The memo starts with a story about a man working on an oil platform in the North Sea. The man decides to risk jumping into the cold waters and try to save himself, rather than stay up, when the platform starts burning. This is a metaphor for Nokia needing to think in a completely different way; rather than allow itself to be swallowed by the competition. The Nokia CEO talks about Apple gaining the high-end market and completely “changing the game”, and about Android’s huge growth and the fact that Google draws most of the industry innovation. He even admits that Nokia has fallen behind, that MeeGo’s development is too slow and Symbian (the reason why Nokia was blamed by many) is non-competitive in important markets. Elop says that Nokia has to decide whether it wants to “build, catalyse or join an ecosystem”. Friday should be a very interesting day, the day Elop announces what Nokia will do in the near future, what strategy it will adopt. I seriously doubt they will try to start from scratch. By the time Nokia builds a new software ecosystem, Android will be miles ahead and good luck catching up. Windows Phone 7 could also be an option (and it’s been constantly associated with Nokia in the last few weeks), but it seems like a pretty remote option. Its presence in the market is too short for Nokia to play its most important and only card on. Android is the obvious choice and direction for Nokia. With Nokia’s hardware and Androids adoption by software developers and consumers, really great things could happen. Just imagine the N8 running Gingerbread… Comment
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