Nokia: Elop provokes new thinking; partnerships the way forward

As Nokia continues to lose market share--below 30 per cent for the first time since 2003, the company's new CEO, Stephen Elop, has told his management to look outside the company for innovation.

Robert Andersson, a senior Nokia VP responsible for alliances and business development, said that partnership would play an increasingly important role in the company achieving its objectives.

"We are no longer trying to make everything or buy everything--we are looking at partnering as a serious strategy," Andersson said. "Our new CEO has been really shaking us up and challenging us in a positive way to think from the outside in rather than from the inside out. This will result in opening up to outside innovation much more."

The company already has some major agreements in place--Microsoft for business software, Intel for the MeeGo platform and Yahoo! for mail and map services, but it would appear that Nokia now wants to extend this outside the wireless and PC world.

Andersson claims that m-commerce and m-health applications will be "trillions-of-dollar opportunities" that Nokia plans to exploit through partnerships. "The big opportunity is going to be partnering with the health-care industry, when companies like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline see that they have to transform as well," he said.

The exec hinted that its new partnership with US-based Intuit could lead to a significant announcement later this month. Intuit has technology that enables SMEs to deliver marketing messages to mobile users

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article

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