More than a decade ago, Nokia’s chief executives and visionaries chaired meetings and delivered presentations as to exactly what they predicted the future would hold for mobile phone and mobile internet facilities.
Almost eight years before the first iPhone made an appearance, the boffins at Nokia were showcasing mockups of touchscreen devices as slender as can be, with no more than a single physical button at the bottom. They showed the device as being able to play videos, games and access to the web to find information including directions and restaurant details.
The First Tablet
Most surprising of all however is the fact that Nokia invested extensive efforts in a project long before the year 2000, which concerned a large touchscreen device with a wireless internet connection – or what we would now call a tablet PC.
Whichever way you look at it, Nokia was way ahead of its time in terms of vision and future projections.
The disappointing news however is of course the fact that neither of the devices ever saw the light of day, as Nokia continued to favor entirely less revolutionary or seemingly ‘safe’ products, rather than leading any particular field in innovation. Nokia was at the forefront of the drive toward a wireless world in terms of calling, texting and basic internet features during the 90s, though as the world now moves deeper and deeper into the age of the high-end Smartphone, the company is having to scramble to stay afloat and thousands of workers have already been given the boot.
End of an Era
2012 will mark one of the most tragic years in the Finnish group’s long history, having said goodbye to its 14 consecutive years at the very top of the mobile phone supply tables and taken second place behind Samsung. Nokia’s market share has plummeted by almost half since its near 41% peak in 2007 – now coming out at just 21%.
Despite having invested upwards of $40 billion over the past ten years on development of new products and research – quadruple the amount spent by Apple – they have been unable to bring anything to the market with the potential to restore the company’s former glory. They had the vision, they had the resources, they had the consumer support and they had the cash, so where on Earth did it all go so wrong?
Misguided Efforts
The simple answer may be that Nokia was incredibly misguided when it came to efforts to launch its own Smartphone operating systems – both of which are now redundant – and scoring so many patents that their total value now makes up the lion’s share of the company as a whole.
This represents a staggering amount of money that could have instead been invested directly in the production of next-generation handset using already market-leading OS platforms, leading to a situation where Nokia may now have to begin cashing in on its most valuable assets simply in order to remain afloat.
Shared Woes
Cold comfort as it may be, Nokia is joined in its plight in the cut-throat mobile phone market by RIM, the Canadian group responsible for the BlackBerry which according to some is already in a death spiral. However, while RIM was seemingly unable to stand up to the likes of Apple and Samsung in terms of vision, Nokia beat each and every Smartphone maker to the punch with its own ambitious plans, but for some reason chose not to being them to life.
RIM however seems to be faring considerably worse than Nokia at present, having lost no less than 90% of its total global value since 2007.
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