Comment by majormajor
2 years ago
Yeah, and it's not like Nokia was riding a winning streak in the pre-iPhone market. Nokia hadn't had a ubiquitous hit for several years - before the Razr, before the LG Chocolate, before the Blackberry, etc.
They could have probably produced better hardware than the other Android makers - the N9 and first Lumias were very nice devices to hold and use - but they weren't exactly coming in with a ton of momentum in the market.
I think you speak from a US perspective. Nokia phones were absolutely ubiquitous in other parts of the world, way into the time of the Razr etc.. Even at the time this memo was written it Nokia still had around 25-30% market share IIRC.
Regarding the N9, it was released essentially without any marketing push, with very little availability (I think they didn't even get it into live stores, you had to order online). It was also released after the memo, so obviously only few people got it.
And the follow up to the N9 was already ready. The N9 was delayed for reasons, but the next phone was already up and both of those phones were positive margin and would have made money.