Sergey Brinn tweet Sep 25, 2009: "The Apps ecosystem is going to be the most important thing for the success of any mobile platform - Android or iPhone or WebOS."

I could not agree more... This is where Nokia's problem is.

Excellent article Ramine.Covered all the points very well.

Points mentioned are to the point. Nokia also needs the culture of open communication & debates. The issues mentioned are tip of iceberg and any news about nokia venturing into other products like laptop ?

Main problem Nokia is facing currently is the external design layout and UI.It needs to bring design which doesnt exist in the current market and the new business model for it.

Nokia recently announced N8 and other phone models whats the point for those. Can N8 really compete with iphone4G/other models? It was just dream what Nokia has thought about.

Nokia said they will look forward to get the revenue from the developing countries.what it will do once other manufactures slashes the price for the phone. For example Apple builts the cheaper iphone for developing countries.THEN ?, Most people in developing countries want iphone but cant afford but once it slashes the price what then?

Work with startups: I agree on this. Usually big companies ignores start up thinking they have lack of funding, they are not up to their standard but usually those companies have more ideas than big companies which are already exisitng and providing service to Nokia.We had same case, we had really good solution,idea and wanted to have cooperation with them. They said idea is really good but we wont be able to cooperate with company which is not opeating for couple of years. Please come later.

So far Nokia is hanging around in market because of the brand which was created before Apple's iphone came in to market. If they dont change whole ideas sooner, there will be no market for Nokia as Motorola.

Very good article.

Agree with your analysis and Timo's comment above: building trust among the developer community is truly a challenge. What comes to the platforms, predictability could be one of the keywords to start with.

Great article. For once there are contructive criticism towards Nokia and not just simple bashing. As the app based mobile ecosystem development, started by iPhone, is slowly beginning to emerge, it is easier to analyse problem points and offer tangible solutions. Well done Ramine!

Great article agree with all your points, I have even given up on Nokia and pre ordered iphone 4. I have also heard from couple of developers who develop in Java and also write apps for iphone and android. That Symbian is the worst platform to write apps for and for them a young company they have opted to stay away from Symbian/nokia. These are exactly the type of companies they need to convince to write apps for their platform.

Also I believe that by abandoning meemo for meego was a blow to the community

First of all the sugarcoating; great and well timed article. What a way to start blogging for ArcticStartup!

Many good points I agree on however I really don't think Nokia should buy up any startups! It's corporate poison; usually ends with the founders leaving, the ditching of the service and Nokia loosing a truckload of money. Rather do really close product co-operation and help the startups stand on their own feet so that they in turn can support and keep the Nokia ecosystem vibrant.

I was having a very similar conversation yesterday evening with Markus (http://twitter.com/MarkusKarlsson) after the LikeMinds event.

So to counter point your arguments:

Fragmentation:
Nokia is talking about *TWO* development targets for all of their platforms;
* Qt
* Web RunTime

My reading of the Qt material is that rather than claiming "write once, test everywhere", it is more "Write once, but make appropriate changes for each platform". The history of Qt (i.e. prior to Nokia acquiring Trolltech) shows this has been the case for a while.
For WRT the message seems to be, make Web apps that can run without a browser.

For Symbian, hopefully Nokia has learnt the lessons of S60 3.1 & 3.2 where each version, of each handset, was slightly different, thus making it a testing nightmare.

With MeeGo (and it's predecessor Maemo) Nokia seems to be copying the Apple model - One handset a year, but does not seem to be following on with the equally important supporting of multiple releases back, as MeeGo support for N900 is currently planned to be a "community supported" project.

Work with Startups:
My view is that just about the last thing a young, agile startup wants to do is attempt to directly engage with large establish enterprises (as the Jaiku team about the pain of talking with carriers!), unless it is to get into talks about being aquired ;)
Nokia have a few projects with potential, http://conversations.nokia.com/ and http://betalabs.nokia.com/ spring to mind. Now if these could be opened up a bit more (as one things startups want & need is more publicity), and not just be for Nokia internal things that might help as both of those have large *International* audiences.

