WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.820 Hello and welcome back to the Deep Dive. It is 00:00:01.820 --> 00:00:05.759 Saturday, February 14th, 2026. Happy Valentine's 00:00:05.759 --> 00:00:08.099 Day. Happy Valentine's Day. So whether you're 00:00:08.099 --> 00:00:10.740 celebrating with someone or, you know, just enjoying 00:00:10.740 --> 00:00:12.919 a quiet Saturday, we're really glad to have you 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.000 with us. Definitely. Today we're doing something 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:17.120 a little bit different. We usually try to look 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:21.260 forward at AI, at space, at the next big thing 00:00:21.260 --> 00:00:24.800 in biotop. But today, to really understand the 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:27.530 future. I think we have to look back. I agree. 00:00:27.690 --> 00:00:30.589 Sometimes the past is the best map. And we are 00:00:30.589 --> 00:00:33.850 dissecting a brand that I guarantee, absolutely 00:00:33.850 --> 00:00:36.829 guarantee, you have a visceral emotional memory 00:00:36.829 --> 00:00:39.289 of. Oh, for sure. It's one of those rare corporate 00:00:39.289 --> 00:00:41.469 names that actually triggers nostalgia. You hear 00:00:41.469 --> 00:00:43.710 it and you don't think of a stock price. You 00:00:43.710 --> 00:00:46.090 think of a specific time and place in your life. 00:00:46.189 --> 00:00:48.429 Exactly. I'm talking about Nokia. And right now 00:00:48.429 --> 00:00:50.590 I know what you're picturing. The brick? The 00:00:50.590 --> 00:00:53.670 brick. The Nokia 3D 310. The game Snake. And 00:00:53.670 --> 00:00:57.600 that... That monophonic ringtone that is probably 00:00:57.600 --> 00:01:00.000 burrowing its way into your head right this second. 00:01:00.659 --> 00:01:02.960 Connecting people. It was, I mean, it was the 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:05.359 soundtrack for a whole generation. But here's 00:01:05.359 --> 00:01:07.379 the hook. And this is why we're doing this deep 00:01:07.379 --> 00:01:10.379 dive today. If you think Nokia is just this, 00:01:10.439 --> 00:01:13.239 you know, tragic story about a cell phone company 00:01:13.239 --> 00:01:15.799 that got crushed by the iPhone and then just 00:01:15.799 --> 00:01:18.170 disappeared. Then you're missing the real story. 00:01:18.329 --> 00:01:20.430 You're missing about 90 % of the actual story. 00:01:20.530 --> 00:01:23.189 It's so much stranger and honestly darker, but 00:01:23.189 --> 00:01:25.890 also more impressive than that. Okay, so get 00:01:25.890 --> 00:01:28.030 this. Yeah. We are talking about a company that 00:01:28.030 --> 00:01:31.209 started its life in the 19th century making toilet 00:01:31.209 --> 00:01:33.569 paper. And rubber boots. Don't forget the rubber 00:01:33.569 --> 00:01:36.489 boots. And gas masks for the military. A company 00:01:36.489 --> 00:01:40.150 that navigated the entire Cold War by cutting 00:01:40.150 --> 00:01:42.870 these... Like secret deals with the Soviet Union. 00:01:43.049 --> 00:01:45.689 A company that once built a car phone. Oh, the 00:01:45.689 --> 00:01:47.890 car phone. That weighed nearly 10 kilograms. 00:01:48.090 --> 00:01:50.769 That's 22 pounds. It's basically a suitcase with 00:01:50.769 --> 00:01:53.430 a handset. And maybe the most surprising thing 00:01:53.430 --> 00:01:57.609 of all, a company that is right now in 2026 building 00:01:57.609 --> 00:02:01.109 a 4G cellular network on the surface of the moon. 00:02:01.290 --> 00:02:04.090 See, it's not just about phones. Not at all. 00:02:04.250 --> 00:02:07.549 It's the ultimate masterclass in corporate adaptability. 00:02:07.709 --> 00:02:09.810 That's really the theme for today. Survival. 