Corporate battles are always interesting to watch. If they are happening between the best of the big companies with strong personalities , there is no void of fun.
One such battles which seems to be heating up is that between Nokia and Apple. To be precise this is round # 3. Apparently Nokia has some arrangements with 40 odd companies which use Nokia technologies in some form or other and Apple hasnt done so. Leaving the outcome to the on or off the court settlements, is it a right strategic move from Nokia at a time where they are losing money big time?
Though still a leader in the mobile market, Nokia has lost grounds to RIM (blackberry) and to Apple (iPhone) for the last couple of years. The smartphone market is a highend market with higher profitability (Apple made 1+billion in profits last year with iPhone) and Nokia is still struggling to captivate the minds of smartphone users.
Whilst RIM has captured the Exec User segment, Apple has captured the popular user segments. With new entrant of the Android Operating system from Google, this war is going to get even more intense and nasty. The smart phone market is on its way to heat up even more and it could soon reach a point where the price-war starts between the major players, once the features across the phone are more or less similar (iPhone, BB Storm and HTC/Android, Motorola ) .
Nokia with its inability to comeup with something which could capture the market share, has resorted to the game of distracting Apple and making it lose its resources over the legal landmine battle and eventual off-the-court settlement.
In my opinion this is going to take a significant management attention from Nokia (esp if Apple decides to play hardball) and could lead to deadly spiral, unless Nokia uses this as a distraction attempt before it launches its stunner iPhone killer.
Lets keep watching
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