Nokia’s Suicide Note

From Eric Raymond’s blog

Stephen Elop has jumped his company off the burning platform, all right. And, I judge, straight into the fire. [..] Elop has failed to resolve Nokia’s drift and lack of a strategic focus. Instead of addressing this problem, Elop plans to institutionalize it by splitting the company into two business units that will pursue different – and, in fact, mutually opposing – strategies.

The plan Elop has pulled out from under wraps effectively splits Nokia in two. The “Smart Devices” piece own MeeGo and Symbian Smartphones, and is expected to work with Microsoft on developing a portfolio of WP7 phones. The vagueness of [their statement] is telling. Clearly “Mobile Phones” is expected to milk the Third-World market for Symbian dumb-phones as long as it can [..]

Actually, the “Smart Devices” unit has confusions of its own. It’s expected to manage no fewer than three platforms – MeeGo, high-end Symbian, and WP7. Nothing has been resolved here! We’re looking at a plan that will scatter Nokia’s management bandwidth and engineering talent in four different directions, formalizing the existence of product-line and line-of-business silos when what the company needed to do was exactly the opposite – shoot the weak horses through the head, end the internal infighting, and focus.

All the old reasons a WP7 commitment was a bad idea remain problems under the new order. WP7 has bombed in its first quarter; there’s actual evidence that it’s not competitive. This means that the alliance does nothing to address Nokia’s historic weakness in the North American market.

In the rest of the article, Raymond recommends adoption of Android. I would recommend to put all resources behind their own OS, MeeGo, trying to make it viable and attractive for developers any way possible. We need diversity in the market. It’s good for Nokia as well.