Nokia, Seen In Isolation, Is Strategically Cashing Its History
This case talks about the world-renowned, Finnish-originated company, Nokia, which boosts its tagline “Connecting people”. This tagline contains within itself the true essence of what Nokia has always strived to do with its products. Since being the producer of mere hardware components was not going to connect people in a truly interactive and engaging way, Nokia started specializing in providing services, which would connect people in real time, in ways other than talking to each other on the cell phone. Some of these ways are multi player game services and swapping personal content like music, audio, video, pictures etc. Other ways of providing that complete personal experience to any buyer of a Nokia handset are the introduction of services like the Nokia Map, which directs and gives complete directions to users of a particular place and online music stores which help users have their favorite ringtones. The top management of Nokia has already decided that making devices is not enough for the type of audience that they cater to. The 21st century is moving at such a fast pace that any company needs to adapt to the changing and new emerging demands of its customers competitively and think proactively as compared to being reactive. Therefore, Nokia very well has used this theory and tried to bring out new ways in which it can make the best use of the advantages it already has by being in the mobile phone market for several years, by being the mobile phone provider to millions of cell phone users, and the huge clientele base it has of the various mobile phone operators.
Nokia, a Tough Competitor for Mobile Phone Operators and Online Major Groups
The efforts that Nokia is making in securing its future, by continuously innovating not just its products market, but also the services market, is indirectly hampering the market and revenues for many other companies and industries. One such industry is that of the mobile operators, who provide telecommunication services and the basic software that would make the Nokia handset hardware worth anything, by ultimately connecting people. Buying a Nokia handset, or any other mobile set company’s cell for that matter, is a one-time investment. But these mobile phone operators charge their bills every month or prepaid credit has to be installed in the phones to receive their services. Since these mobile operators charge a high bill for their services, they have to compensate it by providing many other kinds of services like content provision, whether it is about news, finance, weather, etc. But customers have shown the red signal to these services by mobile phone operators. Rather, the mobile phone operators are now at the mercy of Nokia to make them partners in their service provisions like Nokia maps, game services etc. This partnership will be way more beneficial for the mobile operators than the individual efforts they had made in providing content to its customers. They were at a loss, let alone break even profits. For one of the mobile phone operators, Vodafone, providing an online live content portal was a major disaster since only approximately 15% of its users availed those services. This percentage is not the kind of response expected.
Nokia is also competing with online major groups like Yahoo! And Google, which have been in the web market for decades and are leaders in their market. The fact with these online groups is that they have no control over the phone screens, which are ruling the lives of millions of users and have become essential to fulfill the communication needs of users. Nokia is strategically using this position it has to further step into markets other than its very own, and not just that, but capture it as well.
References
- Merriden, T. (2001) Cold Calling: Business the Nokia Way. Capstone
- Steinbock, D. (2001). The Nokia Revolution. The Story of an Extraordinary Company that Transformed an Industry. AMACOM