Games:
One of the challenges for N-Gage was that most users wanted casual games, but N-Gage was designed more with hardcore gamers in mind, and at the time the handsets just did not have the power to run the more immersive games.
Oh, and FYI, the Finnish success story of Rovio's Angry Birds (top something or other in App Store) is available on the N900 :)

Make a Better Store:
I don't think you will find anyone who will not agree that Ovi Store sucks, big time.
It seems to have suffered from; scope creep, changing priorities, poor technology choices...

The thing is, it is getting better (as currently seems to be the case with Nokia, a little too slowly!"), and as Jan Ole Suhr has shown, if you make a "good" app for Ovi, it sticks out *MUCH* further than if you make a *GREAT* app on iOS or Android. This is the situation currently, as most of the Symbian app's seem to be updates from older apps, so have not had nice GUIs or good UX added to them! i.e *HUGE* opportunity.

Create evangelists:
I think the reason everyone seems to want to get hold of Anssi Vanjoki, is that he provides great value for the media, as he seems willing to "tell the truth" (in that very Finnish direct manner), much more so than Nokia CEO's who seem to follow the corporate line to a much greater extent.
I think on every occasions in the last year or so I have seen or heard Anssi, he always says something that is supper "tweetable" (either a good phrase or a nice put down of a competitor).

Rebuild Trust:
This will take time, and Nokia will just have to prove themselves.
At least as an amateur/hobby developer, every-time Nokia has "abandoned" a platform they have announced a grace period and a migration strategy (the devs may not like the suggested strategy but at least they announced it).
I think the N97 was a classic example of "learning by failing". The N8 is getting a much softer launch, and Nokia seems to constantly saying "we want to get this right".
The Symbian ^3 Vs MeeGo debate will continue as long as both exist :)

Be more humble:
I can't believe you are asking a Finnish company to be more humble! ;)
But on a more serious note, Nokia needs to stop talking about the "big numbers" of Symbian handsets that have already shipped, and hence the potential, as most of those are *NEVER* used to do anything other than make voice calls & SMS! And so are of less than zero interest to developers.
It would be better for Nokia to highlight things like Nokia Money, the "Green" movement (power adaptors, less packaging, ...), the fact that the maturity of Symbian means it uses less power (== longer battery life)

There is no shortage of external advice given to Nokia, some good, some bad. Even though I don't work at Nokia anymore, I can assure you all of these things are known in the company.

It's not that nobody knows how to fix the situation in theory; lots of people do. But as is often the case with strategies, the challenge comes in execution. And being a big company, internal politics often plays too big a role.

Sim: very happy to see a comment from an ex-Nokia.

As you said, there is a lot of feedback. Clearly, this feedback has been ignored during the past 3 years, as shown by an offering that has been consistently lagging behind the competition.

There are ways to change bad management:
- provide well thought constructive feedback
- shareholder pressure
- vote with your wallet

Thankfully, all of these points are happening now, so there is still hope.

By reading this good post I started to think should Nokia, at some point, start considering about divesting its "Internet" business as a separate and independent company?

Handsets are becoming more and more commoditized, Nokia is probably a clear leader in supply chain management and production efficiency, and Nokia's handsets vary from low-end to high-end products. So should this traditional Nokia focus on this traditional "manufacturing" business? Maybe moving some functions to low-cost countries more aggressively?

By becoming independent from the device manufacturing and selling, the new company could focus on developing and commercializing Internet technologies and services for all OSs.

I know that these thoughts might be somewhat unrealistic but I cannot see that Nokia could, as such a "conglomerate", adapt to the innovation ongoing on the Internet and mobile spaces. As a separate entity the new company could have clear own Internet focus/strategy and adapt to market developments without the burden of the device business and OSs used in these devices.

I think the problem is even more complicated from a developers point of view, I wrote a piece about it here,

http://www.duketek.com/blog/2010/06/18/nokia-and-the-new-age-of-mobile-development/

it will be too long to post here but on the case of Humility,I would not necessarily call Nokia a proud company, have you talked to Apple?

On the case of developing countries, Chinese device manufacturers are beginning to invade these markets with cheap Android Phones and it will be only a matter of time before the market share their begins to slide.The phones of the future will be sold on features and may be less on names , at least in these nations.Android is a modern and capable smartphone OS that anyone can put on a device(no matter how crappy it is). There are already reports of sub $100 tablets, and phones to follow, until when will those find their ways to these developing nations?

