 | |
| Author | David J. Cord |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Anders Carpelan |
| Country | Finland |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Company profile |
| Publisher | Schildts & Söderströms |
Publication date | April 2014 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 305 |
| ISBN | 978-951-52-3320-2 |
The Decline and Fall of Nokia is a company profile book detailing the collapse of the mobile phone company Nokia. The author is David J. Cord, an American expatriate living in Finland. [1]
The book covers the history of the company Nokia from 2006 to 2013, during the upheaval in the mobile device industry caused by newcomers Apple, Google and low-cost competitors. To a lesser extent it also covers Nokia Solutions and Networks, then a joint venture called Nokia Siemens Networks, during the same period. [2]
The main focus of the book is Nokia's decline in the mobile device industry, which culminated in the sale of the handset division to Microsoft. According to the book major reasons for Nokia's decline include a pervasive bureaucracy leading to an inability to act, destructive internal competition and the failure to realize the importance of lifestyle products like the iPhone. Other factors include the company's weakness in North America and the botched attempt to move out of hardware into services with Ovi (Nokia). The book refutes the idea that Nokia was unable to innovate, saying that incompetent middle management hampered attempts to bring innovations to market. [3]
Cord spreads the blame for Nokia's fall onto former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, and the company's faulty organisational structure. [1] According to the book, the reason Nokia declined to switch to Android was because Samsung was much stronger and executives were afraid to compete against them in that ecosystem. [4]
The author discusses a theory that skewed decision making during the tenure as CEO of Stephen Elop was due to his conscious desire to do deals specially favorable to his former employer of Microsoft; Cord admits that Elop’s actions appear suspicious, but maintains that they were all logical at the time in the eyes of subordinate Nokia executives who agreed with the decisions [4]
After the completion of the author’s first book in 2012, Mohamed 2.0: Disruption Manifesto , his Finnish publisher asked him to write a book about Nokia. Cord initially declined, because he was working on a novel and thought the time wasn’t right to write about the company. When his novel was completed he began work on The Decline and Fall of Nokia. [1]
The book generated considerable attention from the press as it claims Sun Microsystems' co-founder Scott McNealy had been offered the job of Nokia CEO in 2010 but declined. The board of directors next looked to promote long-time Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki, but were stymied by major American investors, including Morgan Stanley, who demanded an outsider be chosen. The board’s third choice, according to the book, was Stephen Elop of Microsoft. [5] Scott McNealy issued a statement, doubting that he was the "dream candidate" to succeed Kallasvuo and that he was never offered the job. [6]
The process of choosing the CEO in 2010 had previously been wrapped in secrecy, so there was much speculation about Cord’s sources of information. One publication wondered if long-time chairman of the board Jorma Ollila had been the leak. [7]
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, in the greater Helsinki metropolitan area, but the company's actual roots are in the Tampere region of Pirkanmaa. In 2020, Nokia employed approximately 92,000 people across over 100 countries, did business in more than 130 countries, and reported annual revenues of around €23 billion. Nokia is a public limited company listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. It was the world's 415th-largest company measured by 2016 revenues, according to the Fortune Global 500, having peaked at 85th place in 2009. It is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.
Scott McNealy is an American businessman. He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, while still at Sun, McNealy founded Curriki, a free online education service. In 2011, he co-founded Wayin, a social intelligence and visualization company based in Denver. McNealy stepped down from his position as CEO of Wayin in 2016.
Jorma Jaakko Ollila is a Finnish businessman who was chairman of Royal Dutch Shell from 1 June 2006 to May 2015, and at Nokia Corporation chairman from 1999 to 2012 and CEO from 1992 to 2006. He has been a director of Otava Books and Magazines Group Ltd. since 1996 and UPM-Kymmene since 1997, and an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, a New York–based boutique investment bank founded by Joseph R. Perella and Peter Weinberg in 2006.
The Nokia tune is a phrase from a composition for solo guitar, Gran Vals, composed in 1902 by the Spanish classical guitarist and composer Francisco Tárrega. It has been associated with Finnish corporation Nokia since the 1990s, becoming the first identifiable musical ringtone on a mobile phone; Nokia selected an excerpt to be used as its default ringtone.
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo chaired the committee for World Design Capital Helsinki 2012, and is the former chairman, chief executive officer and president of Nokia, as well as a former board member of Nokia Siemens Networks.
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Marko Ahtisaari is a Finnish technology entrepreneur and musician. Ahtisaari has been CEO and co-founder of two technology companies: Dopplr and Sync Project. After the acquisition of Dopplr, Ahtisaari was executive vice president of Design at Nokia and later a Director's Fellow at the MIT Media Lab. He is a composer, bassist and singer in the band Construction.
