Hugues J. De La Vergne, from Gartner, has come out with a brief report, suggesting what Nokia can do in North America. On one side, he’s right. On the other side, he’s just so wrong. On the whole, the analysis is not new, but at least a year behind everyone else.
Link: Nokia Can Avert Disaster in North American Mobile Phone Market.
Nokia is fast losing ground in this market. To turn things round, it must offer clamshell designs, bolster its CDMA range, expand its midrange and high-end portfolios, and meet carriers’ demands for customized phones.
Where he’s right: Yes, Nokia can do well playing by the historical
rules of the North American market. Indeed, the same rules can be
followed in the rest of the world to – do exactly what operators want,
deliver what users think they want today.
Where he’s wrong: This recipe is formulaic and reactionary. It only
addresses the market today and sets up for disaster any company who
follows this recipe. The more control we allow the operators to have,
the more they will think they have, the more they will dictate the
whole ecosystem. That’s bad for innovation, for growth, and for
everyone who is not an operator. And, yes, I have my own view of how
Nokia can kick some serious butt in the US, but won’t talk about it
here just yet.
Credit where due: Hugues is quite right in that the other half of the
argument is simply Nokia doesn’t seem to have a broad enough offering
in CDMA and GSM in North America in general. I think they are offering North America
phones designed (separately) for the European and Asia market. Also,
they just need to put out more phones in CDMA – though, in that market,
that means designing phones for operators.
Well, it’s not all that bad to design phones for specific operators. And I think it would be cool for Nokia to do that. But, I feel that the operators and Nokia are trying to do a fusion of different opposing product creation techniques instead of choosing one (let Nokia design it) or the other (let the operator design it) for specific phones.
Oh, and get off this thing of clamshells. That’s so 2004! To suggest Nokia make clamshells at this point in time is well over a year past due.
I think what most operators (and sometimes phone makers) are forgetting are the end-users.
You said: “The more control we allow the operators to have, the more they will think they have, the more they will dictate the whole ecosystem. That’s bad for innovation, for growth, and for everyone who is not an operator”.
Innocent question: How do operators stifle innovation? I know of very innovative work going on through them where companies like Nokia are being encouraged to be more innovative, not less…
i also know of some cool things some operators are doing. like any large company, some parts are good, some parts are bad.
but, having been in countless meetings with operators, i’ve seen how they desire to charge for everything, lock-in the consumer, and stifle new things that don’t fit their biz model are killing their innovation in their markets. and with handset vendors, they make huge lists of specifications for things to support their services, forcing the manufacturer to participate in these dastardly activites.
i know the operators mean well and, rightfully, need to protect and grow their business. but, in this case, their good intentions are not just killing their users, but they are slowly strangling their business.
operators need to reassess their role in the ecosystem. i think they can still make a boat-load of money with a completely different biz model. they only ‘just’ have to change an attitude that has been ingrained since the days of alex bell.
and another thought, i think the operators act as if there was scarcity. and if there isn’t scarcity, they make it scarce.
nope. there is abundance, competition, and someone will blow them out of the water with a new biz model that they can do nothing about (i get the feeling the mvno craze might be one).
they need to take the lead or they will realize all their worst fears of becoming irrelevant.
Yes, that is familiar. There is innovation driven by operators where it directly benefits their business model, but as you point out many interesting things that don’t, for example to do with communicating via bluetooth as with Nokia ‘Sensor’. In the end though, you’re right, they are strongly thinking about the business benefit of anything.
But many of these innovations we’re talking about have an indirect benefit on business goals if not a direct one. To what extent is it possible to have a conversation with the marketing departments of operators about those? How clearly can they be presented to them? Because in the absence of that operators will stick to what they know as ways of making money.
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