Death by a thousand cuts

The launch of a netbook is frankly absurd for a company that should be focusing on getting its services offerings right. The recent string of lacklustre handsets and umbilical connection to Symbian are death by a thousand cuts for the company, and the lack of innovation is now disappointing.

My advice to Nokia - first fix (and rename) Ovi and start to think as service providers instead of engineers. Otherwise get out of the services game altogether.

As anyone that has attempted to use Ovi can confirm, Ovi is a mash of offerings that do not really work and have no true target audience. Nokia has spent (I would say invested, but that would be giving it more credit than it is due) a considerable sum of money to bring together a bunch of technologies and tried to create a global service for every handset in every hand on Earth.

Why did MOSH get sucked through the OVI?

I look back at the early experiments that Nokia did with MOSH and think that they missed a trick. MOSH was a grass-roots attempt to build a social media service for a particular demographic. Instead of keeping it distinct and letting it "go wild", they tamed it and sucked it through the Ovi. The question is, "WHY?". Probably, because an accountant thought that it would save a Euro or two.

What pains me is when I look at Nokia, I see a wealth of opportunities. It is, de facto, the most successful mobile handset producer in the world and has logistical prowess that almost every other company envies. It has hundreds of millions of loyal handset users. It has a truly worldwide presence. It has more talent that most companies and it is fanatical about incremental improvement. In fact, it has all of the ingredients for a totally successful global services business....but somehow, they are missing the "Chef Ramsay" factor.

What is the killer recipe?

So, my friends, what would I do if I had the chance to run the services business in Nokia? I am not claiming to be Chef Ramsay, but using his approach I would keep it simple and play to core strengths.

How would I (or he) do this?

• Deep clean the kitchen - get rid of rotten ingredients and spring clean the organisation. This is not about reorganisation, it is about making sure that the facilities, skills and tools you have are the right ones 
• Reduce the items on the menu - I would focus all my application development efforts on creating the most advanced, easy-to-use browser possible. All other applications are just noise. 
• Have ONE thing you are known for - I would kill the concept of "syncing" - I have a connected device - it should be "live". 
• Focus on the customer - Forego the brand on occassions to give consumers the choice of the supplier they want to use (carrier or device manufacturer) 

If they did this, Nokia would, in one swoop, change the focus of the company from an on-device experience, to an on-web experience. Right now, they are straddling - and straddling is not good. Live devices, mean live services. Customer choice means having to offer something more than the generic and focusing on the one thing that makes you famous will have customers flocking to you.

So, dear readers, if it were you, what would you advise Nokia to do?