They owned their space in their time, nothing came close, and then, one day, times have changed and their product become obsolete. I don't blame them.
It's cool to sit on HN and think everyone should pivot on a yearly basis, but in reality it rarely happens for companies that big. It takes a lot of time and effort to change to course of a tanker ship, and when you're in position that you have a product that is precisely on point, competition can't touch you, the most reasonable thing to do is just not to fuck things up... and then it's too late. Sometimes. Most of the time it's the winning strategy.
Its difficult for leadership when you are already making billions to change ship, if you are the guy who proposes it, gets approval to work on it then executes and if the plan fails you are probably out of that cushy job.
They owned their space in their time, nothing came close, and then, one day, times have changed and their product become obsolete. I don't blame them.
It's cool to sit on HN and think everyone should pivot on a yearly basis, but in reality it rarely happens for companies that big. It takes a lot of time and effort to change to course of a tanker ship, and when you're in position that you have a product that is precisely on point, competition can't touch you, the most reasonable thing to do is just not to fuck things up... and then it's too late. Sometimes. Most of the time it's the winning strategy.
If anything, Nokia was distaster.