If you owned a mobile phone back in the last 90s or early 00s, then chance are you had a Nokia 3210, 5110, 6110, 6310, or similar. Nokia were the dominant force in the market in those days.
Not so now. Its market share was recently estimated at 23%.
Why?
IMHO, Nokia believed that they had reached the point where they could dictate to the market. Consumers would follow wherever they lead. The first chink I saw in their armour was the introduction of the Communicator series with the GEOS and then Symbian OS. To me, this would the first sign that consumers would not automatically follow.
Then Apple came out with iPhone and turned the market on its head. Google released Android and there were two horses in the race. Symbian just could not compete.
So what did Nokia do? They dropped Symbian (good decision) and got into bed with Microsoft (not so good). So now we have a partnership between a company that makes phones that nobody wants and a company that has a mobile OS that nobody wants!!
Nothing good can come of this. But don’t take my word for this. Let’s take a look at the Nokia share price to see what the “wisdom of crowds” tells us.
In February the share price hit $11.75 just before a sharp decline as the Nokia/Microsoft alliance was announced. In August the price hit a low of $4.82. It has recovered a little and now stands at $7.18.
A few days ago Nokia released its first Smartphones using the Windows OS. I guess we will have to wait a little while to see response of the consumers and investors. But I am not optimistic.