Nokia, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, is increasing use of partnerships to achieve its goals, said Robert Andersson, senior vice president of corporate alliances and business development.
“We are no longer trying to make everything or buy everything we are looking at partnering as a serious strategy,” Andersson said at the Money Talks Forum, a venture- funding event in Espoo, Finland, organized by Technopolis Oyj and sponsored by Nokia.
Partnerships with Microsoft Corp. for business software, Intel Corp. for the MeeGo platform, and Yahoo! Inc. for mail and map services are examples of the new way of working, Andersson said. Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new chief executive officer, previously worked on Microsoft’s side of the partnership to put business software on mobile phones. Nokia has content deals with a larger base of partners, and is reinvigorating Nokia Forum for “the long tail of developers, Andersson said.
“Our new CEO has been really shaking us up and challenging us in a positive way to think from the outside in rather than from the inside out,” Andersson said. “This will result in opening up to outside innovation much more.”
Technopolis, an Oulu, Finland-based real-estate company, also sells consulting and fundraising help for startups. Nokia is working with Technopolis and govemment agency Tekes to transfer unused innovations from its mobile business to companies that are in a better position to exploit them. The program may create as many as 100 new projects, and 24 have been approved, according to an Oct. 18 statement.
Trillion-Dollar Opportunities
Andersson identified mobile commerce and health applications as “trillions-of-dollar opportunities” that Nokia plans to exploit through partnerships. Mobile commerce includes location-based and social applications, while health applications include personal apps such as Nokia’s experimental Wellness Diary and professional medical systems, he said.
“The big opportunity is going to be partnering with the health-care industry, when companies like Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline plc see that they have to transform as well,” he said.
Nokia recognizes it is “a challenger” in mobile applications and needs to improve the experience it offers with integrated software for consumers, he said. The new mobile marketplace is “no longer linear” like the old hardware- driven mobile market and requires partnerships in more directions, he said.
Intuit Partnership
There may be news this month from Nokia’s latest partnership with Mountain View, Calif.-based Intuit Inc., which is aimed at helping small businesses worldwide deliver marketing messages to mobile users, Andersson said. Espoo- based Nokia and Intuit disclosed little more when the partnership was announced on Sept. 15, saying the service would roll out by the end of the year and details would be given then.
“Read your papers carefully on Nov. 23 and you may learn something new,” Andersson said.