strategy

Microsoft strategy success: Nokia no more

Albert Zenkoff

Now it should be painfully obvious to everyone that the long-term strategic plan of Microsoft to bring down and absorb Nokia worked. Many years of hard work by high-profile managers and large investments are finally set to bring home profit for Microsoft.

Now that Nokia is bought by Microsoft, Microsoft can finally make the mobile devices that are, well, mobile devices. They will have the technology, the market, and the people. Unfortunately, they still have to make it all work. They still may run this very successful business of Nokia into the ground. And there is a high chance they will.

There was a time when I was wondering if it was just a Microsoft venture, or a joint venture by Microsoft and Samsung. Actually, no, I would not go as far as to say it is all clear now. We will see how things pan out.

The hole in the market remains though and the market share of Nokia is still up to grabs. The biggest problem is really the patent pool. This is the time when you wish there were no such things as patents. The market could flood with new and exciting mobile phones now if …
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Of “digital piracy”…

Albert Zenkoff

Wasn’t I saying it all along? The net result of abandoning DRM (Digital Rights Management) would be positive for most companies. Various studies show this again and again from different perspectives. This time it is a behavioral study of an Oxford economist Karen Croxson discussing the potential customer behavior and result of the piracy on the net sales. And the conclusion is still same: piracy does not hurt sales, even helps sometimes.

Really, if one abandons DRM and lets go of the piracy hype, the result must be positive. Here is the list of things to consider:

  1. The customers that buy your product would buy it anyway.
  2. The customers that would not be buying your product will not buy it anyway
  3. The customers that are influenced by the “ease to copy” and decide to copy instead of buying are extremely marginal in number.
  4. The experience with your product, the rumors, the hype, the word-of-mouth advertisement would generate many more customers than you might lose in the previous category.
  5. Customers loyal to you are not annoyed by your silly DRM schemes.
  6. You do not need to waste money and time on the DRM.
  7. People who spent time breaking your DRM schemes
…
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