SWOT Analysis of Nokia

Nokia, once the world’s largest vendor of mobile phones, is a popular Finnish information technology and communications multinational corporation which provides telecommunication equipment and services. The mobile phone brand, famous for the reliability and durability its phones provide, has ruled the mobile market for many years with its motto ‘connecting people’.

Recently, the handset division and services of the brand were acquired by software giant Microsoft and since then Nokia has released a number of phones under the Windows umbrella. So, keeping all these points in mind, let’s do a SWOT analysis of Nokia, to get a proper analytic view of the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT).

Strengths

Let’s start with the first part of SWOT analysis of Nokia which is strengths:

• The biggest strength of the company is their brand name. Many consumers often opt for Nokia more than any other brand because of the reliability, durability, and creativity their phones provide.
• Most of Nokia’s highly qualified personnel have teamed up with Microsoft’s experts as a part of the acquisition deal.
• The phones provided by Nokia have a much higher re-sale value compared to other mobile phone brands.
• Many of Nokia’s products are easy to use and are usually coupled with a variety of handy accessories.
• Products offered by the company are available in all price ranges.

Weaknesses

The next part of SWOT analysis of Nokia is their weaknesses:

• The company, though, is often criticized for poor after sales services.
• Took a long time to enter the highly productive and booming smartphone market. As a result the company lost a lot of its once huge market share.
• Some of Nokia’s products are not affordable for middle and lower class consumers, which often affects their searches negatively.
• The Finnish mobile company has made comparatively lower profits due to drop in sales that result from tough competition. According to statistics, the company’s profits have fallen by 7% in the second quarter of 2014.
• There are slumps in the company’s development with its Windows Lumia range of smartphones because of constant competition from rivals Android and iOS.

Opportunities

After discussing the internal factors of SWOT analysis of Nokia, let’s shift our focus towards external factors:

• The Microsoft-Nokia deal is a win-win situation for both companies. The deal possesses great opportunity if both utilize resources in a proper way.
• Opportunities to expand the range of products and their prices. Also bring in new features and applications on to Windows OS.

Threats

The final part of SWOT analysis for Nokia is the threats:

• Strong competition from other smartphone companies will make it hard for Nokia to maintain and expand their market share.
• Low-cost threats by China mobile companies and others can cause big problems.

So, after proper SWOT analysis, we have come to the conclusion that Nokia is going through a tough time in the market due to a variety of factors. However, with Microsoft and Nokia personnel teamed up, there is no doubt in saying that many of these problems can be overcome if Nokia strategizes, plans and uses its resources properly.

Image “Nokia Lumia 1520” by Karlis Dambrans is licensed under CC BY 2.0