Risto Kalevi Siilasmaa is a Finnish businessperson and the chairman, founder and former CEO of F-Secure Corporation, an anti-virus and computer security software company based in Helsinki, Finland. He is also the biggest shareholder of F-Secure, owning around 40% of the company. He was chairman of Nokia from 2012 to 2020.
Stephen Elop is a Canadian businessman who most recently worked at Australian telecom company Telstra from April 2016. In the past he had worked for Nokia as its first non-Finnish CEO and later as Executive Vice President, Devices & Services, as well as the head of the Microsoft Business Division, as the COO of Juniper Networks, as the president of worldwide field operations at Adobe Systems, in several senior positions in Macromedia and as the CIO at Boston Chicken.
Rajeev Suri is an Indian born Singaporean business executive. He has been the CEO of Inmarsat since February 2021. Earlier, Suri was the CEO of Nokia. Before being appointed to this position in May 2014, he was the CEO of Nokia Solutions and Networks. Prior to that, he held various positions within Nokia from 1995. Suri became the CEO of Nokia when the sale of Nokia's phone division to Microsoft Mobile was completed. He replaced Stephen Elop.
Microsoft Lumia is a discontinued line of mobile devices that was originally designed and marketed by Nokia and later by Microsoft Mobile. Introduced in November 2011, the line was the result of a long-term partnership between Nokia and Microsoft—as such, Lumia smartphones run on Microsoft software, the Windows Phone operating system; and later the newer Windows 10 Mobile. The Lumia name is derived from the partitive plural form of the Finnish word lumi, meaning "snow".
The Nokia Asha platform is a mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for low-end borderline smartphones, based on software from Smarterphone which was acquired by Nokia. The platform inherits UI similarities mostly from MeeGo "Harmattan", and replaces Series 40 on Nokia's low-end devices. The user interface design team was headed by Peter Skillman, who had worked previously on webOS and the design of MeeGo for the Nokia N9.
Terry Myerson is an American venture partner at Madrona Venture Group and an operating executive at The Carlyle Group. Myerson was previously an Executive Vice President at Microsoft, and head of its Windows and Devices Group.
Eliademy [əlɪaˈdəmi] was a free online classroom that allowed educators and students to create, share and manage online courses with real-time discussions and task management. Eliademy was based on Moodle, Bootstrap and other open source technologies. Eliademy was unveiled to public in February 2013 by CBTec. Eliademy was available in 32 languages.
The Nokia X was a mid-tier smartphone announced as part of the Nokia X family in February 2014, running on the Nokia X platform. The device shipped on the same day as the unveiling, with Nokia targeting the product for emerging markets, and was sold and maintained by Microsoft Mobile. On 17 July 2014, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue the line.
The Nokia X family was a range of budget smartphones that was produced and marketed by Microsoft Mobile, originally introduced in February 2014 by Nokia. The smartphones run on the Nokia X platform, a Linux-based operating system which was a fork of Android. Nokia X is also known generally as the Nokia Normandy. It is regarded as Nokia's first Android device during the company's Microsoft partnership and was in the process of selling its mobile phone business to Microsoft, which eventually happened two months later.
Microsoft Mobile Oy was a subsidiary of Microsoft involved in the development and manufacturing of mobile phones. Based in Espoo, Finland, it was established in 2014 following the acquisition of Nokia's Devices and Services division by Microsoft in a deal valued at €5.4 billion, which was completed in April 2014. Nokia's then-CEO, Stephen Elop, joined Microsoft as president of its Devices division following the acquisition, and the acquisition was part of Steve Ballmer's strategy to turn Microsoft into a "devices and services" company. Under a 10-year licensing agreement, Microsoft Mobile held rights to sell feature phones running the S30/S30+ platform under the Nokia brand.
Nokia is a Finnish multinational corporation founded on 12 May 1865 as a single paper mill operation. Through the 19th century the company expanded, branching into several different products. In 1967, the Nokia corporation was formed. In the late 20th century, the company took advantage of the increasing popularity of computer and mobile phones. However, increased competition and other market forces caused changes in Nokia's business arrangements. In 2014, Nokia's mobile phone business was sold to Microsoft.
Thomas Henrik Zilliacus is a Finnish businessman and philanthropist, residing in Singapore.
HMD Global, also branded as Nokia Mobile, is a Finnish mobile phone manufacturer. The company is made up of the mobile phone business that the Nokia Corporation sold to Microsoft in 2014, then bought back in 2016. HMD began marketing Nokia-branded smartphones and feature phones on 1 December 2016. The company has exclusive rights to the Nokia brand for mobile phones through a licensing agreement. The HMD brand is only used for corporate purposes and does not appear in advertising, whereas the name "Nokia Mobile" is used on social media.