Although we all knew that Nokia was in serious problems with its response to the ever powerful smartphone onslaught, (see my earlier post The game has changed reporting on more smartphones than PCs being sold in Q4 2010) I didn’t expect them to experience a Ratner Moment as well. A 1200 word email (you can read it in full on the FT site) from CEO Stephen Elop to Nokia’s staff has been leaked (see FT Nokia likened to ‘burning platform') in which he said that Nokia were ‘years behind’ its rivals Apple and Google in smartphones and losing marketshare to cheap Chinese manufacturers at the lower end.
“We have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us. While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time.Indeed, we poured gasoline on our own burning platform”. The decision now is akin to a man torn between burning alive or drowning in icy waters.
All this comes just days ahead of a planned big announcement on Friday about Nokia’s strategic direction. As the status quo is written off as an option by Elop, one suspects that its marriage to the Symbian OS is about to end. There are also rumours that Nokia has abandoned MeeGo. So Android or Microsoft? ‘Rock or Hard Place’ come to mind. But if I was Elop I’d go with Microsoft. Android just guarantees a ‘me-too’ commodity existence. If he can get a special partner status with Microsoft – and fortunately they both need each other rather badly – he might have some chance.