В связи с предстоящим мероприятием "Nokia Strategy and Financial Briefing", которое будет посвящено планам Nokia на будущее и будет проходить в ближайшую пятницу, в Сети появляются различные слухи и предположения.
Как известно, многие предполагают, что глава Nokia
Стивен Элоп (Stephen Elop) объявит о переходе на стороннюю операционную
систему, в частности, речь идет о Windows Phone 7. Косвенным
подтверждением тому является письмо, которое якобы Стивен Элоп
распространил среди сотрудников.
Данным письмом глава компании говорит о том, что Nokia находится в
несколько шатком положении, точнее, "стоит на горящей платформе". И
единственным выходом здесь является "спрыгнуть" с этой платформы хоть
куда, только бы избежать гибель. Стивен Элоп отмечает, что компания
подвергается нападению по всем фронтам. Картина рынка смартфонов
выглядит следующим образом: Apple владеет сегментом high end, Android
царствует в среднем сегменте, а бюджетный удерживают китайские
конкуренты. Symbian и MeeGo, по словам главы, не являются достаточно
конкурентоспособными.
Собственно, притча из письма:
"Есть уместная история о человеке, который работал на нефтяной
платформе в Северном море. Он проснулся ночью от громкого взрыва, и
внезапно его нефтяная платформа оказалась в огне. Он был окружен
пламенем. Сквозь дым и жар он еле-еле сумел пробраться к краю платформы.
Когда он посмотрел вниз через край, все, что он мог видеть, это темная,
холодная, ужасающая атлантическая вода. Когда огонь подобрался вплотную
к человеку, у него были считанные секунды, чтобы среагировать. Он мог
остаться на платформе, и в этом случае погиб бы в огне. Или он мог
прыгнуть вниз в ледяную воду, преодолевая 30-метровую высоту. Человек
стоял на "горящей платформе", и ему нужно было сделать выбор.
Он решил прыгать. Это было неожиданно. В обычных условиях человек
никогда бы не стал прыгать в ледяную воду. Но это были не обычные
времена - его платформа была в огне. Человек пережил падение и воду.
После того, как он был спасен, он отметил, что "горящая платформа" стала
причиной радикального изменения в его поведении."
И полная оригинальная версия послания главы Nokia:
"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.
