Nostradoofus

Nokia signs €500 million loan for Symbian R&D – Engadget, Feb 18 2009

Er, Symbian is a 10-year failed effort with low installed base and no market power.  Some perfectly good mobile operating systems are available free, right now.  Why on earth would one spend half a billion on something with no economic value?

The information technology strategy playbook is quite clear on what to do in this situation.  Once you are losing with a closed standard, you never catch up.  You are certain to lose.  If you are certain to lose with a closed standard, immediately embrace an open standard.  This lowers your costs and helps prevent rivals from winning with a closed standard.

This has been widely understood for at least 10 years.  What can they be thinking?

—

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Web Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.