The translated quote was the 3. most read article on Kauppalehti.fi today - congrats Ramine!! And good points, as always.

I couldn't agree more with sim - At least some of the management I listened to knew really well what was wrong. I mostly agreed with product and strategy slides. It's just that something went seriously wrong between the slides and the launched products. Not always, but way too often.

It's very easy and very hard, at the same time, to say how to fix this. Everybody can be a Nokia expert! The top-3 things in my mind are:

1. Developer / partner relations (as mentioned above) and short-sighted platform and community strategy. This is very hard to fix now that Nokia has continuously fucked up things for years.

Who wants to build something for Symbian3 or MeeGo phones at the moment? Where's my Google apps or top-notch Facebook client. Nokia needs to PAY companies to do it! Seriously.

2. All good things come from California (and in some cases rest of the U.S.). There hasn't been enough pitching and support in Silicon Valley for the companies to understand the value of Nokia's global reach. Nokia should offer better distribution deals, localization support etc. especially for the leading online brands, but also game developers.

I have also hard time understanding the company's site strategy. Since when has Bristol, UK, been the hub for digital music professionals? Or New England for social networking? Much of this relates also to the fact, that Finland is too small a country to hire professionals for these kind extensive needs for expertise. This will change soon though, unfortunately (as a Finn).

3. Nokia's working culture sucks. It needs to change. Many of the managers do not get personally involved with the products they create, they only get frustrated but still stay with the company (it's a really nice and relaxed place to work, and even the salary is good in Finnish terms at least). There's no openness and you are not expected to criticize things that suck. There is something wrong with the structure or incentives that leads to this. Then you get products like the N96, whoa.

I feel that the Nokia's organizational shuffles during the past two years have been too cosmetic, and planned to not scare investors, instead of making the company and its products actually better. They need a MASSIVE reorg. Top management change may be necessary to show they are serious.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the company, and was sad to leave it a year ago. It's also extremely important for Finland's IT/media/marketing ecosystem, even to the whole economy, so I can only hope for the best.

The negative spiral needs to be stopped, before it's too late. But to be pessimistically honest, don't hold your breath for anything to happen yet this year.

Duketek: thanks for the reply blog, I agree with you.

Juhani: yeah, maybe they know, but as you said it doesn't translate into actions. So either they're yes-men, or they're not the right people to get the job done.

From the public's perspective, they're not replying, they're not listening, they're not even acknowledging, so people can only remind them what they wish.

Thanks for giving platform for the one simple rant I have wanted to make for years.

I would like to add one really basic thing to Ramine's list: Nokia should pay suppliers on time. Those of us that have managed to turn Nokia into a customer over the years usually end up at the mercy of their crushing accounts payable "process", which as far as I can tell is designed to leave cash in their bank account and keep it out of suppliers' - which is fine if it is what was agreed. Payment delays destroy the ecosystem faster than anything else, kill the trust down the line. More cases than I can count on this list.

So, advice is just read the contracts and follow the rules, and/or change incentives in the accounts payable department. I am sure they are not bad people.

That said, I think most every company in Finland ready to give a second, third, fourth chance, just give us some hope!

Right. Let's start at the beginning.

Apple are in the land of fragmentation: http://thereallymobileproject.com/2010/04/iphone-os-4-welcome-to-fragmentation-land-apple/

Android! WOW! OK, maybe I am burning my bridges before I have even crossed them but from my reading Android suffers from truly mind blowing fragmentation, especially when compared to where Symbian (and let's not forget Symbian is NOT Nokia any more) is at now. For example please read this: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/06/developer-on-android-fragmentation-really-frustrating.html

As for your comments about the future operating systems that Nokia have planned to use on their phones. Well, I am shocked to see that no one here has read the very well publicised road map for Symbian. The current S60V5 is now more correctly called Symbian^1. That version is prevalent on a lot of current and soon to be realised Nokia handsets as well as ones from Samusung and Sony Ericsson. Western phone makers have decided to skip Symbian^2 but it has been rolled out in the Far East. See here: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11613_First_Symbian2_phones_ship_in_.php

The N8 and onwards will be using Symbian^3. Towards the end of next year Symbian^4 will arrive, Symbian^5 is also coming. But that does not mean more fragmentation as the now widely appreciated QT framework effectively means that coding for one allows coding for them all. Obviously developers may want to re-code and re-release to take advantage of developments in the hardware. Also please remember that Symbian is now properly open source, unlike Android is now and from reading this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/20/google_android_oem/ it looks like it is going the other way fast! So where exactly is Nokia being proprietary and if it is bad for Nokia then why on earth is it good for Apple?

