Nokia Two-Pronged Approach in the 21st Century

Mobile communications developed along two broad fronts during the first years of the century, both of which played to Nokia's advantage, ensuring that the company remained the leader of its industry. The evolution of handsets into multimedia devices ushered in by 3G technology meant that Nokia could continue to rely on marketing expensive, sophisticated handsets. The days of the $500 Nokia phone gave way to the days of increasingly more expensive phones, such as the Nokia N90, a unit featuring a camera with Carl Zeiss optics, video-recording capabilities, and Internet access. Nokia could count on a substantial share of the high end of the market, a segment that continued to thrive midway through the decade, but the company's greatest strength was in the lower end of the market. In countries such as China, Brazil, and India there was a tremendous demand for inexpensive mobile phones, with analysts expecting 50 percent of the one billion handsets sold between 2005 and 2010 to be sold in developing economies. Industry observers believed there were only two companies in the world that could seriously compete for the estimated 800-million-unit-per year market for inexpensive handsets: Motorola and Nokia. Rivals such as Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG Electronics preferred to confine their activities to the high end of the market, while emerging low-cost producers lacked the manufacturing efficiencies enjoyed by Nokia and Motorola.

Against the backdrop of favorable market trends supporting Nokia's entrenched position, the company experienced a rare event in its modern history: a change in leadership. After a decade-and-a-half at the helm, CEO Ollila announced his retirement, effective June 2006. His replacement was a 25-year Nokia veteran named Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, a lawyer by training whom Fortune, in that magazine's October 31, 2005 issue, described as so taciturn that "he can seem like an extra from an Ingmar Bergman movie."

Kallasvuo, who was promoted from his position as the head of the handset division, inherited an impressively capable company whose greatest challenge was contending with Motorola for the low end of the market and beating back competitors for control of the high end of the market. "Nokia is a dynamic company in a fast-changing and fluid environment," Kallasvuo said in a November 29, 2005 interview with the South China Morning Post. "I look forward to working together with our team to help Nokia shape the future of mobile communications at a pivotal time for the industry."