00:02:09.870 --> 00:02:14.310 Right. It's about how this pulp mill became a 00:02:14.310 --> 00:02:17.590 global tech tyrant, lost it all in a crash so 00:02:17.590 --> 00:02:20.530 spectacular that business schools will be studying 00:02:20.530 --> 00:02:22.250 it for the next century. They already are. And 00:02:22.250 --> 00:02:25.169 then quietly, almost invisibly, reinvented itself 00:02:25.169 --> 00:02:27.750 as the backbone of the modern Internet. I love 00:02:27.750 --> 00:02:30.009 a good comeback story. And this one has everything. 00:02:30.460 --> 00:02:33.659 It has galoshes and lunar rovers. So our mission 00:02:33.659 --> 00:02:36.219 today is to unpack this whole history. We're 00:02:36.219 --> 00:02:38.939 using the archives, the financial records. And 00:02:38.939 --> 00:02:41.099 we really need to figure out how did they do 00:02:41.099 --> 00:02:43.159 it? Why did they fail so spectacularly? And what 00:02:43.159 --> 00:02:45.500 on earth are they doing now? And just to set 00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:47.800 the tone, we need to move past the memes. You 00:02:47.800 --> 00:02:49.520 know, we all make jokes about the indestructible 00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:51.180 phones. Breaking the floor if you drop them. 00:02:51.280 --> 00:02:54.099 Right. But the reality of Nokia's history is 00:02:54.099 --> 00:02:57.719 way more complex. It's a story of brutal, absolutely 00:02:57.719 --> 00:03:01.139 brutal strategic pivots. Okay, so let's rewind. 00:03:01.539 --> 00:03:03.719 And we're not starting in the 1990s with cool 00:03:03.719 --> 00:03:06.360 phones. No, no. We have to go way, way back. 00:03:06.539 --> 00:03:10.419 I'm going back to 1865. 1865. And just to give 00:03:10.419 --> 00:03:12.539 you some context, the American Civil War is just 00:03:12.539 --> 00:03:15.520 ending. Wow. But we're halfway across the world 00:03:15.520 --> 00:03:18.539 in the Grand Duchy of Finland. And Finland isn't 00:03:18.539 --> 00:03:20.680 even its own country yet. It's part of the Russian 00:03:20.680 --> 00:03:22.939 Empire. Exactly. It's under the rule of the Tsar. 00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:26.139 And this mining engineer, a man named Frederick 00:03:26.139 --> 00:03:29.419 Eidestam, decides to set up a pulp mill. A pulp 00:03:29.419 --> 00:03:32.840 mill, as in grinding up wood to make paper. That's 00:03:32.840 --> 00:03:35.740 it. He'd been to Germany. He saw this new tech 00:03:35.740 --> 00:03:38.340 for making paper from wood pulp instead of rags, 00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:40.659 and he brought it back to the Nordics. He sets 00:03:40.659 --> 00:03:43.199 up his first mill near a city called Tampere. 00:03:43.439 --> 00:03:46.000 Okay. But the location of the second mill, which 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:48.460 he builds in 1868, that's the one that really 00:03:48.460 --> 00:03:50.979 matters for our story. He builds it on the banks 00:03:50.979 --> 00:03:53.460 of the Nocunverter River. Nocunverter. Yeah. 00:03:53.560 --> 00:03:56.300 It roughly translates to Sable River. It was 00:03:56.300 --> 00:03:59.099 named after the small black -furred animals like 00:03:59.099 --> 00:04:01.300 martens that used to live along the banks. And 00:04:01.300 --> 00:04:02.949 the town nearby was called Nocunverter. Nokia. 00:04:03.009 --> 00:04:05.750 The town was called Nokia. So the name. Yeah. 00:04:05.870 --> 00:04:08.090 It literally comes from a place. It wasn't dreamed 00:04:08.090 --> 00:04:10.729 up by a marketing team in some boardroom. It 00:04:10.729 --> 00:04:13.270 was just geography. So company number one is 00:04:13.270 --> 00:04:16.290 this forestry and power generation company, Nokia 00:04:16.290 --> 00:04:18.769 Ab. Correct. But this is where we have to start 00:04:18.769 --> 00:04:21.009 thinking with the industrial logic of that time. 00:04:21.689 --> 00:04:24.110 You have a river. What does a river give you? 00:04:24.209 --> 00:04:27.730 Water, obviously, and power. Hydropower. A massive, 00:04:27.790 --> 00:04:30.870 reliable source of energy. So who else needs... 