Nokia Siemens Networks and mobile phones unit do not seem to have any synergy anymore so NSN needs should be either listed or sold to a competitor. This is obvious and likely will happen.
Secondly, while Nokia Maps is a cool app and very useful, developing it and the map asset costs and is a complex operation. Location & Commerce -unit is not really producing a lot of profit. The unit made a solid 41 million euro operating profit (non-IFRS) with 283 million euro revenue in Q2/2012, but I suspect that the "profit" was mostly achieved with internal accounting. When Nokia sells a device with Maps, L&C gets "money". Also, the main competitor, TomTom is not looking good. Last year it made a loss of 434 million euros. Mapping is not a strong growth business and smaller companies like Yelp seem to be the real innovators in mapping based services.
I'd sell the whole unit and would just license the data for the phones from wherever it can be obtained the cheapest. Since map -asset clearly has value, selling the unit should be relatively easy and should help Nokia in this transition period, where running out of cash has seen as a one major threat and even Nokia's credit rating has been downgraded to junk status.
Windows Phone gave Nokia a modern OS and support payments from Microsoft. I'm sure WP8 will be a nice, but I have concerns. Android's openness and popularity practically guarantees that it enjoys way wider hardware support than any other platform can get. I think success of Samsung's Galaxy SIII shows that competing with cutting edge hardware is possible and able to create huge profits. Also, since Microsofts approach has been Qualcomm only, Nokia is in mercy of single chipset producer. Due to the tight device specifications by MS (display resolution, etc.) this makes all the phones using WP pretty same in terms of hardware. From these I conclude that on the highest end devices WP -platform devices will not be competitive for a lot of the time. Android guys and Apple are in better positions to constantly push out devices with cutting edge HW. Android guys will have edge since HW vendors target them first and Apple will survive since it designs its own system-on-chips and thus is able to control all aspects it finds relevant. This is particulary bad since obviously in the high end the margins are best. For example Apple makes 73% of mobile industry profits with just 8.8% unit share.
The other issue I have with MS partnership is the example of PC world. Windows OEMs are not making good profits. Many of the old technology giants, like IBM, have pulled off from Windows PC business or are considering in pulling out like HP. Profit margins are razor thin. There is also a risk of Microsoft coming aggressively out with its own devices like is already happening with Surface -tablet. License for WP is only cheap now and would get a lot more expensive if the platform was success.
To combat the WP situation Nokia could either drop WP exclusive deal and adopt Android as additional OS or just focus on feature phones. Developing an own OS or choosing something else is no longer an option. It would just require too much time and money. My solution for short term would be just to focus on feature phones.
So far Nokia has done a really good job in Asha -series. They are selling in high volumes. In Q2/2012 almost 90% of phones Nokia sold are feature phones and compared to year over year Nokia even managed to increase sales of feature phones by 2%. In feature phones Nokia made 98 million Euros of operating profit and the latest cost cuts should improve that significantly. My educated guess is that after the latest cuts are in full effect in 2013 the profit will be between 150-200 million per quarter. In smart devices Nokia made operating loss and number of shipped devices shrunk by 39%. To me it makes more sense to focus now on the feature phone business that is low-margin, but sustainable, instead of making huge bets to high-risk smart phones business, where competition is fierce and Nokia's business is still in rapid decline while making huge losses.
Like everybody knows overall market of smart phones market is growing and feature market is either shrinking or stable at best. However, Nokia has been increasing its share in the feature phones. With its efficient logistics and own manufacturing capability I'm sure that Nokia could remain extremely competitive in feature phones also in future.
For the future, Nokia needs to make its feature phones smarter and nicer to use, while at the same time keeping them affordable. In reality there are a lot of people that do not need a smart phone as such, they just want a bit more service integration, internet capabilities, and nicer user interface than traditional feature phones have offered. This is already happening in Nokia's Asha -series. The devices are connected to the internet services we find most important.
What to do with smart phone unit then? "Sell it!" is my answer. MS probably would want to buy it. A lot of the Nokia Design has to be included in the deal. MS needs to create more desirable HW than it has done so far. Along with Smart Phones, MS may be interested in buying location and commerce.
My feature phone only Nokia would be a lot leaner company. Creating smart phones and services has been a distraction for the company and has required huge R&D resources and a lot of focus from the leadership. People have forgotten that one of the Nokia's biggest competitive edges has always been in logistics and operational efficiency. In practice these have meant that Nokia is almost only company that has been able to make profits in the cheapest phone segments. Ashas have already somewhat revitalized the feature phone business after what seemed like few years of neglect.
These would be only the first steps. After the company is clearly profitable, a new growth strategy is needed.
Bloomberg seems to mostly agree with me here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-21/nokia-s-39-phone-rebound-wins-more-time-for-comeback-bid.html