What really killed Nokia!!

It lost the positioning game!

The unimaginable happened and Nokia (in)famously got sold to Microsoft for a paltry $7 Billion approx. (at one time Nokia was worth more than 7 times to this, and close to its sale to Microsoft Whatsapp was sold to Facebook for about 19 billion, with none the physical assets, brand name and intellectual property)

It has happened before and it will happen again to famous names, seemingly impregnable brands.

But why it really happened?

Many reasons can be, and have been, cited as being the real reason, and to be frank, it may be the combination of all that but in my opinion the biggest culprit is the utter and complete positioning failure vis-à-vis Apple.

Nokia and its products were leading the segment and the industry. All was going well. Such a dominant position in the market, that it was almost a monopoly. Huge premiums on products were lapped up by the people. It had the positioning of anticipation, prestige, aspiration, rock-solid credibility, technology leadership in the minds of its customers.

Then it failed to protect it, in the wake of new kid on the block; Apple or should we say iPhone or perhaps smartphones.

Nokia made the classic Xerox arrogance mistake. The mistake of believing that the power of its products is from the power of the company! In fact it is always opposite – the power of company is derived from the power of positioning of its products in the minds of its audience.

Nokia products and by extension Nokia brand had a leadership positioning; it failed to protect it, it lost it…forever.

Yes Nokia did introduce competing and even better products later on but funny thing with positioning is that it has got nothing to do with you; it is always the perception of you in the minds of your customers.

What Nokia could have done..

The P&G Game

Multi-branding is what it possibly could have done. It should have taken a leaf out of P&G’s book. P&G plays the multi-branding game beautifully. Every time a competitor introduces a new product category, P&G introduces a new brand in the same category and since P&G brand name already enjoys leadership position, any brand associated with them is perceived as a leader in the category. Game is over before it even began. Game, Set and Match to P&G. Of course the product has to match the quality and standard expected by the customers.

It did it when washing powder were getting popular, P&G introduced Tide with positioning reinforcing marketing and we all know how Tide fared.

It again happened when a new category of Dishwasher detergent was introduced; P&G introduced Cascade and so on…

Nokia should have done the same, introduce a product under new brand name in the touchscreen smartphone category in the early days of iPhone and dovetail it nicely into already dominant Nokia brand positioning.

Not that Nokia did not have the technology; It had it 7 years before iPhone - Nuovo, formerly vice president and chief designer at Nokia, told the Wall Street Journal that Nokia had developed an iPhone-like device in 2002.

Now just imagine, Nokia at its peak popularity coming out with the new touchscreen phone with all the Nokia brand bell & whistles - sturdiness, battery backup, durability - along with the promise of same or close to iPhone experience. Which phone will you go for?

Case closed!