When tech companies fall, they fall hard.
Anyone remember Data General? Wang? Silicon Graphics? Sun? They rise quickly to great heights, until they appear to be enormous institutions, then they fall as fast as they rose.
It's modern corporate evolution, one reason why you need to build a career on your own brand, never expect an employer to maintain one for you.
Nokia is now going down that same road. When phones were based on Real Time Operating Systems, Nokia was king of the hill. No one made as much from so-called “feature phones,” because Nokia had all the carriers locked-up, it owned the OS, and costs were outsourced, under control.
What happened? The iPhone happened. Then Google Android happened. Apple defined a new space, a hand-held Internet terminal, and when Nokia didn't respond to that Google created an open source version of the concept that took all Nokia's business away from it.
Critics may bemoan the decision by Stephen Elop to hitch his wagon to ex-employer Microsoft's star, but it was either that or drown fast.
The only savior for Nokia now is for Microsoft to take the market position Google presently has in the market. For Microsoft to do that it must break Google's relations with Taiwanese OEMs, the people who make what everyone else says.
More soon at Seeking Alpha.
