Nokia people must have dreaded the opening of Nokia World this year. A steadily negative press has been giving the impression of a company that has lost its way, delays to the latest flagship phone meant it wasn’t quite in the shops yet, and two senior executives announced their departure before the big event opened in London.
And yet, the company came through with pretty convincing keynotes, solid products and at least a few good reasons to believe that it has plenty of fight left in it – and a good chance of meeting Android and Apple head on.
However, the odd item in the speech betokened a company that is on the back foot. Why the need to mention a slip of the tongue at an Apple press conference, where iOS chief Scott Forstall inadvertently said Apple was “connecting people”. Sure, it’s a Nokia trademark, but it’s also a pretty common phrase.
If Nokia’s not worried about Apple, why the close attention? You never hear Stever Ballmer crowing when Steve jobs opens a “window”.
And the executive musical chairs was a little embarrassing. Microsoft’s Stephen Elop is no doubt delighted to be in charge of Nokia. Vice president Niklas Savander read out an email from him that said so. But he’s not delighted enough to get to the show, and Nokia – a company which connects people – couldn’t find a way to present him by video link-up.
Savander talked tough for a bit, but then the product pitches were left to a smartphone chief who is not long for the company. Anssi Vanjoki did a pretty good job talking up the new products, but why did he announce his resignation earlier this week? Why not keep it quiet for a fortnight or so?
None of this seemed to bother the Nokia fans. They even joined in a round of applause for the former CEO, led without any apparent embarassment by the man who – presumably – kicked him out of the company.
Nokia fans in London sat quietly through this – and more – because that stuff does not bother them. They know this is really about the phones, and this time round, Nokia actually does have a set of phones which could succeed.
The company seemed to have bent over backwards to create a unified experience at this show. All the new phones run Symbian^3, even though the company is supposed to be doing great things with Meego Linux in future. And all of them bore a very strong resemblance to each other.
This was strange, since Vanjoki emphasised from the stage that Nokia wants to offer diversity. One device won’t meet everyone’s needs, he said. But the new phones we were shown all looked very similar, and only really varied in being slightly bigger, slightly smaller, having slightly more megapixels or (in the case of the E7) a sliding keyboard.
Nokia does offer variety – and in particular, compared with Google and Apple – it has a massive strength in feature phones as well as the ability to drive its smartphones down to lower-cost devices. But this time round, the company seems to have learned that a single public image is working well for Apple – and to a lesser extent Google/Android.
There are definitely weak points. I travelled to the show with a committed Nokia developer who had spent a long time using the N8. Even for someone committed to Nokia, he had a dismal view of the open source OS. “It’s the same old Symbian user interface,” he said. “We need a new version, and till then it’s a struggle for survival.”
That kind of reaction is never far below the surface, and it could come to the fore.
But Nokia used a certain skill in playing the hand it has, and could well emerge in a stronger position, if things go its way.
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I'm not a fun of Nokia products, but there aren't any doubts that Nkia will do their best to protect their market share.
Nokia came out fighting at yesterday’s Nokia World event, underlining its credentials in the smartphone industry after an extended period when the limelight has been focused rivals including Apple and Google. Niklas Savander, EVP of the company's Markets unit noted “it is about three words – Nokia is back.” His sentiments were echoed by Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Mobile Solutions, who said: “Yes, we have taken some knocks during the past few years. Some of them were well deserved. But we are not here to look back.”
The story of Nokia and a Southern African Tribe illustrates why CEO’s and boards need to embrace new thinking.
Who would be a leader in turbulent times like these? There has been a few notable falls from grace amongst some of our top leaders in recent times Kia, LG, BP and Nokia to name a few.
Which made me recall the mythical tale of the Fah-Kow-Wii Tribe. A very small indigenous tribe of people who once inhabited the savannahs of South West Africa – until they became extinct. The problem with this vertically challenged tribe had been that because they were so small and the grass on the Savannah plains so high: they kept losing each other. The tribal leader at the time ignored the pressing need to bring fresh blood into the tribe so that better statured people would be able to see above the horizon and help them as a tribe respond to the perpetual call of “Where the Fah-Kow-Wii?” Hence the tribe diminished. The moral of that tale is Unfortunately no-one shared the moral of the tale of the fabled Fa-Kow-Wii tribe to Nokia’s outgoing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. If they had, he might have better seen the fate of his tribe
Sometimes for the survival of the tribe you need to introduce new blood and new DNA – it means embracing new attributes to survive. If only someone had told Nokia’s outgoing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Instead of staunchly sticking to the notion that only Finnish senior managers were equipped to lead the tribe. It meant that the board of Nokia for two decades was almost exclusively made up of males of a certain age, primarily Finnish, and from very similar educational and managerial schools of thought.
The issue here is that for any business, particularly one which is (was) a dominant global market leader to sustain the vitality of their tribe, they needed to increase their diversity – not continually reduce their gene pool and stick to the same rigid thinking. Not only is this potentially somewhat colonial and disrespectful to the various territories it serves, but it is also stifling in terms of being in tune with the real world and the customers and markets a brand seeks to engage with. The failure of Nokia senior management of ignoring the headlong advance of Blackberry, Samsung, Apple and Google Android et al was a serious folly
However, the good news is that before all hope against extinction was exhausted, Nokia shareholders finally saw sense and have enforced a change of regime at the top of Nokia. This will undoubtedly herald a fresh influx of new ideas and DNA into the Nokia tribe. So, here’s to the next generation of the new Nokia tribe.
Tim Bleszynski
Co-founder New Brand Tribalism