~ asdmather ~ Leave a comment
I last owned a Nokia phone in April 2003. Prior to that I had owned only Nokia phones for at least the previous 10 years. What changed? I fell out of love with what, until then, had been the no brainer choice of buying Nokia every time. Nokia simply didn’t keep up with the market. The P800 came along with it’s tiny stick for writing, then the Treo came out with a slightly bigger stick and a keyboard and then the iPhone came along; and all around those phones were clamshells, phones with cameras, phones with more interesting interfaces and all kinds of other more exciting and more alluring devices. During all of that time Nokia seemed, to me, to be doing largely nothing.
In April 2004 I criticised Nokia for not keeping up – failing to provide good designs, making it hard to transfer data between phones (I even wrote to Nokia in February 2003 to explain the problem they were creating), not providing an integrated mail/calendar/task list capability and more.
In May 2007 I listed the features and capabilities that I wanted in a phone:
  • An initially stable phone that gets software updates regularly (to fix inevitable problems)
  • A battery that lasts at least a long weekend
  • A keyboard that registers your touch simply and effectively
  • Doesn’t crash more than once a week (and, if it does crash regularly, that the reboot time is minimal
  • Works consistently. If it has a back button, it should work the same way all the time. Copy and paste should work in every application
  • Adheres to standards (sending a business card by SMS for instance)
  • Allows me to synchronise text messages, ring tones, speed dials to the PC
  • Let’s me install software that replaces the default software
  • Threaded text
  • Single click access to create a text and select a recipient.
  • Contacts that let you phone or text someone right from the screen
  • Freecell, not solitaire
Some 4 years on not all of those are possible still – battery life beyond a day is still rare, being able to use non-standard applications (yes, even on the iPhone) is rarer still. But most of it is there – we have come quite some distance since 2007 with iPhone initially leading the way and competition from Android and others ensuring that the rate of innovation is high.
So given all that criticism that flowed Nokia’s way, I thought I’d have a go at what I would do if I were running Nokia. I’m assuming that the Windows decision is a done deal and can’t be reversed.
First, some observations:
  • In the year that Apple introduced both the iPhone 4 and the iPad, they spent $1.8bn on R&D and their revenue increased by over $22bn. Nokia, in the same year, spent $5.8bn and their revenue increased only $1.5bn (source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek). Nokia also spent more in 2010 than Samsung, RIMM, HTC and Sony Ericsson (source: Bernstein Estimates and Analysis). Nokia is outspent in R&D only by Microsoft, GM, Pfizer and Toyota (source: 2008 EU Indutrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. One third of that R&D goes on Symbian and MeeGo (source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
  • Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, recently noted that companies have a tendency to promote “extensive gains” over “intensive breakthroughs”; that is, they extend or replicate what they already know for incremental gain and think works rather than seek innovative new approaches that will drive long term growth
  • At the end of March 2010 Nokia had around 125,000 employees with 64,000 of those part of Nokia Siemens Networks. 17,200 staff are in R&D and more than 1/3rd of those are assigned to Symbian-related research
And now my prescription. Nokia is going to compete, in my view, on only three things:
  1. Incredible integration between its hardware and Microsoft’s operating system. Those who already have integration (Apple and HP/Palm) already have this; those licensing, like Nokia and including Motorola, are working it hard.
  2. Bundles of Nokia-only features that result either from its close arrangement with Microsoft or from assets that Nokia already own (such as NavTeq) or those that they might acquire.
  3. Stunning hardware capability coupled with awesome design that others will struggle to match, funded by Nokia’s cash flow from its declining dumb-phone business and funnelled through its (soon to be smaller) R&D unit. Battery life will be high on that list but fast processors, great screens, high quality camera lenses, speakers, GPS responsiveness and NFV will all matter. Nokia will be competing here with plenty of other companies who are already ahead of them – Samsung, HTC – and those who want to catch up – Motorola, Palm etc

If that is what Nokia is competing with (or against) then who is the competition:
  • First, themselves. The reaction to the decision to align with Windows has reportedly been strongly adverse. It’s said that whole teams downed tools and walked out for the day. The mood will doubtless worsen as Nokia makes radical cuts in its workforce, cuts costs and closes down pet projects.
  • Second, themselves. Nokia’s non-smartphone business is still a huge cashflow generator. Something like 80% of phones sold globally are still what we might call “feature phones” rather than smartphones. Nokia’s feature phones run Symbian and there will be a strong contingent in the company that fights to keep working on that operating system, enhancing it and getting it to a point where it can compete with other operating systems.
  • Third, the obvious competition

