The Smartphone Wars: Tomi Ahonen carpet-bombs Stephen Elop
<p>The best strategic analysis of Nokia&#8217;s parlous position I&#8217;ve ever seen comes to us from ex-Nokia-executive and longtime company-watcher Tomi Ahonen: <a href="http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/07/the-sun-tzu-of-nokisoftian-microkia-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-whose-the-baddest-of-them-all-waterloo.html">The Sun Tzu of Nokisoftian Microkia</a>.  It&#8217;s thorough, entertainingly written, and includes some instructive diversions into military history.</p>
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<p>It&#8217;s long and really can&#8217;t be summarized well &#8211; you need to plow through Ahonen&#8217;s detailed analyses of things like the impact of Microsoft&#8217;s Skype purchase on Nokia&#8217;s carrier relationships to understand how royally Elop has screwed the pooch. </p>
<p>I see only one thing that I think Ahonen gets wrong.  I think he is too complacent about what the actual medium-term prospects for Symbian were at the time Elop took the helm at Nokia; he understimates the speed of transition to smartphones and overestimates the stickiness of Symbian as a platform under that pressure.</p>
<p>Thus, I think Ahonen&#8217;s evaluation that Elop&#8217;s &#8220;Burning Platforms&#8221; memo wasn&#8217;t diagnosing a real problem is incorrect. On everything else, though, his indictment of Elop seems dead on target. He persuades me that Elop&#8217;s later blunders (beginning with tying Nokia to the Windows phone) were even larger and stupider than I thought at the time.</p>
<p>This essay changes my mind about something significant. I thought at the time of the Burning Platforms memo that Nokia&#8217;s best move would have been to ride the Android tide, that MeeGo was a noble but doomed effort that could never have gained any traction.  Ahonen does a good job of arguing that Nokia had the marketing reach and good carrier relationships needed to make MeeGo seriously competitive. This, in retrospect, makes Nokia&#8217;s cancellation of MeeGo seem like even more of a tragic blunder than it did at the time.</p>
<p>Yes, I know that some Nokia alumni have just launched a MeeGo startup aimed at making it competitive on smartphones.  I wish them every bit of luck, but they <em>don&#8217;t</em> have the co-factors for success that Ahonen ably describes, so I cannot think much of their chances.</p>
<p>Finally&#8230;who knew Ahonen was so well-versed in military history?  That&#8217;s something I know more than a little about myself, and I&#8217;m here to certify that where my knowledge overlaps with his I find his command of facts excellent, and his judgment sound and incisive. Thus, I&#8217;m going to go read up on the Battle of Suomussalmi sometime soon.</p>