00:04:31.180 --> 00:04:33.759 huge amounts of power and water to run their 00:04:33.759 --> 00:04:35.740 factories. I have a feeling this is where the 00:04:35.740 --> 00:04:38.720 rubber boots come in. It is. In 1898, a different 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:41.560 company, the Finnish rubber work Suman Gamitaitas, 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:44.040 sets up a factory right next door to the pulp 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:46.680 mill. To tap into that same hydropower. Precisely. 00:04:46.680 --> 00:04:49.339 They're making galoshes, rubber tires, industrial 00:04:49.339 --> 00:04:52.920 seals. All that stuff. I just can't get over 00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:55.279 the image of the guys who eventually gave us 00:04:55.279 --> 00:04:58.600 the Matrix phone. You know, the 8110, starting 00:04:58.600 --> 00:05:00.779 out making rain boots. But it's so practical. 00:05:00.819 --> 00:05:03.100 Think about Finland. You've got snow, slush, 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:05.379 mud for half the year. Good rubber boots are 00:05:05.379 --> 00:05:07.740 high -tech survival gear in that climate. That's 00:05:07.740 --> 00:05:10.540 a fair point. But then, in 1912, the third piece 00:05:10.540 --> 00:05:13.019 of this puzzle arrives. A company called the 00:05:13.019 --> 00:05:16.819 Cable Factory. Capuletatus. Okay, so we've got 00:05:16.819 --> 00:05:20.610 paper, rubber, and cables. On the surface, it 00:05:20.610 --> 00:05:23.329 seems completely random. Why are they all clustered 00:05:23.329 --> 00:05:25.629 together on this one riverbank? It's not random 00:05:25.629 --> 00:05:27.389 at all. Think about what an electrical cable 00:05:27.389 --> 00:05:29.589 is. You have the conductor inside, right, usually 00:05:29.589 --> 00:05:32.550 copper, but you need to insulate it, wrap it 00:05:32.550 --> 00:05:35.009 in something so it doesn't short out. And the 00:05:35.009 --> 00:05:38.189 best insulator in the early 20th century was 00:05:38.189 --> 00:05:41.850 rubber. Exactly. The rubber factory was supplying 00:05:41.850 --> 00:05:44.930 the insulation for the cable factory. and the 00:05:44.930 --> 00:05:47.449 pulp mill's hydropower generators, supplying 00:05:47.449 --> 00:05:49.410 the electricity to run the machines for both 00:05:49.410 --> 00:05:52.129 of them. It was a vertically integrated industrial 00:05:52.129 --> 00:05:56.110 ecosystem. It wasn't a random collection of companies 00:05:56.110 --> 00:05:59.850 at all. It was this weird symbiotic cluster feeding 00:05:59.850 --> 00:06:02.110 off the same river. That makes so much more sense. 00:06:02.129 --> 00:06:04.050 So it wasn't that they were just eclectic for 00:06:04.050 --> 00:06:06.129 the sake of it. Not at all. And for decades, 00:06:06.269 --> 00:06:08.050 they all operated as separate legal companies. 00:06:08.350 --> 00:06:10.490 But they had a lot of the same owners, a lot 00:06:10.490 --> 00:06:12.430 of the same investors and families. And they 00:06:12.430 --> 00:06:15.230 finally merged into the Nokia Corporation we 00:06:15.230 --> 00:06:19.720 know in. What was it, 1967? 1967. A full century 00:06:19.720 --> 00:06:22.220 after that first pulp mill opened its doors. 00:06:22.360 --> 00:06:25.319 So by the time they officially merged, the product 00:06:25.319 --> 00:06:28.459 portfolio must have been just wild. I was looking 00:06:28.459 --> 00:06:31.120 at the list. In the mid -20th century, you could 00:06:31.120 --> 00:06:34.759 walk into a store in Helsinki and buy Nokia -branded 00:06:34.759 --> 00:06:36.680 toilet paper. They were producing soft tissue 00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:40.639 paper well into the 1960s. It was a direct byproduct 00:06:40.639 --> 00:06:42.839 of the pulp mill. You could buy Nokian rubber 00:06:42.839 --> 00:06:45.740 boots, which, by the way, are still a thing. 