How Nokia Failed due to lack of Far Seeing

Nokia is Finnish multinational telecommunication, information technology, and consumer electronics company, founded in 1865. In less than a decade, Nokia emerged from Finland to lead the mobile phone revolution. It rapidly grew to have one of the most recognizable and valuable brands in the world. At its height, Nokia commanded a global market share in mobile phones of over 40 percent. While its journey to the top was swift, its decline was equally so, culminating in the sale of its mobile phone business to Microsoft in 2013.

In this era of technological advancement, rapid market change, and growing complexity, analyzing the story of Nokia provides salutary lessons for any company wanting to either forge or maintain a leading position in their industry.

Why Nokia Failed in Market 

Mainly businesses fall because they refuse to follow the market rules. They do not change their market policy. Nokia was too late to enter the smartphone market. They refused to change its hardware design and thought it could catch up with the iPhone's superiority. That was the beginning of the end. Nokia did not embrace the windows phone. Even though windows failed, Nokia failed miserably. The brand failed to realize that in the era of high technology, any company that falls behind, Fail.

Nokia launched its Symbian 60 series in the year 2002 which did well until 2008. Apple and Andriod took over quickly. Symbian OS was lax in many areas. It did not have enough applications and Nokia failed at improving its UI. And then, Nokia made the biggest blunder by trusting Windows.

If you look at the numbers in 2009 before Nokia turned into a corporate failure it had a clear market leadership at 38.6%. It all changed as 2014 ended. Samsung was cashing in on the lost market by raising its market share from a mere 3.3% to a whopping 23 percent. The rest, as they say, is history.

Apple and Google make devices powerful. They advertise their products with simple concepts like 

" Desktop- class architecture". They create stuff that can handle all your computer work on a phone from HD videos to 3D games, everything. This is what Nokia failed. Even today, they do not realize what it means to have a smartphone. It's a mini-computer in our pocket.

What can we learn from Nokia

Nokia’s decline in mobile phones cannot be explained by a single, simple answer: Management decisions, dysfunctional organizational structures, growing bureaucracy and deep internal rivalries all played a part in preventing Nokia from recognizing the shift from product-based competition to one based on platforms. Nokia’s mobile phone story exemplifies a common trait we see in mature, successful companies: Success breeds conservatism and hubris which, overtime results in a decline of the strategy processes leading to poor strategic decisions. Where once companies embraced new ideas and experimentation to spur growth, with success they become risk-averse and less innovative. Such considerations will be crucial for companies that want to grow and avoid one of the biggest disruptive threats to their future – their own success.