Nokia Failing To Connect With U.S. Culture
Nokia's Ovi may not be over, but the ovi (Finnish for door) may be about to slam shut on its chances for real success in the U.S. market.
Not to discount Nokia's popularity throughout the world (it is still the world's leading handset maker by far), but its stumbles will do nothing to win it either the hearts of U.S. consumers hungry for mobile music and apps, nor the minds of developers already hard at work on applications built for the Android and iPhone operating systems. And while the company has more than enough resources to overcome false starts related to Ovi (its belated app store) and its Comes With Music service (delayed again until next year), the bigger problem is that it's trying to remedy the situation with poor medicine.
For starters, it has turned to Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart for direction. A Fast Company story documents the former rocker's unorthodox role with Nokia:
Stewart's function at Nokia is to connect the company to talent, opportunities, and new ideas. While not a staff employee, he has an official title: change agent. Stewart and [Nokia EVP Tero] Ojanperä were introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, in 2006, and Ojanperä was captivated by Stewart's unorthodox style. "We both connected very deeply around the idea that a cell phone is really just an empty shell," says Stewart. "And we also agreed that content is the seed." The two met for breakfast the next morning, and a day hasn't gone by since that they haven't communicated.I'm sure that's exactly what engineers at Nokia are looking for: another gasbag with ideas and no actual job.
Actually, I need to give Nokia props for at least trying original approaches to business. According to Craig Warren Smith, founder of consulting firm DigitalDivide.org, the company has been dabbling with a concept it calls "spiritual computing" since 2006, which at its simplest level means that companies that can better connect with customers by understanding what really matters to them, can win their loyalty more surely than any mere technology.
It's an approach that Nokia clearly believes in:
Last April, the company launched a program in India called Life Tools. For a fee of $1.30 a month, users can receive daily information about agriculture, education, and/or entertainment. In addition to cricket scores and Bollywood gossip, rural farmers get weather updates and daily crop prices from three of the closest markets.The problem for Nokia could be that American spirituality is best expressed by the iTunes Genius. But that's not really the case. It's really a problem of translation. For all its flaws, Apple represents a lot more than what Ojanperä disparages as "that fruit company in Cupertino." It has managed to maintain an underdog image (heck, it once was the underdog) while crushing every other MP3 maker and transforming itself into the envy of the smartphone world, and it has created a virtuous cycle, tempting the developers of applications that drive its success with rewards beyond imagining (and often beyond earning) and using those applications to tempt ever more customers to pay for new devices.
But what greater indication of Nokia's misconception of U.S. culture than its choice of cultural ambassador? The company presents a face of caring and concern to the developing economies, but for the developed world-- Dave Stewart? Stewart and Ojanperä would like to transform Nokia into a full-fledged entertainment company, but haven't established the basics:
- great handsets (probably the easiest for Nokia to achieve);
- a coherent roadmap for the Symbian OS that developers can understand and plan for (which most feel is not currently the case);
- a user experience via Ovi that can at least rival iTunes (Nokia is still looking for someone to lead its Ovi business in the U.S.); and
- carrier subsidies (its N97 still doesn't have one).
[Image source: fsse8info via Flickr]