But maybe you would like to hear from someone with the Symbian organisation: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11338_Ian_Hutton_on_the_Symbian_Foun.php

Meego. Is the follow on from Maemo. This is a another great open source bit of software that is really being considered for "mobile computers" (think Nokia's answer to the iPad or Kindle for example), also Intel see it as their entry in to things like on board OS's for cars. But given that it will also support the QT framework, just like Meego does now, then the cross over is there for any developers who want it.

Nokia needs to be buying start ups in my opinion about as much as Steve Jobs needs to be buying Microsoft with his own money.

The games, yes, Nokia missed a HUGE trick when they went and dumped separate graphics processors from most of their phones over the last few years. But the N8 has one. A very good one. "If you build it they will come". As far as I can see this has worked very well for Apple and despite your comment about "casual games" I seem to be seeing a lot of people raving about the graphics processor supported games on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. For example see point 3 here: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/The_Right_Tool_for_the_Right_Job-Seven_users_seven_smartphones.php With the reintroduction of separate graphics processors on the N8 and onwards, I feel that Nokia will be very capable of taking the fight to Apple in this respect and despite the withdrawal of N-Gage again, there are a LOT of big developers out there with previous and will be eagerly awaiting the release of the N8 to get stuck back into the "games on Nokia" market. After all if Nokia themselves can role out a game like Exclusion, available now, for free (http://www.ovigaming.com/reviews/item/Exclusion.php) then the future looks very bright indeed.

Yes, the Ovi Store was a right mess at the beginning now but stories like these:
http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/04/developer-offscreen-knocks-back-25-million-downloads-from-nokias-ovi-store.html
http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/04/numos-sms-preview-hits-1-million-ovi-store-downloads.html
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11313_1_million_downloads_of_Shazam_.php
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11371_4_million_downloads_from_Ovi_S.php
Show that is rocking along a great rate of knots! And will continue to grow better with each passing moment!

Anssi. Well no idea what was going on with the relation to Techcrunch, but check this out: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/06/help-me-anssi-wan-kanobi-youre-my-only-hope.html

So yes, Nokia got knocked back a bit, but they have the strongest chin and the hardest counter bunch in the business and the bell has rung for the next round! Nokia are coming back hard despite the fact that most people really do believe the mobile world begins and ends with Silicon Valley, because of course it is completely impossible for clever, intuitive, opportunistic mobile phone software and hardware developers to live and work anywhere else. There is my "A few ways Nokia will win again."

Just to be clear, I do not now, or have ever done, work for Nokia or anyone connected with them.

I.R.: All valid points. However, there is this sort of a "it'll be fine" complacency emanating from your comment that is dangerous.

It's important for everyone - of course, particularly people at Nokia - to understand that neither doom nor a successful rebound is guaranteed here. If you look at the history, it doesn't bode well; most companies who reach dominance in their specialty field will, at some point, falter and very few manage to regain that dominance. While still an undisputed #1 globally in market share, it is abundantly clear Nokia is faltering especially in smartphones.

Also, the chaotic beauty of the business world is that even if Nokia executed all this good advice perfectly, it doesn't guarantee a win. But doing the same thing again and again hoping for a different outcome is just stupid.

Having said that, Nokia did manage to transform itself from rubber boots to mobile phones. Hasn't it occurred to anyone that Nokia's next huge success story - which may or may not happen - may not be related to mobile phones at all?

The Devices division is responsible for developing and managing Nokia's mobile device portfolio, including the sourcing of components, headed by Kai Öistämö.[108] The division consists of the previous mainline Mobile Phones division with the separate subdivisions Multimedia (Nseries devices) and Enterprise Solutions (Eseries devices) as well as formerly centralized core devices R&D – called Technology Platforms.

