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Nokia crisis as smartphone rivals surge ahead
Business digest: New CEO warns that the Finnish manufactuer is on a ‘burning platform’
The world's biggest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia, has been left "standing on a burning platform" as its innovative competitors develop better products that could undermine the Finnish company's position.
The memo from the company's new CEO, Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive, warns that Nokia not only faces competition at the top of the market from smartphone developers like Apple and HTC, but is also being challenged by low-cost Chinese manufacturers at the cheaper end.
The note, which was first leaked to technology website Engadget, states: "The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience." It also points out that Google's operating system, Android, was only launched two years ago and has already overtaken Nokia's Symbian OS in market share.
Nokia's market share of the mobile market has fallen 10 per cent to 28 per cent in the last year and the last three quarters results have seen falling profits.
Read a full report at the BBC. ·
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This must be very worrying for true Finns and the EU as a whole. Perhaps the problem here is that, being part of the EU, and regulated with bureaucratic burdens generated by business-hostile and tax-hungry Eurocrats, their business has become slowly sclerotic and uncompetitive. They fall into line as lobby-fodder for the politicians in return for what they hope is a sweetheart deal with the powers that be to get protected markets and other favours. Of course what happens is that faster and more innovative and less regulated competitors start to overtake. Shame. Perhaps the new EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE), which passed its current legislative stage in the parliament in Brussels last week will prove to be the weight of regulatory burden which tips the platform over. Maybe not, but as an insider on these things I know that is hurting not helping.