00:06:45.949 --> 00:06:47.970 I actually own a pair. They're fantastic. They 00:06:47.970 --> 00:06:50.170 are. The tire and boot divisions were eventually 00:06:50.170 --> 00:06:53.129 spun off. Nokian Tires is its own company now, 00:06:53.209 --> 00:06:55.629 a very successful one. But they all originated 00:06:55.629 --> 00:06:58.370 in that same riverbank cluster. And then, getting 00:06:58.370 --> 00:07:00.889 a little more serious, a little darker, they 00:07:00.889 --> 00:07:03.430 were making military equipment. Respirators. 00:07:03.730 --> 00:07:06.629 The M61 gas mask for the Finnish defense forces. 00:07:06.889 --> 00:07:08.889 That's the reality of being a massive industrial 00:07:08.889 --> 00:07:11.769 conglomerate in a small country. You make what 00:07:11.769 --> 00:07:15.199 the nation needs to survive. And Finland. geopolitically 00:07:15.199 --> 00:07:18.319 was in a very, very tight spot. Which leads us 00:07:18.319 --> 00:07:20.560 directly into the Cold War era. Right. Let's 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:22.459 unpack that. Because when I think of the origins 00:07:22.459 --> 00:07:25.839 of major tech giants, you know, I think of Silicon 00:07:25.839 --> 00:07:29.310 Valley, maybe. japan in the 80s i don't think 00:07:29.310 --> 00:07:31.589 of a country sharing an 800 mile border with 00:07:31.589 --> 00:07:33.829 the soviet union and that border defined everything 00:07:33.829 --> 00:07:35.990 for them this is what we call the conglomerate 00:07:35.990 --> 00:07:40.430 era from roughly 1967 to 1990. finland had to 00:07:40.430 --> 00:07:43.149 navigate this incredibly delicate foreign policy 00:07:43.149 --> 00:07:46.730 known as finlandization okay explain that basically 00:07:46.730 --> 00:07:49.490 they remained officially neutral which kept the 00:07:49.490 --> 00:07:53.110 west happy but to avoid being invaded or controlled 00:07:53.110 --> 00:07:55.709 by moscow they had to maintain very close very 00:07:55.709 --> 00:07:58.910 friendly economic ties with the USSR. The national 00:07:58.910 --> 00:08:01.850 survival strategy. Exactly. And Nokia became 00:08:01.850 --> 00:08:04.470 the economic engine of that strategy. They engaged 00:08:04.470 --> 00:08:06.810 in something called bilateral clearing trade. 00:08:07.110 --> 00:08:10.129 OK, so explain that mechanism, because it's not 00:08:10.129 --> 00:08:11.629 like they were just writing checks to Moscow, 00:08:11.709 --> 00:08:14.389 right? No, you couldn't. The Soviet ruble was 00:08:14.389 --> 00:08:16.649 essentially worthless on the international market. 00:08:16.689 --> 00:08:18.930 It wasn't convertible. So they used a highly 00:08:18.930 --> 00:08:21.149 sophisticated barter system. A barter system. 00:08:21.250 --> 00:08:23.579 Yeah. Finland would import massive amounts of 00:08:23.579 --> 00:08:26.819 Soviet oil, natural gas and raw timber. In exchange, 00:08:27.220 --> 00:08:30.000 the Soviet Union got a credit in a special account 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.200 to buy finished manufactured goods. So the Soviets 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:37.820 send oil and in return, Nokia sends what? In 00:08:37.820 --> 00:08:41.470 the early days, cables. Miles and miles and miles 00:08:41.470 --> 00:08:43.830 of telephone and power cables to help electrify 00:08:43.830 --> 00:08:46.549 the Soviet Union. But as Nokia's electronics 00:08:46.549 --> 00:08:48.809 division grew, they started sending more advanced 00:08:48.809 --> 00:08:50.929 stuff. Right. Automatic telephone exchanges, 00:08:51.409 --> 00:08:54.769 industrial robotics. By the late 70s and early 00:08:54.769 --> 00:08:57.070 80s, the Soviet Union was a massive guaranteed 00:08:57.070 --> 00:08:59.690 market for Nokia's high tech division. That sounds 00:08:59.690 --> 00:09:01.629 incredibly lucrative. I mean, you don't have 00:09:01.629 --> 00:09:03.590 to worry about marketing or competition. You 00:09:03.590 --> 00:09:05.429 just sign a government treaty and start shipping 00:09:05.429 --> 00:09:08.110 product. It was a total cash cow. While other 00:09:08.110 --> 00:09:09.909 Western companies were fighting. tooth and nail 00:09:09.909 --> 00:09:12.730 for 3 % margins in competitive markets like France 00:09:12.730 --> 00:09:15.190 or West Germany, Nokia was setting on these fat, 00:09:15.389 --> 00:09:17.909 state -guaranteed contracts with huge profits. 