The Heartbreaking Fact is - That Nokia CAN be Fixed in Just One Quarter (as in right NOW)



Nokia is a devastating disaster. Nokia's sales are crashing in smartphones and in dumbphones. Nokia's brand new 'savior' software, Windows Phone, is not helping and its biggest product launch ever, for the Lumia series of smartphones, is barely registering sales. The prices are being slashed. One year ago Nokia towered over its rivals, literally more than twice as big as its nearest rival and today Nokia has shrunk to one third the size of the biggest rival. Nokia was generating enormous profits in its smartphone unit even during the worst economic crisis we have witnessed in our lifetimes. Now when the world economy is recovering, Nokia's smartphone unit is generating massive losses. Even after the 'Microsoft bribe' of 250 million dollars (!!!) per quarter is added to Nokia's smartphone unit profitability. Nokia is in exceptionally bad straights right now. Hire McKinsey strategy consultants to a company this badly messed up, they will give a strategic plan of many years to turn this wreck of a company around.



(Update 23 April - I am sorry for the delay in finishing this blog, I was out of open internet access in China for part of the past week and then had heavy travel with some travel hassles. Now the links are added to the blog, and the last part, the 'regional analysis' has been added after the fold)





But what makes me weep is that the solution is simple. Nokia can be saved. And this is not Rocket Science. This is basic marketing. Marketing 101. If we examine the very simple facts, we find the very obvious problem - and by happenstance, also an existing 'salvation' already waiting to be deployed.



If you want Nokia destroyed, cheer on Mr Elop and the current strategy, it will kill Nokia. But if you love Nokia, read this blog. I will show you where the problem is, by the process of elimination. Then I will show you the specific problem and give you proof of it. Then I will end with a few very simple steps to solve Nokia's crisis. Nokia can be returned to profits within one quarter and I do mean now, if implemented today April 12, the Q2 results would show a modest profit, not a 3% loss for Nokia. This blog article cannot be short, it is a very complex matter and Nokia has just set a world record in suicidal self-destruction. The primary part of this blog runs 9,000 words and will take you about 20 minutes to read. So this is facts and data and deep analysis, point by point, to show how to fix Nokia. If you read this blog carefully and you have a business/marketing background, you will agree with me. Nokia can be saved.



PRODUCT, PROMOTION, PRICE AND PLACE



I learned my marketing like most, that there were the classic 4 P's. Lets not argue about how many P's there might be, or what clever new theories have also appeared. Lets keep this really simple, this blog is long enough as it is. Even if there may be other things that impact the sales of any goods or services, we can all agree, that these four issues are among the most meaningful items, in every market, every country, every segment, every product. The classic 4 P's. Product means the product's design and manufacturing (and in the case of a smartphone, such things as its software and services etc). Promotion is often simplified to mean advertising but it of course means all promotional activites such as publicity and PR. Price is yes, the price. Place is a memory gimmick to cover the distribution channel (the place where your good is sold, but in reality includes the wholesale and global distribution issues too, in the case of mobile phones for example).



Is Nokia's product suddenly undesirable? One can see a lot of evidence that the Blackberry is losing its cool in many especially government and corporate business uses, where many people want phones with larger screens like the iPhone. Similarly the Motorola Razr was a hot phone, but its successor, the Motorola Rokr was a total failure, undesirable at any price. Has Nokia lost its mojo? I please ask you to not consider your 'own' view. Lets keep this to the facts. Lets only talk about what are public published data.



Nokia's 2010 flagship smartphone, the N8 won the best cameraphone of the year awards, it was that good. It is so good, still this February 2012, it was winning side-by-side comparisons against all rival top cameraphones one year newer. The next Nokia flagship, the N9 (the smartphone running the new MeeGo OS) was universally loved in every single review published - in fact it has had the most positive reception of any Nokia phone ever released from the beginning of time, whether smart or dumb. It is the only phone, the N9, among any manufacturers since 2007 (when the iPhone launched), to be regularly rated either as good or indeed better than the contemporary iPhone. As for the N9 in October 2011 that was obviously the brand new hot iPhone 4S, that is truly amazing praise for the N9 and its MeeGo OS. Now in February Nokia's top device in the Windows Phone line of smarpthones, the Lumia 900 won the phone of the event award in the USA.



Then the latest Nokia uber-phone, the 808 PureView won the most coveted award, the 'Oscars' or the 'Nobel Prizes' in the mobile industry, the biggest telecoms event on the planet, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona now in March. This is where all the manufacturers bring their best phones to launch. Nokia's 808 PureView beat out the Samsung Galaxy Beam, yes the hyperphone with that mesmerizing built-in pico projector. Yes, THAT phone (I have 'the Beam', and I truly love it!). Oh, and this 808 PureView? It runs on the 'supposedly obsolete' Symbian OS. An OS so advanced, that Microsoft's Windows Phone cannot support its features until 2013 at the earliest, so says Nokia, not me. I know many of us geeks feel Symbian is past its bedtime, but the facts are, it is an excellent OS that is very robust for 'traditional' phone needs such as the cameraphone, messaging etc. But it was not designed to be a touch-screen OS, so of course its touch-screen lags those who were built to be touch-screen OS platforms like the iPhone and Android. But Symbian today supports tons of features you can't do on an iPhone or Windows Phone or Blackberry etc. Do not misunderstand me now, I did not say Symbian is good for Nokia's future; it is not. But Symbian is not dead either. It is particularly strong on more basic traditional needs (like calls, battery life, messages, camera etc). While Palm died, Windows Mobile is dead, Blackberry OS is obsolete, Symbian is not. Symbian once again produced the absolute run-away best cameraphone ever deviced. With techncial abilites native to Symbian that more 'modern' OS platforms like iOS, Android and Windows Phone cannot support.



So Nokia is consistently able to deliver absolutely stunning super devices that win awards as the best phones - and note, in just a period of 6 months, Nokia managed three superior phones that ran on 3 separate operating systems with dramatically different features and abilities. Nokia has tons of problems today, yes. But designing superior phones is not the problem for Nokia today. The same is true down the line, even the very cheap 'Africa phones' such as the new dual SIM phones have been highly praised and very popular.



IS IT PROMOTION OR PRICE THEN?



