SEVEN THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT NOKIA !!

1  The company was initially started off as a paper production company in Finland in 1865 by Fredrik Idestam in the town of Tampere. In the late 19th century, the organization moved to another town which had a river flowing through it. The river was called Nokianvirta, and the town was called Nokia. This is how it got it name

2. Before the company made its way into the tech world, Nokia had a crazy array of products that it manufactured. From snow tires, gas masks and rubber boots to electricity and cables, the company did it all. In fact, the rubber boots by the firm became so popular that they became a classic design blueprint for boots. And it also had personal computers under the brand name MikroMikko

3.   The first commercial GSM call was made in 1991. The then Prime Minister of Finland, Harri Holkeri made this phone call in Helsinki using a Nokia phone over a Nokia-supplied network.

4. The world's first business GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia-provided organize, by Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, utilizing a Nokia telephone. 

5. It is prevalently trusted that the 'Extraordinary' tone accessible in Nokia telephones, as a SMS tone, is really Morse code for SMS. The 'Rising' SMS tone is Morse code for 'Interfacing People', which is Nokia's slogan. 

6. It sold about 126 million pieces of the most popular black & white model Nokia 3310 and Nokia 3330, with 3310 being the  first Nokia mobile phone without an external antenna

7. About three years ago, Nokia used to manufacture about 210 million handsets every year which, if calculated, comes to 6.5 phones each second. This figure has now gone down due to decrease in demand and immense competition in the mobile market.

Where Kodak went wrong? Failure of Kodak

Eastman Kodak Co. is often used as an example of a market leader that failed to recognize the writing on the wall. After decades of being the undisputed global leader in all-things-photography, it filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

But how could this happen to such a giant? Back in the day, Kodak was like the Google of film and cameras. At one point they held 90% of market share on film sales and 85% on camera sales. The company attracted the best technical talent from around the country and even played movies for its 140,000 employees during lunch.

Now many think the disruption of the digital camera killed off the film business. But back in 1975, a Kodak engineer invented the first ever digital camera. How could a behemoth like Kodak, with abundant resources and some of the biggest talent in the country, fail to take advantage of a technology that was invented inside its own laboratories?

In this day and age, with disruption around every corner, it can happen to just about anyone.

Here are some lessons from Kodak’s demise that we can all learn from.

Visionaries Win

According to the poor Kodak engineer who invented the first ever digital camera back in 1975, senior management’s reaction to it was basically, “That’s cute kid, don’t tell anyone about it.” And with that, the company never pursued the possibilities of this new technology right under its nose.

From Kodak’s perspective, developing a digital alternative to film would have taken resources away from their big moneymaker. But this is not exactly a visionary approach to business. Yes, it’s important to capture and keep hold of as big a market share as possible, but you also must look to future trends and changes in consumer behaviors. Kodak assumed no one would ever stop using film – they failed to see the advantages digital photography offered people.

Always Remember Your Brand’s Core Offering

It is sadly ironic that Kodak forgot what made them a household name in the first place. They offered consumers easy-to-use cameras. In fact, their original slogan was, “You press the button, we do the rest.”

Decades later, the company found itself scrambling to keep pace with the competition by attempting to finally embrace digital. Their solution? To produce photo editing software and inkjet printers that no one wanted or bought.

Disruption tends to send CEOs panicking and trying to reinvent themselves in the midst of change. Instead, brands need to return to their core offerings. Had Kodak focused on developing simple, easy-to-use digital cameras back in the 90s, and easy-to-use photo apps after that, they may still be a big brand.

Focus on Value Not Product

Technology will continue to evolve and advance, but that doesn’t mean your value needs to shift. In fact, it shouldn’t.

Kodak made the mistake of focusing on their product – film – instead of the value they offered customers – the ability to capture life’s most precious moments. Disruption isn’t about newer, better technology coming along and snatching up your customers; it’s about outside factors coming along and erasing your key advantage. For decades Kodak’s key advantage was superior technology, so when new technology came along – digital cameras – their focus on film blinded them to recognize the value of digital until it was too late.

Agility is Critical

A massive company like Kodak had all of their resources tied up in research and operations. Theoretically, they could have (and should have) pooled resources to respond to any threat on the horizon. But they didn’t, and they were eventually usurped by smaller manufacturers in Asia.

