Mismanagement: The reason for Nokia's lackluster performance?

Nokia’s performance as a global mobile leader has been going under fire these days. Recently, Rick Cadden, the founder of the Symbian Guru web site has decided to stop updating the site out of frustration. Rick decided to buy an Android based Nexus One. Nokia’s Symbian platform hasn’t been evolving up to speed in comparison to it’s competitors like Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. A Twitter conversation between Eldar Murtazin and Jan Ole Suhr thinks mismanagement may be the reason for Nokia’s problems.

According to a Twitter conversation between Eldar Murtazin and Jan Ole Suhr, two mobile industry icons, the reason for Nokia’s poor performance has been mismanagement. Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) is a famous journalist that writes about the mobile industry and usually gets to try out mobile phones at an early phase in its development. While, Jan Ole Suhr (@janole) is the widely known developer of the great Symbian based Twitter app called Gravity.

The Twitter conversation all started from a tweet of Eldar – “Hope now no one will say that Nokia the same as 5 years ago. … ”

Jan responded to Eldar’s tweet with the question – “We’re all seeing what’s happening… Wonder if you’ve got insights why Symbian has been let down?”

Eldar’s short answer – “mismanagment from Nokia side if you want short answer ”

Jan went on by asking – “Deliberate mismanagment to push MeeGo or is MeeGo just another ‘construction site’, what do you think?”

Eldar’s response – “mismanagement of whole Nokia in last year. Merging is not salvation.”

In my point of view, it’s the lack of a leader / champion in Nokia to bring out a single solid mobile platform for its devices is the primary reason for their current performance. Everyone seems to be doing “a little bit of this and a little bit of that” inside Nokia. I personally hope Nokia rebounds before it loses its market share once the new breed of mobile platform becomes mainstream.

What do you think?