So if not product, is the problem with Nokia's promotion? It may have been last year, lets not dig into that. Lets look now over the past 5 months. Nokia's Lumia launch has been the biggest, most heavily budgeted massive product launch in the handset industry history. The promotions are enormous in every Lumia launch market, including such phenomenal gimmicks as in the UK, there were free Xbox 360 videogaming consoles given to customers who bought a Lumia 800. That is marketing with a bang! There have been gigantic promotions on Times Square in New York City with Nicki Minaj doing live music etc. In shops from Finland to Australia the store sales displays of Lumia have dominated the stores, as they do also here now in Hong Kong.



In some countries Nokia has even taken to sponsoring a whole TV channel as they did in Britain to flood the chanel with Lumia marketing. But wait. Did I say Nokia spent the biggest marketing budget ever seen for any phone launch? Wait. Then there is Microsoft which threw hundreds of millions more across the globe. Just in the USA, on AT&T, Nokia and Microsoft paid literally 100 million dollars to AT&T, so that AT&T staff could have Lumia 900 phones as employee phones. Talk about spending the money around. No. Promotion and advertising is not the problem for Nokia right now. Over-exposure may be a problem down the line, but right now Nokia is burning cash to be seen.



If the problem now is not product, or promotion, so is it the price then? Nokia launched the Lumia 800 and 710 in the best of its countries among the wealthy industrialized world, such as the richest European countries like Germany, Britain and France, and here in Asia-Pacific, such as Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore. All early reviews of the Lumia series suggested the price was reasonable, the Lumia series was a good value. Nobody said the Lumia was priced as too expensive, at launch. Since then - in every market, for both the Lumia 800 and 710 (and now for both the Lumia 710 and Lumia 900 in the USA as well) the price has since been dropped! Some analysts are very alarmed that early price drops tell of poorly selling handsets, they should not see such early price drops - but the fact is - the fact is - that the phones were initially not seen as too expensive, and since their prices - across all markets - have been cut, sometimes slashed (as Lumia 900 now in the USA where the effective price is zero dollars rather than 99 dollars). Price is not the problem.



Four major aspects of marketing that cause sales success of any service or product - Product, Promotion, Price and Place. Lets think like Sherlock Holmes. If you eliminate those that are not the cause, the remaining item - no matter how implausible - has to be the cause. So the cause has to be 'Place'. Is there a problem with the distribution channel?



RESELLER BOYCOTT



Funny you'd ask. Yes, as it happens, there is a huge, almost unprecedented problem specifically in the reseller channel, and very weirdly, it is across cities, across carriers, across countries, across continents. There seems to be a sudden comprehensive global reseller boycott organized against Nokia, Lumia and Microsoft.



Please reader, do not argue this point. I have gone through painstaking detail chronicling here on this blog how it happened and why it exists, what is caused by Nokia's actions, what separate boycott emerged last year against Microsoft and why these two combine to make Lumia the most hated phone in handset stores globally. I am not going to litigate that here now with you. Lets go to the facts.



Right after the infamous Burning Platforms memo and the Elop Effect, Nokia sales support collapsed. It was reported that in many countries store sales staff refused to sell Nokia whatsoever. It is no longer in dispute. Nokia's own quarterly reports last year told the grim tale such as in the Q2 Results: "During the second quarter 2011, distributors and operators purchased fewer of our devices across our portfolio." That is marketing spin way for Nokia to admit that 'our sales channel is refusing to sell our products.' Meanwhile in China, Nokia's most important market and the world's largest handset market and the world's largest smartphone market, where Nokia's 2010 market share of smartphones was 70% according to Strategy Analytics - Nokia's flagship stores started to sell phones by rival handset makers! Imagine walking into MacDonalds and the guy with the apron with the 'golden arches' tells you he will sell you a Burger King burger and fries! Or imagine walking into one of those uber-cool Apple stores, and when you ask for the iPhone 4S, the guy pulls out boxes of Samsung Galaxy S2s instead! That was about the boycott against Symbian based Nokia smartphones.



UPDATE May 3, 2012: The Nokia Annual Shareholders' Meeting was held today, and in it, in reply to a direct question by a shareholder, Stephen Elop admitted that there is in-store sales staff reluctance to sell Lumia phones. This matter is now closed. It is proven as a fact. Elop himself admits there is a reseller in-store staff 'boycott' or refusal to sell Lumia. Please accept this as a fact, if Elop himself admits it to the shareholders' meeting. Read more here: 3 things we learned from the shareholder's meeting.

The US boycott against Microsoft started almost immediately after Microsoft purchased Skype last summer. It does not matter one iota whether that boycott is caused by carrier hatered of Skype as I claim or not. It does not matter if you love Skype or not. It does not matter if you have downloaded the Skype app to your whatever smartphone. That does not matter. What is true, is that anti-Microsoft smartphone sales boycotts based on in-store sales staff behavior surveys have been reported in separate newspaper articles from San Francisco to Boston. And you cannot argue this point - Microsoft's ex head of Windows Phone, Charlie Kindle admits Microsoft's carrier relations were bad before Windows Phone, but during 2011 they got far worse as Charlie admits that Microsoft itself poisoned those relationships during 2011. So I 'claim' it is because of Skype. You may think its because of the Eggman. I am the Walrus. Coo-coo, ca Choo.



It has been ADMITTED by Nokia and Microsoft executives that the carrier relationships today are worse than they were in the past. You cannot argue this point on this blog. It is a fact, ADMITTED by executives on both sides of the aisle on the Lumia partnership. That was then. Who cares. Lets fast forward to now. It is so bad, that in communicating the Q4 results, Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop admitted explicitly that there is reseller hostility towards Nokia Lumia sales in many early launch countries. He singled out the UK as an example. You my dear reader cannot come here and say there is no such thing. At this point it does not matter why or how. It is proven there is a definite, measured problem with carriers and store staff hating Nokia Lumia and separately hating Microsoft Windows Phone. And now we have explicit evidence.



Two independent surveys of major handset retail outlet sales in Finland, Nokia's home market, and the USA, Microsoft's home market have proven separately and conclusively, that if consumers walk into stores, they will not be offered Lumia at all at AT&T stores who will offer iPhones first, and Androids second, ahead of Lumia, even as Lumia is supposedly an AT&T 'hero' phone that they supposedly promote ahead of others.

Is that a sales boycott? I say so. It is even worse in Finland where Nokia's traditional smartphone market share has been around 90% and for example when it was the world's second biggest smartphone maker, RIM didn't even bother to launch Blackberries in Finland. A survey of stores across all three carriers and two independent handset store chains in the two biggest cities of Finland, revealed that in Finland, where Nokia is revered, if a customer walks in today, right now, asking to see a Lumia, in 8 cases out of 10 the sales rep won't do that. They will refuse to sell Lumia, they will push Androids or iPhones. Is this a sales boycott? I say so.



