Corporations can adapt to change. Nokia.
Three years ago I foresaw Nokia problems. They had no vision and they were producing lots of similar, crappy, unusable and confusing products. The only innovations they were introducing were bigger screens and camera integration with awful user interfaces. People accepted all those devices because they the best thing available even if they sucked badly. The technology was there to make something better but they just missed it.
When Apple introduced the IPhone it was clear where the market was headed. The future of the mobile computing was in simpler, better engineered devices with usability in mind, not features. The IPhone was what the people really wanted. Today, the Iphone, one single device has a big piece of the market and the most interesting thing is that it has never been marketed as a business tool but a cool personal device.
My prediction was totally on it’s way. Nokia was sleeping and dying slowly. Until now. The most interesting pitch I attended on the last GSMA was given by a Nokia VP in which he was introducing the Nokia Store, explaining why they bought symbian just to offer it to public domain, why they also bought Trolltech for the QT technology and their vision of the future mobile computing.
All of that means a 180 degrees turn on Nokia’s strategy. They have a new paradigm and they now embraces a more open way of develop software for their devices. Nokia is full of bright people and they will probably be heading again the innovation in our industry in a couple of years.
This change has tough me that even big corporations are flexible enough to be able to adapt to changes on time. Something similar is happening on Microsoft. They have been a lot of years ignoring and looking down on Open Source initiatives. Now we are in the middle of an economic storm and they are losing market share and the corporation is changing fast to a friendlier approach to Linux and open source.
The world changes, and the companies that are not willing to adapt dissapear.