tequila bomb

Nokia tacitly admit they have no new ideas…

Nokia has added the iPad to its list of patent complaints against Apple.

Nokia filed a lawsuit in a Wisconsin federal court on Friday, asserting that Apple’s iPhone and iPad 3G infringe on five patents that cover a broad range of technologies.

All too often these days companies which were once market leaders fall back on patent lawsuits to try and bolster falling revenues and market share. I guess if you have only a certain amount of money in the pot you have to choose whether you throw it at innovation or legal muscle. Nokia seem to be taking the low road.

Nokia’s market share in the North American market has tanked to well below 10%. Even though the company has released waves of new devices, none of them has been able to convince American buyers to bite.

From InformationWeek.

Nokia have been trying, and failing spectacularly, to challenge Apple’s, and other smart-phone makers’ innovations in the cell phone market place over the last several years.

This week there were rumours that its CEO may be in trouble, as shareholders bemoaned the company’s apparent innovation stagnation, and gradual decline.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has been with Nokia for more than 30 years. He took over the CEO position in 2006. Apple announced the iPhone in early 2007. Nokia has since lost its status as the main innovator in the mobile space, and shows no signs of recovering it any time soon.

…

Whispers have mounted suggesting that Nokia’s investors were unhappy enough in the lack of results from all this R&D to make a change in leadership.

From InformationWeek.

It seems increasingly to me that Nokia think that a backup approach to keeping their revenues flowing may now be to try and simply tax other successful companies, rather than out innovate them.