You cannot come leave comments on this blog about what you think about some Amazon sales number, if the AT&T store sales staff are proven to refuse to sell Lumia. You cannot tell me that some sales chart out of Finland has Lumia near the top, if the stores have been proven to refuse to sell Lumia. Whatever Nokia and Lumia now achieve in modest sales, it is inspite of a reseller boycott (that speaks volumes of how much Nokia customers are loyal, gosh!).



UPDATE May 3, 2012 - At the Nokia shareholders' meeting, Elop was also asked about the retail channel refusing to sell Lumia because of Skype. Elop explicitly admits that there are carriers who have refused the Nokia Lumia offering, because of Skype. This matter is now closed. It is proven and indisputable, if Elop himself admits to the shareholders' meeting that carriers refuse Lumia because of Skype. Read more at 3 things we learned from shareholder meeting.



THIS IS CRYSTAL CLEAR



1. By process of elimination we know there is no problem currently with bad phones, there is no problem with bad promotion, there is no problem with bad pricing. It has to be reseller channel. 2. The evidence is comprehensive and consistent, that in cases from China to Britain and from Finland to the USA, it is the reseller channel that rejects Nokia now utterly and totally. 3. An ex Microsoft executive admits the problem from Microsoft's side and Nokia has repeatedly admitted the problem from Nokia's side. Most recently, Elop himself has singled out reseller reluctance to sell Nokia Lumia specifically in Britain. I rest my case. There is one massive problem. Not a series of problems. ONE big problem. The reseller channel has put Nokia into a stranglehold. Nokia is in sales boycott (or in very severe sales suppression, if you don't like the term 'boycott'. You say potato, I say tomato).



HOW DO WE FIX THIS?



There are two boycotts. There is one that hits Microsoft Windows Phone so it does not hit all Nokia smartphones and obviously none of Nokia's dumbphones, but it extends also to other Microsoft partners like HTC and Samsung. There is a second parallel sales boycott that targets Nokia. The Nokia boycott clearly started on February 11, after the Elop Effect. The Microsoft boycott started clearly on June after Microsoft bought Skype. Their combined effect is devastating explicitly to Lumia sales where these two boycott effects intersect. Their effect is compounded.



The way to fix the first boycott is for Microsoft to immediately announce its fire sale of Skype and total unbundling of Skype with all Windows products on the PC and mobile phones and other Microsoft platforms. Even if Steve Ballmer announced that tomorrow in a press conference, he would not be believed as Microsoft is seen as utterly untrustworthy, being the proverbial Evil Empire. Microsoft's past history in mobile telecoms is a trail of devastation. But you could argue that it might work, especially over time. We all know that will never happen. Skype is a brilliant move by Microsoft to expand the power of Windows on the PC environment. As Ballmer has already learned from dozens of private conversations with the CEOs of the big carriers, this is a non-starter for Windows Phone, but he doesn't care, because smartphones are the ant where the desktop is the elephant over at Redmond. Ballmer will let Elop and Nokia strangle themselves in this conundrum.



In short, the boycott against Windows Phone will never be lifted. It will only get worse with Windows Phone 8. Let me repeat that - it will only get worse with Windows Phone 8. Microsoft will never get its 'third ecosystem' in mobile. The carriers have spoken loud and clear. They take Microsoft's millions with the big smiles, then they boycott the sales. Not my words. Microsoft's ex head of Windows Phone has admitted this problem is only getting worse. Getting worse.



HOW TO END BOYCOTT AGAINST NOKIA THEN?



Ah. The problem that can be solved.. Simple. The boycott started on February 11 with the Elop Effect. What did Elop do back a year ago? He announced he will end Symbian (and shortly thereafter, the Ovi store too) and that he will not proceed to the promised migration path of MeeGo, the Linux based future smartphone OS, and that the migration path, via the Nokia Qt development tool was ended. And that it would be replaced by Microsoft's Windows Phone. Note, at this time there was no boycott against Microsoft, so this was not related to Skype, this Nokia boycott preceeds that Microsoft/Skype boycott.



Why do carriers want Symbian that you and I 'hate' as being so horrible and out-dated? Because the old 'nice' Nokia had gone through the trouble to build the most carrier-friendly environment out of Symbian, Ovi, Qt and MeeGo. The whole thing was carrier-oriented. Did you know that the Ovi/Symbian environment supports over 100 languages, that in over 60 countries there is 'carrier billing' ie one-button payments that go directly to your phone bill. You don't need a credit card to pay for anything. (Most people in Africa, Latin America, Asia do not have credit cards - even in 'advanced' Germany, yes, the majority of the population does not have a credit card! but carrier billing means anyone can buy directly from the phone, clicking one button, and have it appear on the phone bill - or be deducted from the prepaid phone balance). There are localized app stores in all those countries and more. Windows Phone does not even support the Arabic language (spoken by 340 million people - yes, more than the total US population). There are no apps in Chinese (thats 1.3 billion people, in case you are counting, ie 4x as many as the USA).



And the control of the Nokia/Symbian/Ovi/Qt/MeeGo environment rests with the carriers/operators. Nokia has been very open, it even invited NTT DoCoMo the biggest carrier of Japan to be a charter member with Symbian, and China Mobile the same with MeeGo - no such carrier involvement exists with any Microsoft software platforms.



LUCKILY NOT ALL EGGS IN ONE BASKET



If Nokia had all its eggs in one basket, and that was now broken, Nokia would be screwed. But it is not. Nokia is seeing a boycott against Windows Phone, and carriers hate it that Elop decided to kill Symbian and its successor, MeeGo. But Nokia has not yet killed either Symbian nor MeeGo. In fact, in the past six months, the two most highly praised Nokia superphones were not any of the four Lumia handsets announced, no. Not even that supposedly magnificent Lumia 900 that some US analysts seem to feel is amazing. Its amazing only if you haven't seen what Nokia can do when it is not hindered. Nokia's 808 Pureview won the far more highly contested and desired prize. That 808 PureView runs Symbian of course.