This division provides the general public with mobile voice and data products across a wide range of mobile devices, including high-volume, consumer oriented mobile phones and devices, and more expensive multimedia and enterprise-class devices. The devices are based on GSM/EDGE, 3G/W-CDMA and CDMA cellular technologies. Nokia's Nseries Multimedia Computers extensively uses Symbian OS.

Investment Support

sim: Yes I totally understand, and maybe I should of prefaced my comment as a rebuttal. Obviously Apple are not just going to walk away from this market and so what ever Nokia do will have to work around this competitor at the top end and the likes of the Taiwanese firm HTC and Samsung from Korea in the upper and middle range as well as their more established competitors such as Blackberry.

The more I read the original article the more confused I get to be honest. Ramine Darabiha writes well enough but given that this is a site for start ups, which I thought thrive on the most up to date information, the article contains many points that seem very outdated to me and unconnected with Nokia's issues in the middle of June 2010, and it reads with increasing frequency as a list of their issues circa June 2008. I would be very interested to read Ramine Darabiha's comments on this, and especially if he thinks that Nokia are still having the same issues that blighted them two years ago.

IR: I'm happy to answer if you have specific questions. I think saying that my points are not up to date is very vague.

- Calling the iPhone market fragmented is quite a stretch. In comparison with Google and Nokia, it's a super stable and straightforward platform to support.

- Android Open Source & Compatibility Program Manager Dan Morrill is saying that “Android fragmentation” is nothing but meaningless fearmongering on the part of drama-queen pundits. http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-android-compatibility.html and http://gizmodo.com/5504594/googles-solution-to-android-fragmentation-break-it-apart . Basically wait for 2.2.

- I've read the Symbian roadmap. I just think it's bullshit. You posted a link to a Symbian2 phone in Japan. That's hardly a compelling offering to reconquer the Western market. Name me one modern phone except from N8 that uses Symbian 3. Name me one killer app on a Nokia phone.

- Regarding games, Nokia is a different platform to support. That costs money. There are too few gamers on Nokia (small market share for the capable phones) and the store is a nightmare to use. This translates in poor sales. Of course you will see simpler games ported to the machine, but I think it's very unrealistic to expect AAA games to be ported there.

I:R , Interesting follow but there are some missing points there.

Western phone makers and Symbian
Western phone makers ala Sony Ericisson, Motorola e.t.c and all the little chinesse companies are riding the Android Wave, and why shouldn't they? A full blown functional, well documented free smart phone OS that has cloud connectivity at its heart and hackable to the very bone of it. If you frequent on blogs like engadget.com, you notice that there is almost a new Android phone manufactured a day.Everyone else is busy I suppose.

Games
It is not good enough to have graphics processors on a phone, the fact that you have a fast graphics processors does not guarantee that developers will jump on.You need tools, have you checked the iOS SDK and tool environment? ,It is armed to the teeth with solid tools that allows for easy porting,debugging and code profiling. No tools , No games (This is one of the issues with Android at the moment by the way, thats why the games are still lacking).

Ovi Store
I don't have much to say about OVI store, it never worked well on N900.It wasnt even officially supported when I sold the phone.

Nokia got knocked back a bit? .I don't think so, I don't think they got knocked out, I think there is a new era of smart phones,one that seems like Apple is defining, Google is catching up and … well Nokia, .. we will see. These companies are chasing each other, adding features to their OS at break neck speed, preaching to developers left and right (Developer mind share is very important, people flock to the selling platform where they can make money, even the Android store is playing serious catch to the Gold mine called the AppStore ). Integrating services e.t.c. There is a HUGE change in this business.The ball is in Nokia's court. There name is big and respected , they just need to re-adjust and get back in the game differently.Apple and Google are relatively new kids on the block, but they are stubborn ones trying to redefine the rules of the game, I dare say that they are moving ahead.

