The Rise and Fall of Nokia case study deas with the plight of the mobile device manufacturer over the years. Since its inception, the company was known in the mobile market and mobile manufacturing industry. Over the years, it was a strong market player in the telecommunications (telecom) industry. However, the release of other phone models by other manufacturers greatly impacted the company, something Nokia did not foresee. This case study looks into how the company could have possibly avoided the negative impact of the rise of the competition.
​Juan Alcacer, Tarun Khanna, Christine Snively
Harvard Business Review (714428-PDF-ENG)
January 06, 2014
Case questions answered:
- What do you understand to be the primary strategic decisions, positive or negative, made by the management of Nokia?
- For each item identified in number 1, what were the drivers that led them to make the decisions?
- Did the decision have a positive or a negative outcome?
- In the case of a positive outcome, provide an explanation as to why this was the case. For a negative outcome, identify what you would have done differently.
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The Rise and Fall of Nokia Case Answers
1. What do you understand to be the primary strategic decisions, positive or negative, made by the management of Nokia?
In the 1970s, Nokia started developing its own computers and released Mikro. More than a decade later, the company acquired the Swedish consumer electronics company Luxor AB.
In 2011, Nokia dropped its in-house operating system, Symbian, for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. Around two years later, the company announced the sale of its Devise and Services business to Microsoft for $7.2 billion. This action marked an end to Nokia’s once-great handset business.
During the years 1977-1988, Nokia conducted a series of mergers and acquisitions. In 1992, the company divested its data, forestry, and chemical businesses and launched the first mass-produced digital phones.
2. For each item identified in number 1, what were the drivers that led them to make the decisions?
Nokia started developing its own computers to get into the computer market. The company also acquired Luxor AB to grow its exports of wireless telecom networking terminals.
The move of Nokia to drop Symbian for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS was due to its complexity and Symbian’s difficult and unfriendly code structure. It took 22 months for a phone using that OS to be developed.
Eventually, Nokia sold its Devise and Services business to Microsoft to…
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