And what of the N9? Check this out if you think the Lumia 900 is hot. Every single review ever published, that evaluates any Lumia model, by a reviewer who has also used the N9, says without fail - that the N9 is the superior smartphone. Hundreds of those reviews in several languages now. Every one! If you like the Lumia 900, and you got to try the N9, you will love the N9, its that good. No. Its better. It is the only phone by any manufacturer ever, whose name is not Apple, that has been rated in most of its reviews as 'as good as' or 'better' than the iPhone!!!!!! That is as close to the 'god phone' as you can get to the 'jesusphone' haha.



So take the UK. In Britain they have the D&AD awards, the 'Oscars' of the design and advertising industry. Nokia's N9 was awarded the best design award of the year just now. Who did it beat? Pretty awesome competition including the iPad 2, and also yes, the Lumia 800. Here is the bizarre part, the UK design industry was so impressed, they awarded the 'best design of the UK' award to the N9 - even though the N9 is not sold in the UK (and the Lumia 800 is). How good do you have to be, to get that kind of victory?



Then the ultimate endorsement. I cannot make it more plain than this. Germany is Europe's largest nation and Nokia has had a huge market share there. Germany's largest weekly magazine, Der Stern (its like Time in the USA or the Economist in the UK) wrote its review of the Nokia N9 on MeeGo. Der Stern concluded its review thus, saying the phone is so fantastic, that while it is not sold in Germany, German citizens should travel to another country like Switzerland or Austria to go buy that phone! (This while Nokia's Lumia 800 was massively promoted in Germany at the time in a super-blitz marketing push). Think about that please. If the device is so astonishing, that the biggest magazine in your country recommends customers to go travel to another country to go get it. I cannot think of a more powerful endorsement that today, April 2012, this is the must-have phone in all Nokia markets, the N9 HAS to be sold immediately everywhere.



So yes, Nokia has currently in production genuine superphones that are not on Lumia on the Windows Phone that carriers do not want, but that are on those very exact Symbian and MeeGo systems, that the carriers used to want in the past. Nokia had wisely developed its eggs in three baskets. While one basket is now clearly broken (Windows Phone/Lumia), Nokia is in the position Motorola was not, Nokia has two other genuine superphone-class operating systems it still fully supports, for which it has in fact several highly desirable phones in production today. Today!



YOU WANT IT? YOU REALLY WANT IT? YOU CAN'T HAVE IT



The only problem is, that the CEO refuses to sell these superphones globally. Yes. You heard me right. While the Nokia CEO admits - admits - that the resellers refuse to sell specifically his much beloved Lumia phones, the rest of the world demands N9 and 808 phones so much, that at least one major publication suggested it worth flying to other countries to go get yours! The customer is suffocating, begging for air. Elop stops strangling the customer and instead starts to .. waterboard the customer!!!!!!!



No! You can't have the N9! No, You can't have the 808! You have to take this Lumia instead! You have to!



Facts. Nokia's bestselling markets in the affluent industrialized world, where most smarpthones are sold, include Germany (population 80 million), UK (60), Italy (55), Spain (50) and France (65). And Mr Elop in his infinite wisdom? Refuses to let the N9 be sold in any of them. But he is willing to send the N9 to such far-away nations as New Zealand (population 4 million) or Singapore (4). Or in some of the poorest countries like Nigeria. Yeah.. Makes sense?



And the 808 PureView? The only Nokia Symbian phone recently that US press have liked? Elop refuses to sell it in the USA? True.



If the Lumia was a success, this wouldn't matter. But Lumia was supposed to be Nokia's big 'comeback story' where Elop would be the heroic savior of Nokia. That was the Hollywood script. The real world didn't work out that way. The Lumia is a failure, plain and simple. I showed with Nokia numbers, that for every six attempts to sell Lumia to existing (loyal, still-remaining) Nokia owners, five will refuse the Lumia - and buy Androids or iPhones instead!!!!!



It doesn't matter why the Lumia is now an utter failure and cannot with these models recover. It cannot recover. There are at least 13 reasons why these current Lumia smartphones will fail every market including the USA. But that is neither here nor there. We have the facts. The phone looks fine in pictures, on videos, and in the store. But living with Windows Phone as it currently exists, and the early Lumia phones with their severe limitations and drawbacks, is a nightmare that only gets worse. Not my words. The Guardian of the UK, after their living with Lumia test, concluded it is so utterly a failure, that they took the extraordinary step of returning the phone and recommended their readers do the same. This is total comprehensive failure. Don't you argue that you like the Lumia you saw in the store. The facts are now in. Facts. The customers have spoken. We just heard from Russia that Lumia is having Nokia's biggest return rates ever seen!!!



NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE THAT EITHER



The good news is, that Nokia has now, in production smartphones that are not Lumia. that also are not on any Microsoft Windows operating systems and are actually on two very different operating systems to cater to different customer needs. In addition to the N9, there is a sister superphone on MeeGo, the N950 (the QWERTY slider version for heavy texting, email and business users). Most bizarrely, this fully finished N950 superphone that runs the highly praised MeeGo IS BEING MANUFACTURED today, but not sold ???? !!!!! ?????



If this is not evidence of a lunatic in charge of Nokia, nothing is. You have the sister phone to the most desirable phone on the planet - a phone on the operating system that is often called better than the iPhone - and you ARE manufacturing it (in small numbers) but refuse to sell it? I have heard people saying they'd pay 1,000 Euros for an N950. I don't mean to price it there, but if the iPhone 4S unsubsidised price is 650 US dollars (ie the real price, when you don't include the AT&T contract for 2 years haha) then the N950 could easily be sold for 700 dollars - thats 550 Euros boys and girls - and it would still be hideosly profitable. The average price of the heavily discounted Lumias are now 220 Euros.



And you know what? Its not about the price, its about the profit. Check this out. Each Lumia has non-standard Nokia components (less bulk discounts) where the N9 and N950 use standard Nokia component providers with Nokia bulk disocunts. The Lumia series are produced in Taiwan at Compal's factory (yes, not even manufactured by Nokia, no wonder each of the first three Lumia models has been plagued with severe production problems that Nokia has openly admitted). The N9 and N950 are produced in Nokia's own factories - which are now idling! So Nokia has to pay extra to Compal if it tries to push production runs, but at Nokia's own factories there are workers with nothing to do!!! And the license! Every Lumia requires a royalty payment of about 25 dollars to Microsoft further sapping profits. No royalties needed for MeeGo sales.



