One Year Later (as posted to FB 2/26/10)

This month, I mark the one-year anniversary of my departure from Nokia. Over my twelve-year tenure with the company, focused in the Americas and primarily the U.S., I graduated from leading U.S. government and industry affairs to driving Americas-wide strategy; from managing North American corporate communications to spearheading the North American Multimedia Business Group and Americas-wide Go-to-Market. And, over my twelve years with the company, I watched Nokia's star rise spectacularly in the U.S. going into the turn of the Millennium, and have since witnessed a steady decline, notwithstanding brief spurts of inspirational success, such as experienced by the NSeries products in 2007.

Things have changed. Indeed, the mobile and Internet convergence environments continue to evolve at a more and more rapid pace. To that point, leading up to and in the wake of last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, there has been a great deal of hooplah about who will drive the mobile future. Has the U.S. left Europe in its innovative dust? Have Apple and Google upended operator control points? Has the oft-foretold and now-consummated marriage of mobility and the Internet forever changed the landscape?

Hmmm. I guess we'll have to wait and see. In the interim, no matter however it turns out, and for whatever it may be worth, I'd like to highlight that:

Nokia Multimedia had it right, and First, but...

...what in retrospect (mine) may have been a perhaps premature Nokia re-organization at the end of 2007 may well have undermined Nokia's high-end mobile computer momentum, displacing the company at a terribly critical inflection point in the marketplace.

Read this: Buh-Bye Wireless Guys. Daniel Lyons' recent piece in Newsweek may be a bit off here and there, but it more or less hits the mark. In short, he suggests that "the computer guys in Silicon Valley" cottoned on to the unique monopoly dominance being exercised by U.S. wireless carriers and wondered "why aren't we doing that?"

He's right. Apple and Google are flipping the apple(google)cart, and, notwithstanding recent Barcelona announcements of carrier alliances to establish interoperable application platforms, stores, whatever, to better compete with Apple, Google, etc. (link), the game has been changed. Utterly.

Lyons credits (in my liberal interpretation) the Silicon Valley types for having figured out that wireless broadband is no different than any other broadband and, as such, consumers will want, deserve and demand to attach a device of choice to a network of choice to consume content and services of choice. And, well, unlocked, liberated, mobile devices that are open to non-carrier applications, content and services are a key solution. I mean, c'mon, after all, who really wants to be locked in to a carrier and carrier services and content for two years just to get a subsidized phone? Would you buy your PC from Comcast or Fios and get locked into some latter-day Internet walled-garden offering? Of course not.

But - and this is my first key point - Nokia was there first. Nokia perceived and understood the evolving market environment and was executing around it excellently (and ahead of the market) going into 2007. Indeed, Nokia's Multimedia Business Group was dedicated to capitalizing on this emerging reality with its ground-breaking NSeries devices and related (pre-Ovi) services at the time. To wit: the Nokia N95, introduced in 2007, was a truly global phenomenon - yes, even in North America. A bit clunky perhaps, particularly lined up against the elegance of the iPhone, yet far more feature-rich than any device at the time.

But then came the re-org, which was well-intended, to be sure. Nokia had three devices business groups - Mobile Phones (mainstream volume), Enterprise (struggling to break into Blackberry's realm) and Multimedia (ascendant value) - and rightfully sought to re-unite the disparate businesses to leverage and rationalize globally scalable solutions. Intent aside, in the wake of the re-org, the vanguard and value-oriented NSeries devices somewhat derailed as Nokia responded to near-term financial market pressures and ever-exercised carrier muscle, particularly in the U.S., focusing instead on volume-oriented mid-range feature and entry phones, particularly in emerging markets. Meanwhile, Nokia's fledgling, new-born services group, striving to drive newly-launched-but-quasi-'me-too' Ovi services, floundered as Nokia's commitment to iconic high-end multimedia devices seemingly flagged.

The result, well, in an increasingly competitive market, complicated by disruptive plays by muscling interlopers like Apple and Google, having one's volume cake and eating one's value torte proved and has proven to be a bit more challenging than Nokia may have imagined. Ditto, I fear, may be the case in terms of expectations that all of those emerging market Nokia consumers will build lasting branded and upgradable relationships with Nokia devices and services at the expense of a growing field of competitors, much less operators desperately trying to maintain their something-more-than-bitpipe relevance.

Reality check: I wouldn't want to suggest that the Nokia 2007 re-org was solely responsible for Nokia's global predicament today. Indeed, there were a number of crucial mis-steps in the early- to mid-2000's that equally contributed to the current challenges, and particularly led to the Nokia miasma in the U.S. - I'll address this in a separate thread.

In any event, now, in the midst of all of this, Nokia is struggling to regain it's thought- and market leadership. But, this struggle is in the context of a global marketplace which certainly perceives, and may actually be feeling momentum to have shifted, and significantly... Witness "The Observer's" piece out of Barcelona last week, straight from the world's most prestigious global wireless trade show - How the Smartphone Made Europe Look Stupid - in which it is rather harshly suggested that the European mobile giants that pioneered the mobile industry are now stumbling behind U.S. and Asian rivals, mere "flyover states" in the greater global wireless nation.

There is some truth to this. And, for what it's worth, I believe that the general direction that Apple and Google are now driving is the right one - strategically focused to capitalize on proven market success - notwithstanding certain "control" issues. But, I'm also highlighting that Nokia was there, right, and first.

Whatever the case, this isn't just new players in the game, or the game-field having changed - this is an entirely new game. And as for "control issues?" Yeah, sure, success, for awhile - whether operator or Apple or Google. Indeed, the semi-closed ecosystem approach is exactly the way to prove the market for true mobile multimedia. But, ultimately, this is about consumers (also known as human beings) - like it or not, at some point, choice, preference, lifestyle, liberty, individualism (Hail Jaron Lanier) will out in the end, regardless of who's driving or otherwise credited for having driven the change. For now though, it would appear that Apple and Google are best positioned to be the guardians of the cloud when that day comes.