“We are not on the defensive,” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President and CEO, Nokia said at the Nokia World 2009, held this week in Stuttgart, Germany. “We are on the offensive.”
I have always admired Nokia for its devices – My mom still uses her 3300 religiously (its 6+ years old phone by the way). Yes there is stiff competition ahead for Nokia. Competition is Good. Its understandable what Apple, RIM & Google are doing which has caused some grief for Nokia. Nokia’s hardware still rocks – believe me my phone has taken so much of beating that other phones normally give up.
We are putting a relatively big part of our future into the hands of third-party developers because this is the only way we can be relevant to consumers – Niklas Savander, the head of Nokia’s mobile internet services unit
- That’s a brilliant strategy.
There are loads of things which need to change from within for Nokia, here are few which came to my mind when I was watching the NokiaWorld event:
- Though I appreciate that not all devices are made equal there should not be too much diversification – this is killing Developers productivity. – S40 . S60 & Maemo
- Keep all the devices up-to date all the time. – Learn from RIM, Apple & Google – they do an excellent job. – Don’t forget your older customers just because they did not buy a new device from you year over year.
- Use the same firmware across the devices using the same platform – firmware releases should be portable – For example firmware for devices using S60 such as E90/E71… /N95/N97 should be *almost* the same – yes it can be done.
- Promote interoperability, if you want developers to develop for different platforms you have to help them do it. We really don’t have large teams like the ones you do. Java still rocks in this respect – provide more functionality and improve it.
- Yes, you might argue that Qt would be better than Java – but with all due respect finding a Java developer is much easier than one with C/C++ skillset – I hope you are aware of that. – I like the fact that Google uses Java as its language for development on Android – its a good strategy.
- Thanks for the OVI SDK – it looks awesome – In general we developers would want to develop a software which can be as portable across more manufacturers; not just Nokia. I would love to get more comments on this from other developers.
- Work with other players – please – collaboration with your competition in few aspects does provide good results.
- Get the top-management to follow and read the posts on Nokia’s hardware / software – its very important that they get the feel for what’s happening.
If any mobile developers do read this, please do keep me in the loop as to what you think about it.
I would love Nokia to read this… feel free to forward it across the board.