This is the perfect 'no-brainer'. The N950 is the single most profitable Nokia phone right now, when Nokia is desperately in need of profits, as its smartphone unit is now producing its 4th consecutive quarter of an operating loss. And there is no comparable iPhone to compete against it! (at least not yet). And there is no comparable Lumia phone in the four units Nokia has announced! So the N950 is pure gravy, there is no conceivable down-side to rushing it to mass-production now!



Oh, and same goes for the E7 on the Symbian side, yes its a year old now, but there is a good QWERTY-slider there, if only the resellers would stop boycotting Nokia.



So yes, the bad news is the boycott, but there really is good news too. Nokia has two ranges of smartphones it can mass-produce today and sell globally, that potentially would break the boycott. Yes, it is theoretically possible, but now for the hard part: exactly how do we stop the global sales boycott by the reseller channel?



THIS IS THE HOW



I have proven to you that Nokia's problems are not in undesirable products overall (quite the contrary), not in promotion (gosh, massive marketing right now) and not in the pricing. Nokia's problem is clearly centered on the reseller channel. And if the reseller channel refuses to sell your product, you die. It is that simple. If the reseller channel refuses to sell your product, you die. No ifs, ands and buts. If the reseller channel refuses to sell your product, you die.



The retail problem is two separate boycotts, one that cannot be ended (against Microsoft) but the other (against Nokia) that can. Nokia cannot unilaterally end that boycott. It can only be ended by the carrier community. Which kind of tells us what is the crux of the problem. Elop has admitted to meddling severely in the Nokia sales. Elop himself has personally changed the top guy in charge of Nokia sales in the China market and the US market. These are the 2 largest smartphone markets on the planet. After those changes we see that China sales have collapsed and US carriers take Nokia millions but still sales refuse to sell the Lumia.



The problem is not the sales staff of Nokia. It is the captain of the ship. The carriers don't trust Elop. That is unrecoverable. The evidence is most obvious in China, Nokia's most important market, so important, Nokia constructed the world's largest phone factory into Beijing to provide handsets to just China's domestic market. Before the Elop Effect, China's sales were continuing to set growth records, right up to Q1 of 2011, as Nokia proudly announced in its Q1 results. Right after the Elop Effect the China sales collapsed so comprehensively, that Elop complained in public and replaced the head of China sales. The guy Colin Giles, who was sent to go 'save' the Nokia China market, actually had to take a demotion but was the previous head of China sales, and Elop felt he must be able to return China to Nokia's friend. So how is that Lumia doing? Yes, Lumia launches in China now. Not on China Mobile the operator with 650 million subcribers (yes, SIX times as big as AT&T Wireless). Not on China Unicom with 150 million subscribers (bigger than AT&T). No. The Lumia 800C model is launching on only China's smallest carrier, China Telecom with about 45 million subscribers (about the size of T-Mobile USA).



The best China guy was sent to China to recover Nokia sales. He was not even able to get nominal support of Lumia out of the big carriers. Only managed to to land the smallest carrier. And this is one who uses the CDMA network which other Lumia phones do not use (they are on the GSM network). So Elop has to approve expensive changes to the Lumia for another technology and even then, he only lands the smallest network of China.



Maybe that is some kind of anomaly. Maybe the 'hero' salesguy managed to otherwise recover Nokia's sales back in China. Yes. Interesting proposition. Lets examine the evidence. Strategy Analytics just reported on China market shares in smartphones. Before the Elop Effect the market share for Nokia smartphones in China was 70%. After Q2 when the full effect was seen, the market share had plummetted to 32% !!! And what of Elop's emergency solution to send the best man to do anything to recover China? Since then Nokia's market share fell to 17% by Q4 (Strategy Analytics didn't have Q1 results yet to report).



This guy had over 70% market share year-out and year-in when he was head of Nokia in China. Now he is sent back, he cannot even stabilize Nokia's market share to 32% He lost almost half even after that. No. The sales cannot fix this problem in the reseller channel. Only one action can recover Nokia. It is Elop.



(UPDATE TO THIS STORY April 23 - at the Nokia Q1 results, we also heard that this Nokia top sales guy, Colin Giles will depart Nokia. So much for last-minute heroics. The problem IS Stephen Elop, and until he is gotten rid of, the carriers will strangle Nokia to death)





THESE ARE THE ACTIONS



If the reseller boycott is not lifted, Nokia dies. Nokia has lost 74% of its market since the boycott started only a year and two months ago. This is a world-record destruction of market share for any Fortune 500 sized company in the economic history of mankind. Understand what that means. Elop established a world record in being hated. It is not bad phones, it is not bad prices, it is not bad promotion. Even when the best Nokia sales guys are sent in, they cannot fix the damage. The problem was caused by Elop. He is the cause. This is against not Nokia, but against Elop. This is what he caused with the Elop Effect, the most destructive management communication ever, that destroyed the revenues the size of Oracle and the profits the size of Google. Or to put it in another way, Elop damaged Nokia so severely, he has cut off a part of Nokia as big in market share, annual sales and profits of a healthy RIM (the maker of Blackberry). He has sunk a whole RIM out of Nokia's business. And the damage is continuing as we speak.



We know there are two boycotts. We know nothing can be done about the one against Microsoft, Ballmer would be a fool to sell Skype (and even then, he would not be believed). We know Elop has moved heaven and earth but has not been able to end the boycott. It was first confirmed by Nokia a year ago but it has only gotten worse. Elop now admits the sales channel is not supporting Lumia specifically. The independent reporting of the sales channel verifies from Helsinki to New York City, Nokia Lumia authorized resellers who have Lumia in stock and feature massive Lumia sales promotion in the stores, actively push customers to rival phone makers!!!!!!!



This means the following steps. First of all, Nokia must announce immediately that it will somehow shift away from the Windows Phone based Lumia series. It could be the truly sensible and honest "Finnish" way of just telling the truth, stating categorically that the Lumia experiment has failed, will be discontinued and the partnership with Microsoft is ended effective immediately (and any payments from Microsoft would of course be returned by Nokia). But that is pretty drastic. I think the more sensible spin is something like 'we apologize to our customers, the Lumia series has been launched prematurely with the best of intentions, to try to bring it rapidly to the market but the early phone models are not up to Nokia standards and will be withdrawn for redesign' - that kind of marketing gobbledygook doublespeak. Then offer massive discounts and rebates to the reseller channel to sell as many Lumia as possible; what is not sold - give as Nokia gifts to low-income high schools in USA, get the best out of the brand and use the market where Microsoft is strongest. At least get some PR good will out of that wasted stock.



