红场阅兵总动员
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 00. 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.
