NOKIA&RIM DILEMMA
This Blog will be posted to a lot of sites as I seek to get the attention of Two Organisations, namely; Rim/Blackberry and Nokia.
The Buzz is that they are taking hard hits on their finances and are beginning to look bad to their investors. In fact I read a post that Citigroup has asked investors who have their money on Rim to withdraw and invest somewhere else. Secondly I also heard that Rim is letting go of a certain percentage of their staff because of the management shortcomings.
This is what I have to offer RIM & Nokia freely;
Prioritize NOKIA; I have a problem with the Nokia brand, because they have been in the market for a long time, sitting on their BRILLANT product brand, snoozing and snoring loudly, while Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile came into the market with a technology that could have been developed by them, and took the market away from them.
What they have lost, is an angle on the social media perspective, and will need a lot of work to gain lost ground. BUT, they still have a lot to offer in terms of developing new applications around existing CORE applications namely OviMaps, OviStore, PCSuite, OviPlayer etc.
Prioritize BLACKBERRY; Blackberry is offering a world service that benefits all the social media providers and forgot to develop CORE applications that will be a Unique Identifier for their Brand. While they are running around now, trying to remove their tails from their behind, they need to go back to the drawing board on their latest models. What is the use of Tablet if I have to have a bridge that enables my hand-held before I can use applications like the BBM, Maps, etc? They do not need new models in the market, they do not not need for them to be expensive (RIM is separate from Apple), they ABSOLUTELY should move their area of concentration away from USA, and they should reconsider their business SLA with banks like Citigroup, who rather than deploy their expert financial advisers, are doing more damage than the business needs for survival in the global Telecom/technology competitive market.
Location NOKIA & BLACKBERRY; these two providers need to analytically look at where their highest income/volume/value is coming from. Sad as it is to break this news to them, IT IS NOT THE US. 31% of Blackberry's income is from Africa. 5% of that are from other African Countries, the rest is from Nigeria. It is an enabling technology for the high trade and transaction volumes expended in the country. It is the fastest, sustainable and not-too expensive means of communication because of its allowance for chat, sms, and various call modules. Research shows that 100% of the high income earners use at least 2 Blackberry phones, 70% of the middle income earners use Blackberry as their fastest and most convenience means of communication, 30% of the low income earners, use Blackberry as a status symbol.
FOR NOKIA; the highest sales record ever was from Nigeria, but GUESS WHAT? They do not have a Licensed, Authorized, Nokia Company in the country. Their sales decline is a factor of the advent of Blackberry, HTC , Samsung Galaxy and a low percentage for iPhone.
Nokia needs to re-evaluate their position on not having the required presence, moderately priced phones, and applications that can compete with Blackberry BBM, AppWorld, etc.
My final analysis for these two Organisations, is that Yes the US is a developed first world country compared to the rest of the world. Yes they develop the technologies that we use in the developing regions, Yes they have the largest number of populace spread across their states and state-lines. All these should have been factors for Financial Dominance, but they are not. The end users are the most important factor to any business, any product and any growth. If your business is not with your end-users, then you may want to ask yourselves, what is your way forward.