> Remember Nokia. They produced mobile phones with excellent quality, extreme ruggedness, good battery life, and good voice quality. Their manufacturing was highly automated and their costs were low. They focused on their core business. Recently, their CEO said "We did everything right, and we lost anyway".
I don't agree that not developing a side-business is what cost Nokia their throne.
Very simply put, it was because they rested on their laurels. A Nokia executive told me the original iPhone is going to fail and used the Nokia N95 spec sheet as the only argument. It was the most impressive smartphone of the time but he completely failed to look ahead, as Nokia had a huge market share, large R&D budget, their own factories and no real competition.
Of course the new platforms crushed Nokia while they had several half-hearted attempts to follow them. They were completely setup to be crushed by any disrupter with money and a vision.
One more reason because of which Nokia failed, I think, is because they had a platform which was somewhat successful. Symbian. They stuck with it too long rather than jumping the Android ship. If they had embraced Android whole heartedly, I think they could have competed with Samsung for the Android supremacy. Their hardware was good and they had loyal customers, at least in India.
I don't agree that not developing a side-business is what cost Nokia their throne.
Very simply put, it was because they rested on their laurels. A Nokia executive told me the original iPhone is going to fail and used the Nokia N95 spec sheet as the only argument. It was the most impressive smartphone of the time but he completely failed to look ahead, as Nokia had a huge market share, large R&D budget, their own factories and no real competition.
Of course the new platforms crushed Nokia while they had several half-hearted attempts to follow them. They were completely setup to be crushed by any disrupter with money and a vision.