Case Study Of Nokia

It was 22nd April 2008.

Two and a half years into Apple’s iTune Music Store dominating the global market, Nokia is finally challenging its status quo. This day saw Nokia Music Store opening its door to music lovers in Australia – the eighth media store after Britain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Finland, The Netherlands and Singapore. The Nokia Music Store contains millions of tracks from both global and local artists and users will be able to download songs to their computer supported by Windows XP or Vistas PC and transfer them to their mobile phones be it Nokia or other brands7. Songs can also be downloaded directly to specific Nokia mobiles such as the N81 and N827. More importantly, the service allows users to download unlimited number of tracks with a $10 monthly subscription fee7.

Apart from the music store, other innovation initiatives by Nokia include three new phones to be launched in the third Quarter of 2008 in Asia – the Nokia 6600 fold, 6600 slide, and 3600 slide10. These phones come with facial contours, tap-sensitive response, and background noise cancellation10. Other features include an integrated Maps application which holds more than 15 million points of interest, autofocus camera, and the ability to connect to television sets10. Nokia has also launched a series of high-end fashionable mobile phones under Vertu and L'Amour label that come with sapphire crystals, polished ceramics keypads, gold and stainless steel housings, and diamond and leather ascents to cater to the fashion-conscious consumers9.

Background

Nokia started in 1865 in Finland16. Throughout the nineteenth century to late twentieth century Nokia had its business in electric cable, rubber boots, tires, toilet paper and radio telephony utilities16. By the 1980s, Nokia was close to bankruptcy due to the collapse of the Soviet Union which was Finland’s main trading partner1. In 1992 Jorma Ollila became the President and CEO and decided to venture out of all its other businesses to focus on telecommunications systems and mobile phones16. Ollila is charismatic and entrepreneurial1. He saw the opportunities in mobile phones for the younger generations of the Nordic countries and decided to position Nokia to consumers in terms of functionality, design and performance1. This was at a time when Motorola, the leader in telecommunications was targeting at industrial, governmental and business users1. Nokia’s first GSM (Global System for mobile telecommunications) mobile phone was launched in 199216. Further break-through from Nokia was