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The Nokia Case: Fall and Rise

Multinationals do not always constitute a guarantee of permanent success, even though they are considered indestructible over time and avant-garde in terms of technological innovations.

This is the case of what happened a few years ago with the Finnish telecommunications nokia company, which, by not adapting to the most ambitious change in mobile telephony, which was the smartphone, was losing followers and their phones, which could do nothing against the competition, were being forgotten.

Although over time, Nokia managed to recover from that fall by finally adapting to market demand and demanding users by incorporating the Android operating system, it took several years after the shadows to be able to achieve it, until just two or three years ago its incipient The rise was noted with the launch of the first smartphones that, for the better, still retain the distinctive mark of strength and durability that catapulted the brand.

In this article, we tell you all the details of the fall and rise of Nokia, the company that was once a market leader and today retains a low profile alongside leading companies such as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei.

Story of a fall and rise.

It all started when in 2007, even when Nokia was still leading the world cell phone market, the first iPhone smartphone was launched, led by the prestigious Apple, which came not only to stay, but to unseat the Finnish giant that was beginning to sense its decline.

Faced with the stark prospect of an increasingly demanding market that fed unreachable competitors, the company decided to join forces with Microsoft to be able to cope with the operating systems that were already prevalent at that time with some chance.

But unfortunately, it became aware of this reality late because, like many companies with a long history, it resisted change. Nevertheless, he made the attempt by fighting.

In 2011, Nokia released the Nokia N9, with the MeeGo operating system. Then it also presented the first terminals of the Asha series, but clearly the Finnish giant was looking to bet harder as it warned that they were losing against other competitors that had already launched phones more advanced than the N and the Asha.

Examples of this uneven competition were the Android devices that Samsung and Sony Ericcson were already launching to capture the desire of users with an ever-increasing market share.

It was then that in that same year Nokia established a strategic alliance with Microsoft so that all the company's smartphones incorporated the Windows Phone operating system, leaving aside MeeGo and Symbian, except in the most basic models. Two years later, in 2013, Microsoft announced the purchase of mobile devices and the licensing of Nokia's patents under a global agreement.

From this strategic alliance, the Nokia Lumia series of smartphones was born, which had the Windows Phone operating system. But despite all the efforts between the two multinationals, the Nokia Lumia failed to charm consumers because the competition led by IOS and Android did not leave them room for maneuver.

So finally in 2014 Microsoft decided to stop the production of Windows Phones Lumia, once it understood that there was no point fighting against operating systems that were easier to use, faster and more efficient for users. Consequently, it announced the latest public version of Windows Phone 8.1.

 The bet on Android.

Due to Nokia's long history in the mobile phone market, it was not easy to overcome old preconceptions regarding preserving a certain distinctive brand of producing resistant phones of hard materials and with the classic keys.

That is why they rested on the laurels of success and did not see the flood of Android and IOS coming, which settled among the people to erase from their memory any remnant of past experience with that obsolete technology for the new digital age.

10 years have passed since the checkmate that iPhone and Android did to the proud Nokia. Ten years of bad decisions, of which the alliance with Microsoft was the worst of all. However, there was still a glimmer of hope on this path of darkness in which the Finnish giant had plunged. There was still the part that Microsoft had not bought, and that was its salvation.

Satya Nadella, Nokia's new CEO at the time (2015), did something very practical to give the Finnish company its once-in-a-lifetime prestige: he demolished everything Microsoft had built since it bought it, leaving almost no trace of it that failed alliance. He had understood that if he wanted to resurface as a brand and regain lost market share, he had to do something different, not go through the rubble.

In this way, he made the best decision he could to win back the public that had abandoned him: surrender to Android. And far from looking like a low risk act, it was the best decision because it was safe. Android then became the answer the company needed to resurface and become competitive again, and in 2017 the firm, together with HMD, launched the Nokia 6, the first mid-range smartphone to incorporate Android as an operating system.

Although initially it was only launched on the Chinese market, it was the company's most anticipated return to the mobile phone market. And it was not bad at all because the terminal was renewed in increasingly advanced devices.

 Nokia forever.

This history teaches us that no multinational is guaranteed success if the correct decisions are not made to stay current, which was precisely what Anssi Vanjoki, the CEO of the company during the early days of Android, did not do by sinning with pride and stubbornness by pretending success without betting on change.

Then the desperation not to go bankrupt prompted the company to ally with Microsoft - the worst of decisions - and launch very interesting phones but not what consumers wanted after flirting with Android and Apple, which shows that they made a Failed market study for uselessly believing that its buyer persona would continue to buy small phones with keys or poor imitations of smartphones without WhatsApp or application store to download for free and unlimited.

But as failures teach us to reinvent and improve ourselves, fortunately, Nokia reinvented itself when, keeping its design and resistant materials, it took advantage of Android to create very powerful phones that are gradually climbing positions in the market. And it is still Nokia, its quality phone essence was not diluted with Microsoft's fiddling.

In final words, this was the story of the fall and rise of Nokia, a multinational that had everything to be the best indefinitely, but bad decisions precipitated its failure just as the competition adopted Android to sink it further. But thinking about customers was what saved her, because her customers wanted Nokia with Android, and now they finally have it.