The point is, Nokia needs to acknowledge now, that the Lumia series has failed, and Nokia no longer forces these undesirable phones at the 'public' when in reality behind the scenes, Nokia promises not to push them anymore at the carriers.



That is not enough, but it is a necessary first step. Remember, the boycott started with the Elop Effect and Windows Phone was only part of the problem. Second step is a new lease-of-life officially to Symbian - while I am not suggesting we go back to Symbian. Just four months ago, Nokia was selling 17 million Symbian phones per quarter (68 million per year). Now they sold 10 million. But there are 28 million customers around the world with Nokia smartphones in their pockets, who are at 18 months of their ownership and are ready to come in to a phone store, to upgrade to a new Nokia phone. They know nothing of Elop or Burning Platforms or Windows or Lumia. They probably don't even know that their current phone runs on Symbian. They are just normal customers, who like their existing Nokia phone, and want to buy a new one. If the reseller boycott is lifted, no matter what their friends said about 'try the iPhone' etc, these customers are existing Nokia owners, most have owned Nokia for a decade, their first preference is to get a new Nokia phone now.



If the sales reps are willing to sell them Nokias, on any of the platforms, they will mostly take them, and judging by the recent reviews of new Nokia phones on Symbian and Meego, they will very likely be happy with those purchases too. I am not talking about tech geeks like you and me who want the best collection of the hottest apps etc. Just a basic phone for basic needs that happens to be a smartphone (and one that accepts Angry Birds - what Windows Phone currently doesn't even offer haha).



Even if both N9 and N950 are immediately put into mass production and sold everywhere, they won't cover most Nokia customer needs, they are far too expensive. So if we can't sell Lumias, then obviously it has to be Symbian smartphones today. How can you get the reluctant sales reps to stop refusing, and start selling Symbian? Their bosses have to tell them. How do we get that to happen? The best Nokia sales reps haven't achieved that? No. We need to get a public reversal of the silly Elop edicts of last year, that messed up the carrier relationships. That means, the carriers have to believe Symbian is not going to die. In fact the only way Symbian sales can recover - totally irrelevant whether there are 10 apps or 10 million apps, totally irrelevant if the camera has 1 megapixels or 42 megapixels. Totally irrelevant if it is 2G or 3G or 4G or 5G. The only way the sales recover for Symbian is, if the carriers believe that Symbian will not be killed.

???



Yes, this is the Osborne Effect part of the Elop Effect. If any company announces its platform will be discontinued, of course sales will immediately collapse. Only way to get those sales back, is somehow to convince the sales channel that the platform will live..



This is a paradox, it can't happen and even if it were to be claimed, of course it won't be believed.



EASTER TIME MIRACLE



This is how it is done. We resurrect the Qt migration path. Nokia has to announce that it made a mistake discontinuing the Qt migration path. You don't know what the migration path is? Let me give the quick version.



Nokia has currently an installed base of 1.3 Billion happy Nokia owners. About 1 Billion of those are on basic 'featurephones' using Nokia's proprietary operating systems, ie S40. And about 300 million are on Symbian. There are still some 50 million more Symbian handsets in the wild made by other manufacturers. The Blackberry installed base is something over 100 million. Apple iPhone installed base is under 200 million. Android installed base nears 300 million. But Nokia has in its S40 and Symbian installed base, over 1.3 billion mobile phone owners. Qt is a developer tool environment, to let application developers use extremely easy-to-use and extremely powerful software tools to make apps, that will be able to reach all S40 and Symbian phones! Smartphones and dumbphones! Imagine a potential customer base which is 4 times bigger than Android, and 6 times bigger than the iPhone and 13 times bigger than Blackberry (and 150 times bigger than Windows Phone).



Qt is not yet completed, and the S40 side at Nokia is not yet ready, but this was the vision. Understand how huge this is - Qt has a larger potential user base than all personal computers using Windows of any generation today! Qt reaches the biggest 'ecosystem' on the planet, and by a wide margin too. But wait, there is more. Qt also supports Nokia's older Maemo OS and the new MeeGo OS. Qt even supports Nokia's next OS called Meltemi. Now would be a good time to ask how many developers does Nokia have? Yes. They have shipped developer tools to 400,000 registered Nokia developers!!! Nokia has by far - by far - the biggest developer community. They hated coding for Symbian, especially after iPhone and Android came along, but they loved this idea of Qt to allow develop-once, publish five times utility across all Nokia platforms. Well, all platforms until Elop announced Windows Phone, which is the only OS Nokia uses, that can not be supported by Qt.



And here is the kicker. Qt can be used today to develop apps also for Android and will shortly support the next version of Blackberry OS !!!!! Develop on iOS and you can reach about 5% of the phones in pockets worldwide. I am not talking smartphones, i mean all phones. Develop on Windows Phone and you reach .. under 0.1%. Develop on Qt and (when the development is completed and the migration of phones done, about 2-3 years from now) you can reach 40% of all pockets - and a massive 80% of all smartphones! No wonder when Nokia announced this migration path, the developer community cheered.



Elop killed the Qt migration path. But Nokia still owns Qt and keeps developing it with tiny budget and slowly. If Nokia's CEO or Chairman were to say the end of Qt was a mistake, and were to apologize in public to all developers, and to announce Qt will be fully funded and developed rapidly, to support Nokia Symbian, Nokia S40, Nokia MeeGo, Nokia Maemo, Nokia Meltemi - and Android and Blackberry (And bada, Limo and Tizen) - this would show that Symbian is not 'dead'.



It is not enough, though. Nokia has to very publically return to Ovi store and all support Nokia had for its platform from Navteq maps and advertising and Nokia Money etc. Even that is not enough. Nokia has to make public clear statements, with the CEO very publically embracing Symbian - showing it is the ideal smartphone for some logical segment(s). And it is. The Emerging World. MeeGo currently is designed for high-end smartphones. Meltemi is not yet ready. Windows Phone cannot be used to sell under 200 dollar smartphones (remember, this is real price, not the contract-based price like 99 dollars at AT&T). Not my words. Microsoft itself says Windows Phone is currently not suited for cheap smartphones and Nokia says the same. You cannot argue this point. Windows Phone currently is not suited for low-cost smarpthones. But SYMBIAN IS PERFECTLY SUITED FOR LOW-COST SMARTPHONES !