Success in today’s ever-changing global marketplace will require companies to remain agile so they may react quickly to change. While the last century rewarded those businesses who excelled at growth techniques – this next century will reward companies that can make smart decisions fast.

Kodak eventually managed to recover from bankruptcy and remains manufacturing film, with a focus on independent filmmakers. Still, you can’t help but wonder what the company could have become had it paid better attention to the shifting landscape around them.

Why Nokia Failed ?

  TIMELINE OF NOKIA'S IMPORTANT MOMENTS :

• In Late 1998, Nokia became the best-selling mobile phone brand in the world;
• Nokia’s operating profit went from $1 billion in 1995 to almost $4 billion by 1999;
• The best-selling mobile phone of all time, the Nokia 1100, was created in 2003;
• In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone;
• In 2010 Nokia launched the “iPhone killer” but failed to match the competition;
• The quality of Nokia’s high-end phones continues to decline;
• In just six years, the market value of Nokia declined by about 90%;
• Nokia’s decline accelerates by 2011 and is acquired by Microsoft in 2013.

Nokia’s failure was something that just had to happen - Nokia, realistically, couldn’t have done much about it.

In 2007, around half of all mobile phones sold were Nokia phones. These guys were massively dominant.

Less than 10% of all phones sold were smartphones, but even in that growing space Nokia, with its Symbian, had dominance.

But in 2007 something happened that you can’t really blame Nokia for. A nut job, Steve Jobs, made this insanely great smartphone that didn’t even have a keyboard, the iPhone. Not only that, he made buying apps so easy that people would actually buy them, making smartphones so much more useful.

And then, to make matters worse, Google decided to partner with every smartphone manufacturer in the world via Android, which would emulate the iPhone. And they didn’t care whether they made any money or not so gave the software for free.

I mean, what were Nokia supposed to do? It’s far more difficult changing a legacy software, like Symbian, than making an essentially new one like Google did with Android. And given they were so dominant in both hardware and software, they couldn’t have really abandoned either.

Ok, in hindsight they should have adopted Android, but fat chance that was going to happen given Android was way behind, and a competitor.

And so the reason Nokia failed was because shit happens…

Nokia's failure can be attributed to a combination of 3 factors.

1. Competitors attacking the incumbent:

Nokia was the world leader in mobile phones circa 2008. The smartphone of those times were dominated by the Symbian consortium and Nokia was a dominant player in that ecosystem. The Symbian roadmap was being driven by Nokia and Samsung, LG and others were desperately trying to get out of Nokia's shadow in the Symbian ecosystem. They started to divulge from the Symbian consortium and eventually Nokia acquired Symbian. This effectively tied Nokia to that platform as they had already invested heavily in it. Meanwhile the competitors were looking for an alternative operating system.

2. The alternatives becoming the mainstream:

Around 2008 there was a shift in the smartphone market. Two new and promising alternatives were introduced to the market backed by companies with deep pockets, namely iOS and Android. Apps and Ads started to dominate the revenues. Both Apple and Google emphasized on creating a developer community to encourage people to adopt their new platform. This resulted in more apps being created for those platforms and with the respective market places, it became easier to monetize the apps. This started the ball rolling.

Nokia on the other hand had a fragmented developer community. Symbian was cumbersome to develop apps on. It was unweildy, heavy and not developer friendly. Moreover, there was no marketplace where developers can showcase their apps. It is fair to say that Nokia made a blunder in not recognising that Apps and Ads rule the world.

3. Strategic failures:

Nokia being behemoth that it was, was slow in reacting to these paradigm shifts. But it did react. A new platform was started called the Maemo to fight the iOS and Android ecosystem. A new marketplace was being created called the Ovi Store. But it was too little too late. There were already millions of apps in both App Store and Google Play to cater to most needs of people.

Nokia was slow in execution too. Nokia N900 was promising but it was slow and not as polished as iPhone had come to be. The software updates were few and far and there was not much content in the Ovi Store either.

All these lead to Nokia doing something very drastic. It wanted to hard reset. Enter Stephen Elop. In Feb 2011, he issued the "Burning Platform" memo and announced the strategic partnership with Microsoft. Windows Phone was announced to be the primary smartphone platform. Active development of Symbian and Maemo was stopped. Here was a chance for Nokia to regain the marketshare by providing an alternative platform to the world. But that strategy backfired as Windows Phone failed to gain any kind of foothold.