American History X

XIn recent years, Nokia, the world's leading producer of mobile phones, had seen its market share and profits eroded by rival products such as Apple's iPhone and phones featuring Google's Android operating system. To correct the company's course and improve its competitive position it has been decided to make new global mobile ecosystem in partnership with Microsoft. According to strategic plan Windows would serve as Nokia’s smartphone platform.

Nokia is going to compete in the market for smartphones and operating system platforms. For identifying potential competitors at this market we have just determined between which products a consumer makes a choice when buying a smartphone. Nokia would compete with Samsung, Motorola Mobility, Ericsson, Apple, RIM, LG; Windows OS competes with Symbian, Apple iOS, Android, Blackberry OS.

We have analyzed Nokia’s performance from 2007 to 2011 (we suppose that now we are at the beginning of 2012) and its internal and external environment. Results are provided in the table below.

Table 1. SWOT-analysis.

Strengths

Weaknesses

brand name and customers’ loyalty

Opportunities

Threats

investing in emerging markets

strong competition for market share

The source of information: case study analysis.

So, we can conclude that

2. Problem.

Nokia’s CFO estimated that it is necessary to attract USD 5.6 billion (equivalent to EUR 4.3 billion) to finance the strategic plan. There are four potential sources of financing for