We have talked about troubles at Nokia in the past. I had posited that Nokia’s troubles arise from mismanagement not lack of innovation.  We had also discussed that the change at Nokia will require a management cultural change that brings innovations to market – not just strategic change or new alliances (such as the one with Microsoft).  Here is some more evidence from Mobile-review.com:

“When you are in a big trouble and every day there is even more bad news for you it is only natural to try to save your career so the exodus from Nokia continues. Employees responsible for NFC development are leaving the company massively as well as the most valued engineers and developers. And all this is only the top of the iceberg. The company is also being destroyed by the management steadfastly depriving Nokia of any chance for a future. The company is shutting the OVI Contacts ‘cloud’ service that allowed you to store your contacts online (like Gmail and many other services) on January 24. In the end of January the web interface will be gone as well as the possibility to sync your contacts with any service except for your Nokia phone. The company is simply ditching a service that works fine (it is a rather limited service but it worked fine) in order to… well, nothing, they are just getting rid of it for no apparent reason.”

Nokia’s share price keeps declining.  New products based on WP7 are not exciting and their reviews have been lukewarm at best (anandtech, engadget). Nor are they being successful in the market:

Independent researches beg to differ – Exane BNP Paribas carried out a potential consumer poll on five markets where Lumia 800 has been released. Out of 1300 people 456 planned to buy a smartphone within a month and only 2% of them were interested in Nokia WP7 phones. It is a fail so big it can only be compared to the size of the PR budget of these products.

Clearly, Nokia will have to do more than just bring another smart phone to market.  They will have to differentiate and bring new innovations.  This is easier said than done.  In the fast paced world of mobile electronics, competitors do not get many chances to catch up… Nokia has been trying to address this through acquisitions.  However, integrating new software and OS into a product line – difficult at best – is even more challenging in a diminishing organization.  I am yet to see examples or stories about changing R&D management…