    – Google’s partners, such as Motorola, who have also hitched themselves to an operating system
    – Contract manufacturers such as HTC who have already proved that they can deliver good hardware running Windows devices
    – HP with its recent acquisition of Palm. HP’s last foray into the mobile market was on the back of the iPaq and Windows CE. Now they are aiming to control both the software and hardware but are coming from a low base with little consumer market penetration outside of printers
    – Research in Motion. Whereas Windows Mobile 7 seems to have focused on the consumer market, Microsoft’s obvious corporate presence could allow Nokia to deliver phones that are accepted by companies looking to avoid having their email shipped offshore or to reduce the costs of their mobile operations. This must be a key area for Nokia / Microsoft to move in on. Microsoft and Nokia need to own the corporate warrior market.

    I’m going to leave Apple off this list. Apple is patently making a ton of money from the iPhone off a relatively low market share. Nokia is unlikely to make a dent in the iPhone share (or get anywhere near the margins that Apple has) for some time, if ever (my vote is the latter).

Here’s what I’d set off doing:
  • Break the company up – first transparently through very clear and detailed reporting and then structurally, that is not through tracking stocks. Nokia’s carrier equipment business would be valuable to many other companies, including PE. Owning a division that makes GSM equipment may make for better ‘phones – perhaps in understanding signal strength and optimising battery life as a result – but I think its tenuous. The first spin-off then is Nokia-Siemens Networks (read its mission and vision statement); It floats separately, goes to a competitor or its bought by Private Equity. €12bn of sales including €2bn of R&D and a net loss of nearly €700m and involved in connecting something like a quarter of the world’s population on any given day (source: nokia). At a stroke that cuts the employee count, allows better management focus and reduces losses. A second spin-off would be Vertu. Searching on the Nokia site for information on Vertu gives this as the first result:

    How do I recycle my Nokia phone and accessories?Just drop off your old mobile phone and accessories at any Nokia Care point. Nokia will send the old products to closest Nokia approved recycling company

    That hardly seems like a core business – it is independently operated but wholly owned by Nokia. Brand association with Nokia is limited, revenues are unlikely to be enormous and whilst, arguably, they are great at design, the consumer isn’t pressing for diamond studded phones with perfectly lined up screws. Nokia can licence their technology to Vertu if they want to, but they need not own it.

    I wondered a lot about whether Nokia should actually create a separate smartphone business, leaving its huge cash cow feature phone business to work on Symbian, provide funding for the shift to Windows and to, eventually, dwindle. But I think the potential for flowdown (and perhaps flowback) is too great.

  • Exchange team members between Microsoft and Nokia at both a senior and a working level, but not at the top level. Learning how your own organisation works is already a challenge, learning a new one whilst remaining in touch with the old one even harder. Senior people in key teams should swap between the companies so that their joined up efforts have a better chance of succeeding. Microsoft and Nokia (Microkia? Ugh) should treat this as a joint venture. If either one fails, they both fail although Nokia has more to lose.
  • Massively cut internal R&D spend – you’re spending too much and, as a result, have built a bloated R&D organisation that is spending more than it generates in revenue; it’s trading on innovations that were hits 10 years ago. Nokia is no longer in the software business, it’s in the software integration business.

    Nokia’s R&D spend needs to be focused on only three areas:

    (i) Joining up with Microsoft to develop new operating system features. Microsoft outspend Nokia in total innovation (but only by about €500m). Together they could achieve some great things (at the risk of Microsoft alienating its other partners but, then again, they’re not selling much so it doesn’t matter)

    (ii) Developing new hardware capabilities around touch, battery life (an area where Nokia already excels albeit on feature phones), GPS integration and responsiveness, NFC integration and cool design. Nokia will need to partner widely to achieve innovation in these areas and use its famous reputation for supply chain management to ensure the right quantities are available

    (iii) Looking for, partnering and acquiring new software technology that can make Nokia phones stand out. Notwithstanding the need for Microsoft’s software to run perfectly, Nokia needs to seek out other companies to acquire. Ideal targets would be those that provide equivalent software to the top apps in Apple’s appstore, or even those very companies themselves. There’s no point in trying to start another Facebook or Twitter (although Nokia/Microsoft will need to work closely with those companies to make sure the client apps fly). There is, though, plenty of opportunity in task management, email, group text, contact management (so why not buy Hashable for contact management and introductions, after all Microsoft owns Xobni; RIMM owns Gist).

