Nokia - Challenges with Open Innovation
April 2014
Challenges of Open Innovation
Team Assignment
Table of Contents
1. Cooperation forms and IP management
First of all, we will give a short overview of Nokia’s history and look at the business alliances and IP management procedures that were established by Nokia from 2008 until now. Thus giving you a general understanding of Nokia’s past operations in the market of tablets and also a general idea of the smartphone market (because they are strongly interconnected). Finally, IP protection methods and current legal issues in relation to IP management are addressed.
1.1. Cooperation Forms
1.1.1. Acquisition
Figure : Nokia Acquisitions 2008/2009, Source: Nokia
This figure shows the target companies of Nokia in 2008 and 2009 – with nine acquisitions Nokia was quite an aggressive investor in those years. We will take a closer look at the three most important ones:
1. NAVTEQ: Leading provider of comprehensive digital map information
2. Symbian: Software Company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for mobile devices.
3. Plum: Develops and operates a cloud-based social media sharing and messaging service for private groups
As the acquisitions show, Nokia is following a strategy to acquire Wholly Owned Subsidiaries, which gives them full control over the companies operations but also leaves them with all the risk. The acquired companies all have know-how in complementary fields to Nokia’s products. Especially, Symbian is basically a monopolist for phone operating systems, which offers potential for licensing. Interestingly, Nokia acquired Plum in 2009 for cloud-based social media, which is rather late considering Facebook appeared in 2004 already. In the next three years Nokia gradually decreased its acquisition strategy from 2010 on, probably because they started to concentrate on their core competencies due to bad financial years. Here the
Challenges of Open Innovation
Team Assignment
Table of Contents
1. Cooperation forms and IP management
First of all, we will give a short overview of Nokia’s history and look at the business alliances and IP management procedures that were established by Nokia from 2008 until now. Thus giving you a general understanding of Nokia’s past operations in the market of tablets and also a general idea of the smartphone market (because they are strongly interconnected). Finally, IP protection methods and current legal issues in relation to IP management are addressed.
1.1. Cooperation Forms
1.1.1. Acquisition
Figure : Nokia Acquisitions 2008/2009, Source: Nokia
This figure shows the target companies of Nokia in 2008 and 2009 – with nine acquisitions Nokia was quite an aggressive investor in those years. We will take a closer look at the three most important ones:
1. NAVTEQ: Leading provider of comprehensive digital map information
2. Symbian: Software Company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for mobile devices.
3. Plum: Develops and operates a cloud-based social media sharing and messaging service for private groups
As the acquisitions show, Nokia is following a strategy to acquire Wholly Owned Subsidiaries, which gives them full control over the companies operations but also leaves them with all the risk. The acquired companies all have know-how in complementary fields to Nokia’s products. Especially, Symbian is basically a monopolist for phone operating systems, which offers potential for licensing. Interestingly, Nokia acquired Plum in 2009 for cloud-based social media, which is rather late considering Facebook appeared in 2004 already. In the next three years Nokia gradually decreased its acquisition strategy from 2010 on, probably because they started to concentrate on their core competencies due to bad financial years. Here the