Nokia Rocks the World: The Phone King's Plan to Redefine Its Business

Fast Company, Sep 09
By Mark Borden
Addressing a diverse gathering at Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca one of the hosts for the evening ,Nokia's 43-year-old executive vice president of entertainment and communities, Tero Ojanperä, talked of Nokia’s impressive statistics: about being the No. 1 cell-phone company in the world, with nearly 40% market share and 1.1 billion users.
But he added that the numbers were unimportant and went on to explain to a group composed of music execs, about Nokia's Comes With Music service, which offers unlimited downloads of more than 6 million songs (that can be kept for life) and is paid for with a fee built into the cost of certain mid-to-high-end Nokia handsets. "The two forces we are competing against are actually non consumption and piracy," Ojanperä says. "If we can get people engaged with music and compete against piracy, then we have won the war. And we believe we are revolutionizing the way music is being consumed."
"It's not only about music," he adds. "It's about paying. We want to make a difference in the payment for music. Nokia not only wants to revolutionize music, but I am claiming now that we will quickly be the world's biggest entertainment media network."
According to him, the ability of any device to gather and present information on demand is what will decide its fate, with the crumbling of barriers that divide television, computers, and cell phones. And he says that the cell phone has emerged, for now at least, as the single most important device in the global marketplace.
While, Apple has done the best job to date of creating a luxurious digital platform that scratches the modern itch for constant connectivity and content, Nokia has endless patience, a very long reach, and a willingness to study the competition. Nokia plans to win that scale game.
The company believes there are three reasons why people adopt new technology. The first is survival, the second is social, and the last is entertainment. The common thread among the three can be loosely described as culture, and Nokia has worked hard to develop a deep understanding of all the cultures in which it operates.
But it is Ojanperä's experiments with Dave Stewart that best reveal the range and depth of Nokia's ambition. Stewart's function at Nokia is to connect the company to talent, opportunities, and new ideas. While not a staff employee, he has an official title: change agent.
Beyond entertainment, Nokia sees in its billion-person base an opportunity to insert itself into all types of commercial exchanges.