Ramin:

1)is your livelihood, or lack thereof, directly or indirectly connected to the issues you have raised.
2)What part of Nokia is proprietary and why is it bad?
3)Why is proprietary bad for Nokia and not bad for Apple?
4)If Android is not fragmented then why wait until 2.2?
5)If we wait for Android 2.2 do we then ignore every other version and pray like crazy that everyone will, when possible, update? What do we do about all those people who don't/can't/will not update?
6)What is it about the Symbian road map that enrages you so?
7)Why does there have to be a "killer app"? Is that all people buy phones for now?
8)Ovi Maps. Nokia's numbers for this are incredible! What is wrong with it?

Oh and the store just got an update: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11708_Ovi_Store_gets_a_refresh_and_n.php

Also, as you would have seen from the roadmap, Symbian^3 is new, very new. At the moment it looks like the one of first phones loaded with this new iteration will be the Nokia N8, which in itself is the first in a new family line of phones. But anyone can use it, Symbian that is. It is not owned by Nokia anymore. It is it's own independent software foundation. As a fold in and follow up to the question of a "killer app" surely having Symbian^2 rolled out already in Japan just widens the developer field anyway? If, as it seems, I am being a terminal wanker in not grasping the concept of a "killer app" then surely it would stand to reason that Symbian would want as many people around the world developing for them, and then this in turn feeds Nokia's uptake. If this is indeed of primary importance.

My comment about the issues you talked about in the original article being outdated goes to the fact that despite the blatant fact that I do not work in the mobile industry, they are the same issues that people were raising in the months and years gone by. They have, from what I have read, been dealt with now. The issue of the "evangelist" is one I feel that will, thankfully, never be addressed. Mainly because I dislike being spoon fed easily digested PR/blog friendly titbits of information about a new product by some gushing, over hyped salesman. Nokia let their products do the talking. And rightly so.

duketek: HTC are neither tiny nor Chinese. Their Android phones vastly out number any other and they are Taiwanese. And Samsung are massive and Korean!

If Android is so "hackable" and so "free" then what is Symbain? What is Meego? And as for developing, well, even I can see that Qt has really caught peoples imagination, and a lot of those are also, or are now former Android developers.

Yes, Nokia took a bit of a rocking. No one can deny that. Just look at their bottom line. And when you consider that now we have Symbian, iOS, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Bada and Meego all in the mix, the mobile market is bound to need a little time to readjust itself!

I.R. and others, this is something I wrote about earlier here:

http://en.xihalife.com/b/setok/whining-kris/nokia-please-kill-symbian/

I've seen and played around with the N8 and I'm sorry to say that it is not going to change anything. The fact of the matter is that nobody cares about Symbian anymore. The Symbian Foundation doesn't matter because nobody wants to push forwards with that. Even the latest edition seems klunky and slow on an n8. Sure, the specs are nice on paper, but the framerate is still horrible on an ultra high-end piece of hardware!

Developers wanted to do Maemo stuff for years. The platform is instantly appealing to them, but Nokia did absolutely nothing with it. Even now they are still fumbling along with Symbian, instead of just saying, "Right, guys, Maemo is where we're at. This is the cool OS and libs we are offering you, now create something amazing". They could have done that at any point in the last 5 years of Maemo.

With a combination of Symbian, and Maemo and then QT Maemo and then MeeGo, nobody wants to develop for them. The problems with the Ovi Store are not helping. The phones on offer are a mess and there is no clear strategy for what the platform will be. And, yes, the tools are not great.

You say QT has caught people's imagination. Where? I'm not seeing it, and I'm a half a kilometre away from Nokia Ruoholahti. But I keep hearing about cool stuff for Android and iOS, even in Finland. Even within the company there's a real sense of disillusionment and lack of vision or innovation. I actually find it worrying that someone still thinks they do not have a problem!

Don't get me wrong. This is not a situation where they cannot win. They can, if they play their cards right and get the developers in on the game, and present a clear mobile strategy with appealing products (and that means innovation). But they should stop faffing about and concentrate. Plus I also think switching to Android would a) not solve anything (the problems are elsewhere) b) be a losing strategy.

that is so amazing dude..

Wow so many things to do!!!

1. Focus on LTE and MIMO

2. Design and UI must be simple

3. Good recording circuit

We have advanced generation algorithm

We can help

www.ago-inc.com

Total market size is > 6B end users

Killer App: Biometric Identification