00:09:18.090 --> 00:09:19.929 They were getting paid in oil money, essentially. 00:09:20.210 --> 00:09:22.990 But the US government? They couldn't have been 00:09:22.990 --> 00:09:25.509 thrilled about this. You've got a Western -leaning 00:09:25.509 --> 00:09:28.149 country selling high -tech infrastructure to 00:09:28.149 --> 00:09:30.629 the Red Army. They were deeply paranoid about 00:09:30.629 --> 00:09:33.889 it. Washington watched Finland like a hawk. The 00:09:33.889 --> 00:09:36.509 big concern was dual -use technology. Meaning 00:09:36.509 --> 00:09:38.750 it could be used for civilian and military purposes. 00:09:39.149 --> 00:09:41.950 Exactly. A digital telephone switch is great 00:09:41.950 --> 00:09:44.009 for letting civilians call their grandmothers, 00:09:44.009 --> 00:09:46.350 but it's also fantastic for military command 00:09:46.350 --> 00:09:48.870 and control. So Nokia was walking a tightrope. 00:09:49.200 --> 00:09:52.379 A very, very thin one. It got so tense that in 00:09:52.379 --> 00:09:56.320 1987, Finland finally agreed to join COCOM, the 00:09:56.320 --> 00:09:58.500 Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export 00:09:58.500 --> 00:10:01.120 Controls. What was that? It was basically the 00:10:01.120 --> 00:10:03.360 West saying, look, if you want to keep buying 00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:05.460 our advanced microchips from Intel and Texas 00:10:05.460 --> 00:10:07.460 Instruments to build your products, you have 00:10:07.460 --> 00:10:09.379 to promise not to sell the best stuff to the 00:10:09.379 --> 00:10:12.269 Soviets. But by then, Nokia had already made 00:10:12.269 --> 00:10:14.690 a ton of money from that trade. They had. And 00:10:14.690 --> 00:10:17.809 this is where the CEO, a man named Kari Kairamo, 00:10:18.009 --> 00:10:22.250 enters the picture. He takes over in 1977. He 00:10:22.250 --> 00:10:24.350 was this incredibly charismatic, high -energy, 00:10:24.409 --> 00:10:27.230 some said slightly manic figure, and he had a 00:10:27.230 --> 00:10:29.429 vision. The Nordic Japan. That was his phrase. 00:10:29.690 --> 00:10:32.990 He looked at the vibe in the 80s, you know. Japan 00:10:32.990 --> 00:10:35.610 was just taking over the world with Sony, Panasonic, 00:10:35.870 --> 00:10:39.850 Toyota. Kairamo wanted Nokia to be that for Europe. 00:10:40.049 --> 00:10:42.129 And he had the cash from the Soviet trade to 00:10:42.129 --> 00:10:44.549 fund it. Exactly. He looked at that river of 00:10:44.549 --> 00:10:46.950 money coming in and said, we are going to use 00:10:46.950 --> 00:10:49.730 this to buy our way into the West. He went on 00:10:49.730 --> 00:10:52.730 an absolutely massive acquisition spree. Right. 00:10:52.809 --> 00:10:55.909 He bought Solora, a big Finnish TV maker. He 00:10:55.909 --> 00:10:58.710 bought Luxor AB, the Swedish electronics giant. 00:10:59.009 --> 00:11:02.309 He bought the French TV company Oceanic. I had 00:11:02.309 --> 00:11:04.350 no idea until we started researching for this. 00:11:04.429 --> 00:11:06.649 But at one point, Nokia was the third largest 00:11:06.649 --> 00:11:09.450 television manufacturer in all of Europe. Behind 00:11:09.450 --> 00:11:12.230 only Philips and Thompson. They were huge in 00:11:12.230 --> 00:11:14.250 consumer electronics long before they were huge 00:11:14.250 --> 00:11:16.570 in phones. They even made personal computers. 00:11:16.970 --> 00:11:19.210 Micromico line. Yep. And they bought the beta 00:11:19.210 --> 00:11:21.570 division from their Swedish rival Ericsson. They 00:11:21.570 --> 00:11:23.370 were trying to do absolutely everything at once. 00:11:23.509 --> 00:11:26.649 But Kairama's story, it has a really tragic ending. 