Nokia Phones: From a Total Success to a Total Fiasco: A Study on Why Nokia Eventually Failed to Connect People, and an Analysis of What the New Home of Nokia Phones Must Do to Succeed

Abstract

This research intensively reviews and analyzes the strategic management of technology at Nokia Corporation. Using traditional narrative literature review and secondary sources, we reviewed and analyzed the historical transformation of Nokia's core business, leadership strategies, business architecture, R&D policy, innovation strategy, product lunch, and smartphones recognition and demonstration. We identified various strategic gaps that the previous analytical studies seemingly have missed to identify and generalize. Therefore, we add to the literature a bundle of the lessons learned that chronologically explain how Nokia failed to create and sustain competitive advantages, particularly in the smartphone market. We concluded that the problem at Nokia was not the lack of innovation, but rather, it was the lack of a precise technology forecasting, and misunderstanding that the needs in smartphone market were not just about demonstrating a mobile phone that makes calls, texts and connects to the web, but also the platform that operates all these functions together. Since Nokia's brand name is recently back in the market through a newly licensed firm (HMD Global), we further discuss how likely the new Nokia's smartphones will possibly compete and plausibly succeed in a very well-established market.