Nokia ushered in a new era of their devices when the company introduced the Lumia handsets, and a major talking point was the fact that they ran on the Windows Phone operating system. However, the brand has not seen much success in regaining its lost market share and continues to lose pace as compared to some of its rivals such as Samsung and Apple. As per a report by Yle Uutiset, Nokia's board chairman, Risto Siilasmaa, has stated that the brand does have a back-up plan in place if the Windows Phone operating system fails to garner the company success.
As per the report, "Last month, Siilasmaa took the reins from longtime Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila, who spent 27 years of his life with the company. F-Secure founder Siilasmaa’s time at the helm has been one crisis after the other. Two weeks ago the company announced redundancy talks aimed at slashing its worldwide workforce by 10,000, with nearly 4,000 jobs to go in Finland. This week, Nokia’s share price sunk to its lowest level since Finland adopted the euro in 2001.”
Though it may appear that Nokia has put all their eggs in one basket by adopting Microsoft's platform, Siilasmaa has refuted this by claiming that the brand does own other business areas including location services, patent stock and network division, which is Nokia Siemens Networks. The report states, “According to Siilasmaa, Nokia has a contingency plan in place if the Windows 8 Phone fails to live up to expectations. But he said the company was confident that the product would be a success.” Siilasmaa has also stated that the Windows Phone platform was selected after Nokia critically studied the available options. He has also spoken on the Symbian operating system which has been declining steadily since 2008. He stated that the market share for Symbian has come down to close to zero.
The report states that since the launch of the iPhone five years ago, the share price of Nokia has dropped nearly 90 percent. The report states, "Analyst Mikael Rautanen at Inderes has added that, everyone knows that Nokia is in a crisis, which is hurting their brand. According to Rautanen, the sector is extremely dynamic, meaning things can turn around just as quickly as they go south. “One or two hit products can change everything. Industry analyst Hannu Rauhala of Pohjola Bank meanwhile said there was no certainty as to the success of the new Windows 8 operating system. “Investors are most concerned about Nokia’s burn rate,” he explained.”
As for the back-up plan, it's anyone’s guess as to what it could be, but it is highly unlikely that Nokia would use the Symbian platform for future gadgets. The other viable option would be the Android operating system. A report by CNET states, “Some observers think Nokia should have adopted Android in the first place, but Nokia felt differently, arguing that it's hard to stand out among the Android crowd. Still, if Windows Phone tanks, it's not inconceivable that Nokia could switch to Android. On one hand, Android is great and with Jelly Bean, it's just getting better. And on the other hand, what other choice is there?”
Let us know your thoughts about Nokia and their declining figures in the comments below.
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