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Nokia's fall from the top of the world

Business & startups

Nokia's fall from the top of the world

12 min

Nokia sold more phones than anyone on Earth, then lost it all within a few years. Examine how the dominant player misread the smartphone shift and how quickly a seemingly unassailable lead can evaporate.

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Show notes

Nokia dominated the two thousand seven market with nearly fifty percent of all smartphone sales.

Managing fifty-seven incompatible versions of the Symbian operating system discouraged developers from building apps.

A culture of fear led middle managers to hide technical failures from Nokia executives.

The burning platform memo caused a sales collapse by prematurely announcing the end of Symbian.

Nokia's smartphone market share plummeted from thirty-four percent to three percent in just three years.

Microsoft eventually acquired Nokia's handset business for five point four billion euros.

In this episode

  1. 1Intro1 min
  2. 2The Peak of the Finnish Empire2 min
  3. 3The Software Blind Spot3 min
  4. 4The Matrix and the Culture of Fear3 min
  5. 5The Burning Platform and the End2 min
  6. 6Outro1 min

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Nokia's fall from the top of the world — Fylom