    I would start from a zero base and add R&D back to key future product areas rather than start at the current spend and strip away. Given that there are more than 17,000 R&D staff, this will result in large lay-offs that will have to be negotiated with various governments (2,000+ will go with the NSN spin-off)

  • Focus software efforts with Microsoft as follows:

    1. Stunningly fast transfer and synchronisation tools.

    – Transfer so that data from other phones running different operating systems can be moved simply (whether that’s Android as the first target or iPhone as the second target); – Synchronisation so that data from gmail, ical/mobileme, outlook and any other emerging cloud services as well as iTunes, Amazon music (and whoever else is managing media) can be imported and managed easily. Just a few screen taps to make any of those happen.

    2. Stunningly fast backup to a PC, Mac and Linux clients from day one. You’re in the mobile business, not the PC business and so you should be client agnostic. Better still, offer backup of all settings, applications (including all settings for games and apps), texts and logs to the cloud – for nothing. Sign up from the ‘phone and let it just happen, with incremental backups seamlessly happening in the background without the user needing to know.

    3. Regular operating system upgrades without a need to re-synchronise the entire media library. Wireless upgrades of what are doubtless 500MB files is perhaps a step too far for now, but I shouldn’t need to copy everything back to my phone after such an upgrade – with 32gb or 64gb of data that’s just become a chore. Release regular updates – every 2 months fixing bugs and adding incremental features to keep people interested in what’s coming.

    4. A series of in-house apps that compete brilliantly with what Google and Apple provide and then go beyond. Nokia already own Navteq and provide on-phone maps (that is, without the need for an Internet connection) – more needs to be made of that, especially in Europe where roaming is far more common. I’d like more capabilities in text messages – group texting for instance. Music, video and other media will need to work brilliantly (first with synchronisation of existing libraries and then with adding new ones) from the get go, audiobooks as well as e-Books too. Your store will be as good as Amazon and Genius put together. You will know what I like and you will recommend new things based on that. You’ll do it by acquiring companies or partnering with them, not through doing it yourself.

  • Develop a brilliant and obvious naming convention. Years ago when I started using Nokia I understood the convention … There was the 6210 which was replaced by the 6310; not long after came the 7210 which I understood to be better still. It all went wrong with the 8xxx series – the 8250 was small and sexy, the 8800 was shaped like a banana. Now, I couldn’t tell you how it works with C, E and N series. The picture above this section shows only part of the current range.

    Nokia is certainly going to release more than one phone a year unlike Apple of course, which makes the need for a naming convention essential, and all the astronomy-related (Galaxy, Nova, Star, etc), inspirational names (Desire, Optimus, Incredible, Inspire), dance/music names (Cha-Cha, Salsa, Aria, Salsa). That leaves a few areas that might work – elements, Greek or Roman gods, cities, big cats (Apple might claim they have those), birds, colours and so on. The trick is going to be providing some kind of unifying theme that ties to phone capability. It must be obvious whether the phone is touch only or touch & keyboard. Potential candidates include simple number T-1000 (for touch) and K-1000 (for keyboard) but more creative names would be welcome.

  • Bundle the cloud with your phones. Cloud based email (with your own domain name if you want it), calendars and contacts must be out of the box ready. Microsoft can give you this tomorrow with their Office 365 infrastructure. Your initial volume won’t be enough to threaten their margins and there will always be a chance to cross-sell more services in the future. You’ll also want to be sure that you have an equivalent of Dropbox (if you haven’t acquired a company like them). And Evernote should be pre-installed and work like a charm, ideally with Nokia only features. It goes without saying that you’ll want all of the big social networks and whoever follows them to work from day one.
I would also make the first phone you design the most amazing phone you can imagine. Develop it, prove you can produce it. Then throw it away and do another one that learns all the lessons from that one and is even better. When you’re halfway through that process, set off a competing team to build the phone that will come after that one and when you’re a third of the way through that cycle, set off the next team. Have them race against each other.
I have yet to get to what Nokia should do with tablets, Meego (or some other operating system that they might want to work on as an R&D project either to spur Microsoft to keep innovating or as a replacement operating system should things not work out with Microsoft), in-car systems and so on. 
Perhaps those are topics for another day.