Interesting read about Nokia from BetaNews.com

'At Nokia's annual meeting yesterday, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo vowed to change the business model of the world's leading mobile phone maker, to make it, in his words, "more like an Internet company."

"Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an Internet company," Kallasvuo told Nokia shareholders yesterday. "Companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with. Make no mistake. We are taking on these challenges seriously and aggressively."'

More: http://www.betanews.com/article/Noki...any/1210351935

TRANSLATION:
"We think the cellular market is already very saturated, this mobile Web 2.0 thing sounds like it's priming up to be the next cash cow for the foreseeable future."

...

"We've a backburner project already underway trying to tap into the opensauce community, milking their development resources for very little investment on our part. It will be ready to be harvested soon."

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to put a label on top of my b.s. translation =D

Where is this quote from?

Probably just a translation from bulls^H^H^H^H^Hbusiness-speak to plain language.

Hello, I think this forum is a poom because I have to make my message longer.

Nokia actually had a big event last year where they outlined their internet plans. It's definitely more than just talk, they've put down $8 billion to buy the mapping company Navteq (which is still going through the regulators), and over the past few years they've also bought up other service companies like Twango, Smart2Go and Sega's online gaming division. They've launched a new brand called Ovi ("door" in Finnish) which will eventually provide a unified log-in to their existing file-sharing, mapping, music, gaming and other services.

If you want an explanation why they are doing this, here's my take:

Nokia is almost 150 years old as a company. It started out with wood products, then got into electrical cables when they became a hot new thing, then moved into tyres, rubber boots and electrical goods, then computers and modems, and most recently into mobile phones and pocket computers.

They've stayed profitable by reinventing themselves periodically, getting out of industries that are going stale and entering new industries that are just getting started. I think they're considering what to do after mobile phones go stale, which could happen in the next 10 or 20 years.

Phones aren't going away of course (electric cables and wood products didn't), but they're becoming increasingly difficult to make a large profit from because the prices are tumbling so quickly. The average sale price of a phone now is about 100 dollars, and that's the retail unlocked sim-free price without any subsidies from operators. You can now buy a mobile phone for about 40 dollars and a smartphone for about 200 dollars (again, all unsubsidised no-contract prices). If this trend continues the phone-making business will become almost entirely about cheap low-profit models which have every feature most people would ever want.

In short, I think Nokia talking about itself as an internet company now is premature, but it's a reflection of where they want to be if/when the phone industry goes stale.

Much sooner than that. The bulk of the market is cheap 20-40$ phones and Nokia already has difficulties to stay competitive compared to chinese manufacturers... no wonder when China, with a home market around a billion, is a bigger market than the US, Europe and Japan all together. The top of the market (smartphones) is evolving rapidly with Nokia sitting on a valuable but obsolete platform (symbian), an new competitors entering the market (Apple today, Chinese manufacturers tomorrow).