00:11:26.990 --> 00:11:30.269 It does. The stress of managing this sprawling, 00:11:30.269 --> 00:11:33.830 chaotic, global empire, trying to integrate French 00:11:33.830 --> 00:11:36.309 factories with Swedish engineers and Finnish 00:11:36.309 --> 00:11:39.389 management, all while juggling the delicate politics 00:11:39.389 --> 00:11:42.509 of the Soviet trade, It clearly took a massive 00:11:42.509 --> 00:11:44.909 toll. He tragically took his own life in 1988. 00:11:45.409 --> 00:11:48.490 Yeah. It's a really somber note in the corporate 00:11:48.490 --> 00:11:50.889 history, and it highlights the immense pressure 00:11:50.889 --> 00:11:54.210 of that kind of rapid, debt -fueled expansion. 00:11:54.649 --> 00:11:57.250 And it left the company in a state of chaos right 00:11:57.250 --> 00:11:59.370 as the world was about to fundamentally change. 00:11:59.649 --> 00:12:03.590 But buried deep inside this massive, messy, grieving 00:12:03.590 --> 00:12:06.470 conglomerate, there was this one little joint 00:12:06.470 --> 00:12:09.500 venture. a division called Mobira. This is the 00:12:09.500 --> 00:12:13.000 seed. This is 1979. 1979. Nokia teams up with 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:15.019 Celora, this is before they fully acquired them, 00:12:15.100 --> 00:12:18.279 to create Mobira. And their goal was radio telephony. 00:12:18.419 --> 00:12:20.919 Car phones. And in 1981, they helped launch the 00:12:20.919 --> 00:12:23.200 NMT. The Nordic Mobile Telephone Service. And 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:24.679 this is the crucial piece of context, right? 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:26.820 This wasn't just another car phone network. No, 00:12:26.919 --> 00:12:30.080 this was a game changer. Before NMT, car phone 00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:33.059 systems were all national closed systems. If 00:12:33.059 --> 00:12:35.179 you had a Swedish car phone and you drove across 00:12:35.179 --> 00:12:38.100 the bridge to Denmark, it was a brick. It just 00:12:38.100 --> 00:12:40.460 didn't work. So NMT was the first system that 00:12:40.460 --> 00:12:43.120 allowed for it. It was the world's first international 00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:45.679 cellular network. You could drive from Sweden 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:48.799 to Denmark to Norway to Finland and your phone 00:12:48.799 --> 00:12:51.139 would keep working. It was the cellular internet 00:12:51.139 --> 00:12:53.580 of its day. And to use this incredible new network, 00:12:53.759 --> 00:12:58.110 you needed hardware. Which brings us to the Mobira 00:12:58.110 --> 00:13:01.970 Senator in 1982. The Senator, an absolute icon 00:13:01.970 --> 00:13:04.330 of clunky 80s tech. I was looking at the specs 00:13:04.330 --> 00:13:07.429 again this morning. 9 .8 kilograms. 22 pounds. 00:13:07.549 --> 00:13:09.649 Just try to picture that. Go to the gym, pick 00:13:09.649 --> 00:13:12.389 up a 20 -pound dumbbell, and imagine holding 00:13:12.389 --> 00:13:14.289 that to your ear. Well, you didn't hold it to 00:13:14.289 --> 00:13:15.929 your ear. That's the thing. It was this big box 00:13:15.929 --> 00:13:17.789 that you installed in the trunk of your car. 00:13:18.029 --> 00:13:20.529 Right, with a handset wired up to the front dashboard. 00:13:20.809 --> 00:13:24.149 So technically it was mobile, but only as mobile 00:13:24.149 --> 00:13:26.750 as your Volvo was. But here's the really interesting 00:13:26.750 --> 00:13:30.309 part. The Nokia board of directors hated it. 00:13:30.370 --> 00:13:32.690 They didn't see the potential. Not at all. They 00:13:32.690 --> 00:13:34.549 looked at the mobile division and just saw a 00:13:34.549 --> 00:13:37.889 money pit. They called the phones James Bond 00:13:37.889 --> 00:13:41.110 gadgets. As in, they were futuristic and cool, 00:13:41.269 --> 00:13:44.549 but only for a tiny niche market. Exactly. They 00:13:44.549 --> 00:13:46.909 saw it as a toy for millionaire playboys and 00:13:46.909 --> 00:13:49.549 spies. They could not conceive of it as a mass 00:13:49.549 --> 00:13:52.450 market product. But then came the city men. 1987. 