Nokia-sjef varsler Symbians død

Plattformen brenner, og vi må hoppe av nå, heter det i et internt notat.

Nokias toppsjef Stephen Elop gjør det klart at døden venter selskapet med mindre de greier å forlate Symbian.

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Harald BrombachNyhetsleder

Eirik Rossen

9. feb. 2011 - 15:04

I forkant av en analytikerkonferanse fredag, og av mobilbransjens globale samling i Barcelona neste uke Mobile World Congress) har Nokia-sjef Stephen Elop distribuert et notat til sine undersåtter med et klart varsel om at store endringer er på gang.

Notatet er gjengitt i sin helhet av Engadget.com. I en oppdatering av artikkelen forteller de at flere kilder bekrefter at notatet er ekte. I sin omtale, bekrefter BBC at de også har fått uavhengige kilder til å bekrefte at notatet er ekte.

Notatet starter med å fortelle om en mann på en oljeplattform i Nordsjøen, som plutselig opplever å stå i et flammehav på kanten av riggen. Han har to valg: Hoppe i havet for å redde livet, eller dø i flammene. Han velger å hoppe i havet. Han overlever, og han gjør om på livet sitt.

Nokias toppsjef Stephen Elop gjør det klart at døden venter selskapet med mindre de greier å forlate Symbian.

– Også vi står på en «brennende plattform», og vi må finne ut hvordan vi skal endre vår atferd, skriver Elop.

Han skriver at han de siste månedene – han kom til Nokia fra Microsoft i september i fjor – har snakket med aksjonærer, operatører, utviklere, leverandører og Nokia-ansatte, og at hensikten med notatet er å bekjenne hva han har kommet fram til.

– Jeg har lært at vi står på en brennende plattform. Og at vi har mer enn én eksplosjon, vi har en rekke kilder til brennende hete som holder liv i flammehavet rundt oss.

Elop peker på hvordan Apple økte sin andel i den øvre delen av markedet for smarttelefoner fra 25 prosent i 2008 til 61 prosent i 2010. Han peker på hvordan Google er blitt en «tyngdekraft» som trekker til seg utviklere, tjenestetilbydere og maskinvareleverandører, som startet med avanserte mobiler og som nå arbeider seg nedover mot telefoner priset under hundre euro (800 kroner). Han peker på hvordan MediaTek i 2008 distribuerte referansekonstruksjoner for brikkesett til mobiltelefoner, med den følgen at produsenter i Shenzhen i Kina fornyer og produserer rimelige mobiler i en «utrolig takt» – og tar markedsandeler fra Nokia.

– Mens konkurrentene satte fyr på markedsandelen vår, hva skjedde i Nokia? Vi kom på etterskudd. Vi overså de store trendene. Vi kastet bort tid. Da det skjedde, trodde vi at vi tok de riktige avgjørelsene. Nå er vi etterpåkloke, og vi skjønner at vi ligger mange år på etterskudd.

Elop kritiserer MeeGo-satsingen:

– Vi trodde MeeGo ville vinne fram. Men med den farten vi holder nå, kommer det kanskje bare ett MeeGo-produkt innen utgangen av 2011.

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Elop kritiserer Symbian.

– [Symbian] har vist seg å være ikke-konkurransedyktig i ledende markeder som Nord-Amerika. Symbian viser seg videre å være et stadig vanskeligere utgangspunkt for å tilfredsstille stadig skjerpede forbrukerkrav. Det gjør det tregt for oss å utvikle nye produkter, og det gjør det vanskelig for oss å forholde oss til nye maskinvareplattformer.

Han siterer en ikke-navngitt Nokia-ansatt, som fortalte ham at kineserne bruker like lang tid på å framstille en ny mobiltelefon «som vi bruker på å finpusse en Powerpoint-presentasjon».

Den nye strategien skal legges fram fredag 11. februar.

– Det vil kreve en enorm anstrengelse å omdanne vårt selskap. Men jeg tror vi sammen kan møte utfordringene vi står overfor. Sammen kan vi velge å definere vår framtid. Den brennende plattformen som vår mann befant seg på, fikk ham til å endre atferd og ta et modig skritt mot en usikker framtid. Det mulig for ham å fortelle sin historie. Nå har vi en stor anledning til å gjøre det samme, avslutter Elop.

I vår dekning av Nokia den siste uken, har digi.no publisert to artikler som peker på store endringer i selskapets strategi førstkommende fredag. Den ene går ut på omfattende endringer i selskapets ledelse. Den andre dreier seg om at Nokia tenker på å inngå en allianse med Microsoft og framstille mobiltelefoner med Windows Phone.

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[23.07.2014] Vil ikke prate om Nokia
[24.01.2014] Til forsvar for Stephen Elop
[20.06.2013] – Nokia takket nei til Microsoft
[25.06.2012] Hvorfor dreper de Nokia?
[26.04.2012] Flengende kritikk av Nokia-sjefen
[22.12.2011] Over og ut for Symbian
[08.06.2011] – MeeGo var Nokias samlede håp
[27.05.2011] Gir Symbian fem nye år
[18.04.2011] Intel åpner forskningssenter i Finland
[07.04.2011] Symbian ikke lenger åpen kildekode
[14.03.2011] – Windows Phone-satsingen er risikabel
[08.03.2011] Garanterer Qt videre liv
[10.02.2011] Google-uttalelse forteller i grunnen alt
[10.02.2011] Bekrefter samtaler Nokia-Microsoft
[07.02.2011] Hodene ruller i Nokia
[03.02.2011] Rykte om at Nokia tenker Windows

Elops notat strider ikke mot noe i disse to artiklene.

Analytiker Ben Wood i CCS Insight sier til BBC at Elops notat viser at han har en god forståelse av hvor dypt problemene stikker for Nokia. Wood legger til at Nokia er i enda dårligere forfatning enn Elop hadde trodd da han tok på seg topplederstillingen, og at arbeidet som må til for å få Nokia tilbake på sporet ikke må undervurderes.

Her er Elops notat gjengitt i sin helhet:

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.

Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

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