Ask HN: Is Nokia a victim of ephemeralization?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208548

by patkai • 15 years ago

3 1 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Just wondering about Nokia, the great success story of Finland. They are great at hardware, but when software became dominant with touch screens, they clearly lost it. Our user experience is a software experience, not a hardware experience anymore. (Remember the 6150 etc, it was ALL hardware and it was great!) Those who can do better software will win in mobile. What do you think?

Jun8• 15 years ago

Well, exact same thing applies to Motorola, they always got the hardware correct but didn't do too well on software, in fact the saying that "We are not a software company" was (and even now, sometimes is) frequently heard in company discussions. However, Motorola had a deeper problem, which I think Nokia shares, and leads to the above: the culture.

Both of these companies had strong engineering (not software) cultures that served them very well in their domains. Up until very recently, that domain was closed off, and had a well-understood status quo. There were some smartass companies in the Valley, like Google etc. but no one paid attention to them.

But suddenly, WHAM!, everything became one, suddenly Google is both Motorola's ally and enemy (Android and Google TV), Apple, who used to make cure computers only, is a big competitor. You know the rest. These Titanics had no time to change.

This is what killed Motorola and is killing Nokia now. Problem is, this cannot be fixed by firing N managers, M engineers and hiring "better" ones, because the culture is built into their DNA. You should fire all management and rebuild the culture. Jha is trying to do that with Motorola Mobility (evidently, with limited success, as seen from XOOM pricing and tethering to Verizon).

Ask HN: Is Nokia a victim of ephemeralization?

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