Yet Deloitte told us that this year 300 million smartphones will be sold that cost under 100 dollars!!! If not Symbian, then what? Symbian is perfectly suited for this segment. These customers don't want the biggest touch screens. They want simple basic smartphones. Symbian works perfectly there. Symbian & Ovi store already support languages of the Emerging World markets! More languages than any other OS - by a wide margin! There are local apps for Symbian selling in the massive quantities in India, China, Africa, Latin America. In the Emerging World, the competition will not be the iPhone, it will be a cheap knock-off Blackberry clone smartphone (RIM cannot afford to make Blackberries at this price either, but Nokia's E-Series QWERTY phones fit this segment very well, running.. Symbian!)



If the CEO of Nokia first announces that Windows is no longer the only way. Then the CEO returns to Nokia the migration path via Qt from Symbian to MeeGo - and then announces that Nokia reverses the end of Symbian because Windows 'is not suited for Emerging World markets' (currently) - then it can be believed. As long as Nokia tries not to suggest Symbian will live forever, or it will be the main OS to high-end phones. But that there is a 3-5 year window to come for Symbian in the lower-cost smartphones. That is plausible. I am not saying it will be believed. But it can be believed. This is the only way Jesus comes back after 3 days. This is the resurrection of the dead platform.



WHEN CUSTOMERS DON'T TRUST YOU, ALL FAILS



Unless Nokia can get the carriers to volunteer to lift their sales boycott, Nokia dies. So how can we make them believe this above total reversal from the very public statements by Elop?



He has to go. Nothing Elop can say, will be believed. This is not the need to fool the general public. This is the need to convince 600 CEOs of the carrier community who have decided Elop is now the little brother of the Evil Empire. He has no credibility within the carrier community whatsoever. He is being screwed as we speak - the carriers take his money - they allow all the big displays into the stores - then the sales reps refuse to sell the Lumias. This is not random. This is is global pattern. They are f*cking with Elop now. He is a dead man walking. As long as he carries a Nokia business card in any function, Nokia will not be believed. Nothing, absolutely nothing, anyone can say can fool these guys. They are very intellient and bright. They knew Microsoft's dubious history in telecoms and were watchful of any tricks. They saw right through Elop. Remember, these are only CEOs and in practically every country, they run companies that are among the 10 biggest companies in that country. The best of the best minds. And they talk to each other! Elop never had a chance. They saw right through him and his deceptions. If Ollila said something, if Anssi Vanjoki came back to say something, if Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was brought back to say something, if Elop is still employed by Nokia, all the things said will be only words and not ever believed, because these smart powerful CEOs knew, Microsoft is out to screw them. And they saw on February 11 last year, that Elop was a Microsoft Muppet, not a Nokia Man.



Equally - if Elop is fired, the above becomes believable, instantly! The new CEO or the Chairman do not need to make ANY public statements about the real reasons why Elop is fired, but will call or visit all major carriers (About 250 of them) to inform them that all Elop silly decisions are now abandoned, the Elop Effect shall be totally reversed at Nokia, no matter how long it takes, and no matter how much money it takes. But that the carriers now have to help the new CEO recover Nokia to profits, else Nokia will be sold and the carriers lose their Symbian/Ovi/MeeGo/Qt based 'third ecosystem' and they will face a more hostile Microsoft instead.



So that is all said in private only, to the CEOs of the carriers. If the CEO tells the Sales VP that Nokia is no longer in the dog house, and please tell the sales reps to start to sell Nokia again - Nokia will recover! Not to 40% or 30% or even 20%. But the total collapse will end - remember, it is not handsets, it is not promotion, it is not price. The ONLY problem with Nokia sales collapse is the sales boycott by the retail channel. If Nokia can recover the damaged carrier relations, Nokia can recover (somewhat).



NEW CEO



And that means what? Nokia needs a new CEO. Not a Finn. Not an American. Not from the Computer, IT or Software industries. Not from the handset or infrastructure business. Definitely not any current or ex Nokia guy. Nokia has a crisis of confidence by its most important stakeholder - the carrier community. They liked/tolerated and some even nearly loved the Nokia of old (except the US carriers, obviously, but note - both in Canada and Mexico the carriers liked the old Nokia a lot). Now they hate Nokia. The carriers decide who lives and dies among handset makers because they control the retail channel.



The answer is obvious. To restore its respect and trust among the distrusting carriers, you fire the Microsoft Muppet and hire a current active CEO from one of the carriers. Someone whom everybody in the carrier community knows and respects, who has been in that business for a good while, many years as CEO. And I would say, that CEO needs to come from Asia to be most insightful and able to see where Nokia's future will be.



So imagine if Nokia's Chairman, Jorma Ollila held an emergency press conference now, today, at say 3PM. He has a short statement. Elop is not on stage with him. He reads the following:

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a short statement about Nokia. Stephen Elop has just handed in his resignation, he is no longer Nokia's CEO. Mr Elop and the Board had differing views on the direction Nokia should follow. (the Nokia share price starts climbing on this sentence). We thank Mr Elop for his service to Nokia under these difficult times. He is not available at this press conference because he has already left Finland and is no longer in Nokia's employ. We shall be reviewing all decisions recently made by Mr Elop, including the statements about the future of Nokia's Symbian, MeeGo and Windows Phone based smartphones.



I can report that effective immediately, Nokia shall halt the shipping of Lumia smartphones because of production errors and we will offer anyone who purchased a Lumia phone a full exchange voucher option if they would like to exchange their Lumia for another Nokia phone, at the same price as the customer has paid. The Lumia series is not ended, nor is Nokia's partnership with Microsoft, but these will be reviewed and decisions made about them in due time. It is clear, however, that the first four Lumia smartphones did not meet the standards that Nokia customers expect, and we apologize for that.



I am taking temporary control of Nokia in the interim while we search for a successor to Mr Elop. (The Nokia share price will spike strongly at this point, this would be the best news imaginable by US based investors of Nokia). I can tell you, that it is our intention to find a suitable CEO from the carrier/operator community, as the Board feels it would be in Nokia's best interest for Nokia to be run by a CEO who understands the needs of Nokia's customers intimately.



I can announce one decision about an immediate change. The Board has been impressed with the strong customer affection with our new N9 smartphone. I have instructed Nokia's factories to rush into production the N9 and N950 smartphones that run on Nokia's MeeGo operating system, and these will be made available in large volumes within the next three weeks in all countries. I can tell you that we have several other MeeGo based smartphones in the production pipeline and new MeeGo phones will be introduced before this year is over. Related to this decision, I am announcing that Nokia returns to the migration path strategy built around the Qt developer tools environment, which will support all platforms that Nokia will carry in the future. Further statements will come shortly about these changes. I will not be taking questions, that is all. Thank you.





