

7 Ways Nokia Can Win Again - p0ppe
http://www.arcticstartup.com/2010/06/18/7-ways-nokia-can-win-again

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edster
Kind of a fluff article, but I'll take the bait.

1\. Fragmentation: Given Nokia's "Strong" 44% marketshare, even splitting up
the share into three different OS equally would mean 15% each, or about the
size of iPhone and Android share. Big enough that developers would target it
if there was any interest.

2\. Startups: The old throw a bucket a money at the problem to make it go
away. Give developers a good business proposition and they will create
products. Whether it's direct investment or potential upside based on revenue
sharing and mass market doesn't matter.

3\. Games: I don't know about the statement that big IP games aren't being
created for iPhone. I would dispute that. Nokia had a huge lead in mobile
games that they squandered.

4\. Make a better store: I think a differentiator would be a curated store and
a side loading option. This is a good point

5\. Create evangelists: Sorry, but Jobs isn't an evangelist for Apple, John
Gruber is. Creating fake evangelists is just a way of saying astroturfing.
Evangelists are created for free by offering something compelling to
evangelize.

6\. Rebuild trust: You can't send out a press release saying you are now
developer friendly. It needs to be proven through action.

7\. Be more humble: Cause Apple is known for being humble! Developers want to
know they can make money, customers want their product to be reliable and fun.
Nothing else really matters.

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rbanffy
> Big enough that developers would target it if there was any interest.

I think it's not about size, but potential growth. Nokia's two platforms will
remain limited. Nokia's 44% share is not in the smartphone segment, IIRC.
Having 99.9% of the featurephones means very little for those who write apps
for smartphones.

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rbanffy
I suggest one way: get rid of Symbian and embrace Android, track it closely
making the phones upgradable to the latest possible release they can run
(reducing platform fragmentation) and keep launching excellent hardware like
Nokia always did. Everybody changes phones every couple years - as long as
there are nicer, more capable ones.

Symbian is a dead-end. It runs on smaller, simpler and cheaper phones, but
those are not the future.

Obviously nobody in a position to make such decision reads HN, so, this is a
pointless exercise. But someone had to say it.

~~~
carmen
X is the great leveler of UI. any toolkit can be used. likewise, any app can
control/talk-to any other app in any language with DBUS. this is the diversity
that only Nokia and OpenMoko managed to ship.

~~~
rbanffy
I am not sure diversity of tools is key to survival in this space. Android is
proving very successful right now and does not even include X.
<http://soundcloud.com/unaudible> Nokia will not be able to achieve critical
developer mass faster than Android and will soon be unable to compete.