00:13:53.389 --> 00:13:56.769 The Mobira Cityman 900. Now, this was a handheld 00:13:56.769 --> 00:13:59.009 phone. I mean, it was still a brick by today's 00:13:59.009 --> 00:14:01.889 standards. Think of a big walkie -talkie from 00:14:01.889 --> 00:14:04.350 an 80s action movie. But you could carry it. 00:14:04.389 --> 00:14:07.049 You could carry it. And then marketing gold just 00:14:07.049 --> 00:14:09.750 fell into their laps. Mikhail Gorbachev. The 00:14:09.750 --> 00:14:11.690 leader of the Soviet Union. He was in Helsinki 00:14:11.690 --> 00:14:14.110 for a state visit, and there's this famous photograph 00:14:14.110 --> 00:14:16.809 of him standing outside his hotel, holding a 00:14:16.809 --> 00:14:19.570 Mobira Cityman to his ear, making a call to his 00:14:19.570 --> 00:14:21.970 ministers back in Moscow. It became known as 00:14:21.970 --> 00:14:25.279 the Gorbaphone. That one image went viral before 00:14:25.279 --> 00:14:27.539 viral was even a thing. It was this incredible 00:14:27.539 --> 00:14:30.059 signal to the world. This wasn't just a toy anymore. 00:14:30.179 --> 00:14:33.120 This was a tool of power. If the leader of the 00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:36.019 entire Eastern Bloc is using a Nokia to run his 00:14:36.019 --> 00:14:38.659 empire from a sidewalk in Finland... It's a serious 00:14:38.659 --> 00:14:41.419 device. Put them on the map. Okay, so we're moving 00:14:41.419 --> 00:14:43.879 into the 90s, and this is where the story shifts 00:14:43.879 --> 00:14:48.539 gears. I mean, violently. 1990, 1991, the Berlin 00:14:48.539 --> 00:14:51.500 Wall has fallen. Soviet Union collapses. And 00:14:51.500 --> 00:14:53.200 for Nokia, this was an economic heart attack. 00:14:53.379 --> 00:14:56.720 Because that bilateral clearing trade, that guaranteed 00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:59.399 profit. It vanished overnight. Their biggest, 00:14:59.620 --> 00:15:02.659 most profitable customer just ceased to exist. 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:05.980 The contracts were void. The whole country of 00:15:05.980 --> 00:15:08.879 Finland plunged into a deep, deep depression. 00:15:09.259 --> 00:15:12.370 And Nokia is bleeding money. Their stock price 00:15:12.370 --> 00:15:14.690 crashes. They're this cluttered closet of all 00:15:14.690 --> 00:15:17.230 these random businesses, TVs, cables, tires, 00:15:17.529 --> 00:15:19.889 computers, and none of them are making enough 00:15:19.889 --> 00:15:21.909 money to cover the losses from the Soviet collapse. 00:15:22.190 --> 00:15:23.889 It was a near -death experience. And this is 00:15:23.889 --> 00:15:26.669 when Jorma Olayla takes over as CEO in 1992. 00:15:27.070 --> 00:15:29.389 And honestly, the logical move what any normal 00:15:29.389 --> 00:15:31.509 CEO would have done was to break up the company 00:15:31.509 --> 00:15:33.610 and sell off the assets. But he didn't do that. 00:15:33.750 --> 00:15:36.289 No. He made one of the boldest, most audacious 00:15:36.289 --> 00:15:38.750 bets in modern business history. The great focus. 00:15:39.029 --> 00:15:41.019 He looked at this whole mess of a company. And 00:15:41.019 --> 00:15:43.500 he said, we are selling everything, everything 00:15:43.500 --> 00:15:46.620 that isn't phones, everything. The tires spun 00:15:46.620 --> 00:15:49.860 off into their own company. The TV is sold. The 00:15:49.860 --> 00:15:52.860 power generation business gone. He said, from 00:15:52.860 --> 00:15:55.000 now on, we are going to be a telecommunications 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:58.399 company, period. That is terrifying to give up 00:15:58.399 --> 00:16:01.000 these stable hundred year old industries like 00:16:01.000 --> 00:16:04.279 rubber and power generation to bet the entire 00:16:04.279 --> 00:16:08.409 farm on. Cell phones, which were still a pretty 00:16:08.409 --> 00:16:10.809 new thing. It was a total existential gamble. 