If Jorma Ollila made that short speech, Nokia's share price would turn from falling to climbing. If Jorma Ollila made that short speech, and followed it up with short telephone calls to 20 biggest operator group CEOs, the Nokia sales boycott is over. Jorma Ollila is trusted within the telecoms industry like no other so if he personally calls the top guys after that speech in public, they will give Nokia the benefit of the doubt. When the carriers hear that the hated Microsoft Muppet has been ejected from Espoo, and that even better, the new CEO will be hired from the carrier community, they will thank Jorma and they will promise him full support. The boycott will be over the very next day within that given carrier group and its hundreds of millions of subscribers.



There is nothing wrong with the handsets (apart from the Lumia series). There is nothing wrong with the promotion. There is nothing wrong with Nokia pricing. The problem is a global carrier revolt against Nokia and its Microsoft strategy and the CEO they no longer trust. If the boycott continues, Nokia dies. As long as the current strategy stands and Elop is in charge, the boycott continues. But the boycott can be stopped in one speech and one day of phone calls. And if Nokia launches the N9 and N950 in every market now, the smartphone unit will return to profits already during calendar Quarter 2, yes, by June 30th.



WHAT DOES TOMI KNOW?



I am the most accurate forecaster of the mobile telecoms industry. My forecasts are quoted in dozens of books and in major press like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Business Week etc. So what do I know about Nokia. When Stephen Elop announced his mad Microsoft strategy on 11 February, this is how I forecasted only four days later, how Nokia would end the year 2011. This was my forecast for Q4, 2011:



TOMI FORECAST MADE FEB 15, FOR Q4 2011



Nokia Q4 2011 forecast: Smartphone units sold 17.0M, Market Share 12.0%, Nokia revenues 2.0B Euro



NOKIA ACTUAL PERFORMANCE Q4 2011



Nokia Q4 2011 actual: Smartphone units sold 19.6M, Market Share 12.6%, Nokia revenues 2.5B Euro*



* revenues from actual handset sales, the Microsoft bonus payment not counted in smartphone actual sales revenues, it is an accounting gimmick and should be reflected in corporate Nokia income, not handset sales.



Considering that Nokia all numbers were growing by the latest info available on February 15, that I was within about 20% of each of those key metrics, correctly forecasting the immense scale of the collapse, is very accurate in terms of forecasting. I also accurately forecasted in February that Nokia's smartphone unit would become unprofitable, and all of Nokia corporation would become unprofitable due to this severe decline in a traditional Nokia profit engine. You will not find anyone else who forecasted in February 2011, that Nokia's 2011 market share would end at 12.6%. There were many ridiculous forecasts promising high market shares above 20% etc. The only other remarkably accurate forecast from February 2011 was Horace Dediu whose Q4 2011 forecasted number was 21 million Nokia smartphones sold. He was widely accused of being too pessimstic about Nokia in the year 2011.



What of now, Q1 of 2012? Could anyone have foreseen that Nokia could have it now this bad? Is Elop truly a victim of unforeseen circumstances, or is it conceivable that some forecasters saw this level of plight, last year. This is my forecast for Q1 of 2012, which I gave as a detailed quarterly forecast for years 2012 and 2013, that I made on 27 July, 2011.



TOMI FORECAST MADE JULY 27, FOR Q1 2012



Nokia Q1 2012 forecast: Smartphone units sold 11.0M, Market Share 7.0%, Nokia revenues 1.9B US dollars



NOKIA ACTUAL PERFORMANCE Q4 2011

Nokia Q1 2012 forecast: Smartphone units sold 11.9M, Market Share 7.0%, Nokia revenues 1.95B US Dollars*



* again the Microsoft bonus payment is excluded as it is not paid by the actual customers of Nokia.



That is as near perfection as you can hope for, in a forecast made 9 months into the future! I am within 10% on each of these metrics. I also made a 'best case' projection on how much Nokia can 'at best' migrate to Windows Phone based Lumia smartphones in this Q1, where I correctly forecasted that the Lumia sales will commence in Q4 of 2011. I said best case would be 4 million Lumia sales now. Obviously Nokia only managed half that, at 2 million. I also said in my best case scenario, that under optimal conditions, Nokia's loss-making would be resolved by excellent management by Q4, and now Nokia would report a miniscule 2.3% profit margin in smartphones and generate a 43 million dollar profit. Obviously the reality was not as rosy as my 'best case' scenario, Nokia generated massive losses, when the Microsoft bonus is removed, Nokia's smartphone handset unit generated a quarterly loss of 638 million dollars. And again, the next most accurate forecaster of Nokia Q1 2012 quarterly smartphone sales was Horace Dediu, whose Q1 forecast was 10% market share. There are others, utterly mad forecasters who suggested Nokia would have 28% market share this year.



You may freely think that Tomi is a lunatic who doesn't know what he is saying or writing. But I record all my projections and forecasts in writing in my 12 books and on this blog and in various other writing I do. I have chaired the industry's forecasting conferences since 1997. I regularly have plenty of discussion about my forecasts. They are often widely referenced so I have no way of trying to doctor them afterwards to try to make me 'look good'. I also am known for announcing in public EVERY TIME one of my forecasts has been wrong. I do that immediately as a matter of professional integrity and pride. (how many other forecasters bother to do that, or even admit they have been wrong). Please feel free to go read those forecasts and the dozens of comments in the threads. And I ask you, can you find anyone else who so accurately projected in February, Nokia's exact unit sales, market share and revenues for the end of the year 2011, and again, projected in July of last year, the exact unit sales, market share and revenues for now, Q1, 2012. I do know what I am doing. When I say Nokia current path is certain road to doom, and also that it is possible for Nokia to be saved, I truly do know what I am talking about.



That is what needs to be done. Now. If you still have some passion to understand Nokia's plight, and what it takes and where there are problems, I have one more piece of analysis after the fold here. But you need not go there if you wanted to see how to save Nokia. What comes after the fold now, is the regional implications, why and how can Nokia recover in each of the four major regions of smartphone sales ie USA, China, Europe and Rest of World regions.



FOLLOW-UP on April 24, I wrote a follow-up on why now, this path has become a Certain Road to Death for Nokia. (but this story about how to fix Nokia still continues here, after the fold if you want the regional analysis)





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