Stephen Elop's memo to Nokia employees

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.

Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

Source: engadget.com

If you can't build something, just buy it!

Long ago, when cell phones were still phones, and we used to cry Yahoo! for our searches, there was an ad that said loud, "We are about Human technology". It was a predictor for a camera, a music phone and a GPS device that we call "phone" today. This was a company that no one had heard of, but took the market by storm. It was the buzz of the day that they created a whole new division to build phones for celebrities and came with a personal concierge service. All was well.

But, time is a ruler as much as a healer, today this company is still large and sells mobile phones. The only point is they don't know to whom they sell it to.
If you are wondering what we are talking about, this company is called Nokia.

Today (Feb 12 2011), Nokia, and "world's most sympathized for what it used to be" Microsoft announced an exclusive deal for Windows Phone 7 OS and Nokia phones. The market greeted this deal with skepticism, reflected by the fall in their respective stock prices. But, what matters most here is execution. Both Microsoft and Nokia are capable of doing this. They have done this before, and been envied and loathed for executing their plans so perfectly. But, they now have to do it again after this deal. Executing and porting this new platform is a definite challenge for Nokia's deep software department (which has become like a French guy ordering in an Italian restaurant nowadays). The deep entrenched experience in Symbian would have to be discarded to pick up a new look of Windows Phone 7. For Microsoft, it would be a task to conform to Nokia's requirements and get used to work in teams. From any standpoint, it is a sweeter deal for Microsoft, but Nokia for the hard work they are known for should do it.

Perhaps, Nokia needs to go back to the first paragraph of its chapter so far and take a new trip...if they do so, All will be well.

Good luck to Nokia & Microsoft. Nice to have another option besides Android...and yeah iPhone. :p

Roger Federer, the man with 15 slams in his showcase is truly an amazing character from the perspective of sport. But to say the truth, after the Wimbledon this year, I think there is a worthy contender in form of Andy Roddick.

When Roddick leapt into international fame about 6 years ago, I would say, he looked mostly like a rebel. He sometimes sounded too loud, and the media was always saying things about him which he was not even close...but if time being taken for an answer, I guess I was grossly mistaken.

24 hours ago, Roddick bowled over me, like he did to millions to those all over the world.

He was fresh, fast, stately and sensational when he played the best match he had played so far. I truly believe, he has greater heights to scale, and he will. He lost, but in his losing he ultimately won something even greater...sportsmanship.

Yes, you are a sportsman Andy, be proud of it.

As for Federer, do you need hear more about the great man?

There was once a sparrow...

Birds have always been a source of inspiration for humans. We look up to the sky more often to see them than airplanes. A bird inspires us in many ways,
1. Seeing a bird fly, gives the ultimate sense of freedom
2. Seeing it feed the chicks makes us remember our family after a hard day’s work
3. Hearing bird song makes us feel tranquil & safe
4. Last, a pair of birds always makes one remember love.
The list is endless and goes on…

I still remember the days when I was a kid, we had a neighbor who works with the Food Corporation of India (FCI). He works as a supervisor for a local granary and like any government employee he has his own list of worries. His list used to be the unaccountable babus, the bad monsoons, the grain thefts by local goons, the big fat rats & the ever breeding sparrows. Days rolled by, I grew up, went places and now out of my hometown.During a recent trip back there, I had a chance to catch up with him after a long time. I found that his list has actually shortened, which actually got me worried, not excited. The list of babus & rats remains the same, but the sparrows in it have vanished!

That piece of news made me sit and think. My mother used to feed the sparrows before we had our breakfast then; now, she no longer does it. I see the smoggy skylines of our cities in the morning; not the birds heading for their day out. What ever has happened to the sparrows?

The small, cute, naïve bird that had so much been a part of my life was gone, and worse, I did not even realize it. What followed then was a set of frantic steps. I tried to search for a sparrow in the best way we could, just Google “Sparrow” and I got more than 17 million results. Still, I had not seen a sparrow.

I pride myself in that I do not miss capturing many moments, having my ever faithful Sony-DSC-H2. Yet, in all my collection of over 13GB of pictures, there was only one sparrow. It was taken more than 20 months ago! So, what shall I put, Sparrow last spotted: Mar 2007?

I contemplated more on what ever had happened to them, and found only more questions than answers.
1. Sparrows are gone by the time cell phone towers started to creep, does it have anything to do with increased electromagnetic radiation?
2. Sparrows are gone after apartments started to sprout. Did we just uproot them in our desires to reach new limits in the sky?
3. Sparrows are gone after unleaded petrol came in (because it contains exhausts that kill small insects that sparrows feed on), did we kill the little sparrow in making our vehicles greener?

Many more questions like this remain unanswered.

But, I also worry about what we can do. Of course, we can’t do anything unless we have answers to the many questions that dazzle us in this context. I believe that someone would realize what has happened, and what we can do before it is too late.

I still wake up every morning hoping to hear the excited chirps of the House Sparrow, but all I get to hear is the loud honk of my neighbor back from his night shift.

Oddity Reframed...

Everything in the world seems to be going odd nowadays...
Stating a few things:
Beggars in MG Road signal dont pay income tax...
Telemarketing calls come on Sunday...
There are theatres that still release T.Rajendar films...
and so on...
But, take a look at these in another way:

The beggars of MG Road are mostly migrants, who came into Bangalore hoping to do well, and they are doing well!

We go shopping on sunday...so, the telemarketeers keep their shops open!

The most odd fact is that, TR has said that his last film would be a super duper hit...all theatres owners keep thinking that "this is it" when they release each and every new film of his.

So, this is the way the world is...the more odd things become, the odder is the fact.
As soon as we wake up in the morning, we always wonder, Has it come so soon? But the fact is, it has come, and we are either early/late depending on the state we wake up!

The oddest of all facts is, (in my perception atleast)
This day (Sunday, 27 May 2007 CE, 2.07AM IST), when the world sleeps,
There is this guy in Bangalore, who stays awake to put odd posts in his blog!

Enjoy oddity,
For, oddity is what makes life even... Even better to live

First Post...

"Hello World"..Never thought this would be the most appropriate way to start my blog...
But, cant think of a more better way for it...

This idea is not new, and I have indeed come across it quite some blogs earlier...nevertheless this a nice way to start at!