Nokia CFO Rick Simonson: We want to start acquiring smaller companies
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 1:08 PM PST In Financial/Corporate News
When innovation can’t be created in house, it is usually purchased. I have no problem with this attitude, but the question has to be asked:
If you had the mergers and acquisitions checkbook for Nokia (NYSE: NOK), what would you buy?
Let that thought sit inside your head for a moment, I will most certainly expand on this topic later today.
Not along the lines of innovation, but if I were Nokia I’d hire yourself for our marketing team and I’d pump money into sites like AAS, 3-Lib and My-S to ensure they kept going – all are run on (literally) shoestring budgets from month to month and between them do a HUGE amount for Nokia’s profile and sales figures.
Steve
The problem could be that directly sponsoring such sites would make them less objective.. Sure, I would certainly pump more money to advertisement on those sites, invite them to events more etc. And it does seem they do appreciate those sites and bloggers nowadays. I mean manufacturing a pink N95 just for Darla Mack.. that’s is just sick..
Steve: Thank you very much for the compliment. I completley agree that a strong community makes for a strong brand.
Viipottaja: Good job on playing devils advocate. Nokia gives bloggers devices all the time however and they have no problem telling the world their thoughts.
Yes, I know that, and Nokia knows that. But having any presumably independent and critical site effectively paid (i.e. heavily sponsoresd) for by Nokia would seem like a pretty serious conflict of interest situation
That is the editor’s responsibility, to be unbiased.
Nokia sponsors Gizmodo, did you know that?
Did you hear about the PC World writer who left the company because his boss didn’t like an article he published about one of their sponsors (Apple)? He got his job back and his boss (the CEO) got demoted.
In the end it is up to the editor to decide if that money will corrupt him or not and for the reader to decide to read the content.
How do you think Engadget gets access to hardware before consumers do? Companies send them stuff.
Being 100% independent is difficult, but if I was the CFO of Nokia I would make sure people like Rafe and Steve from AAS, Eldar from Mobile-Review and Michael from My-Symbian would be THE FIRST to get products to review.
Hell I would invite them to a round table discussion and make them sign NDA’s so I could take their feedback and incorporate it into the products that are still a year or two away.
They have proper integrity and give constructive criticism that is invaluable to Nokia engineers, product managers and designers.
Being an honest man is hard and that is why there are so few out there today.