00:16:11.090 --> 00:16:14.450 But Olayla saw the next wave coming. He saw the 00:16:14.450 --> 00:16:17.870 GSM revolution. Global system for mobile communications. 00:16:18.230 --> 00:16:20.610 Right. Nokia had been one of the key developers 00:16:20.610 --> 00:16:23.570 of the GSM standard. What made GSM so different 00:16:23.570 --> 00:16:26.269 from the old analog systems like NMT? It was 00:16:26.269 --> 00:16:29.149 digital. And that meant a few huge things. One, 00:16:29.269 --> 00:16:31.289 much better voice quality and more security. 00:16:31.549 --> 00:16:33.370 You couldn't just tune in with a radio scanner 00:16:33.370 --> 00:16:35.690 and eavesdrop on calls anymore. But most importantly, 00:16:35.789 --> 00:16:37.409 it was designed for data from the ground up. 00:16:37.429 --> 00:16:39.929 It allowed for something revolutionary. SMS text 00:16:39.929 --> 00:16:42.409 messaging. The first GSM call ever made was in 00:16:42.409 --> 00:16:46.690 1991, wasn't it? Yeah. By the Finnish prime minister 00:16:46.690 --> 00:16:49.929 at the time, Harry Holkery, using a Nokia prototype 00:16:49.929 --> 00:16:52.450 phone on a network built with Nokia equipment. 00:16:53.500 --> 00:16:56.179 Alila knew this standard was going to conquer 00:16:56.179 --> 00:16:58.820 the world. And he was absolutely right. The financial 00:16:58.820 --> 00:17:01.559 turnaround was just, it's insane. They went from 00:17:01.559 --> 00:17:05.279 a huge operating loss in 1991. To making $4 billion 00:17:05.279 --> 00:17:08.579 in operating profit by 1999. It's the hockey 00:17:08.579 --> 00:17:10.359 stick growth curve that every Silicon Valley 00:17:10.359 --> 00:17:13.160 startup dreams of. But this was a 100 -year -old 00:17:13.160 --> 00:17:16.059 industrial giant from Finland doing it. A total 00:17:16.059 --> 00:17:18.019 transformation. So let's talk about why they 00:17:18.019 --> 00:17:20.329 won. Because in the 90s, it wasn't just them. 00:17:20.349 --> 00:17:22.789 You had Motorola. You had Ericsson. Motorola 00:17:22.789 --> 00:17:25.910 literally invented the portable cell phone. Why 00:17:25.910 --> 00:17:28.910 did Nokia just blow past them? I think it came 00:17:28.910 --> 00:17:30.410 down to a fundamental difference in philosophy. 00:17:30.769 --> 00:17:33.200 Motorola was an engineering company. They built 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:35.240 radios for the police, for the military. Their 00:17:35.240 --> 00:17:38.000 phones were designed as rugged, functional tools 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:41.339 for business. Utilitarian. Very. Nokia, and maybe 00:17:41.339 --> 00:17:43.359 this comes from their background in consumer 00:17:43.359 --> 00:17:45.740 electronics with the TVs, they understood something 00:17:45.740 --> 00:17:47.920 profound. They understood that a phone wasn't 00:17:47.920 --> 00:17:50.579 just a tool. It was a lifestyle device. They 00:17:50.579 --> 00:17:52.740 went after the youth market. Exactly. Think of 00:17:52.740 --> 00:17:57.789 the phones. The Nokia 5110. The 3210. These weren't 00:17:57.789 --> 00:18:00.289 boring gray business phones. They were fun, and 00:18:00.289 --> 00:18:03.369 they had the killer feature, Express On Coverage. 00:18:03.450 --> 00:18:05.349 Oh, absolutely. I had a metallic blue one for 00:18:05.349 --> 00:18:07.990 my 5110. My friend had one with a flame pattern. 00:18:08.190 --> 00:18:10.509 It sounds so silly now, but being able to change 00:18:10.509 --> 00:18:12.809 the color of your phone was mind -blowing at 00:18:12.809 --> 00:18:15.210 the time. It was genius. It turned a piece of 00:18:15.210 --> 00:18:17.710 technology into a fashion accessory. You could 00:18:17.710 --> 00:18:19.869 match it to your outfit. It made the phone personal, 00:18:20.029 --> 00:18:22.490 an expression of your identity. Motorola didn't 00:18:22.490 --> 00:18:24.289 get that. Ericsson didn't get that. And then, 00:18:24.309 --> 00:18:26.720 of course, the software. the usability was just 00:18:26.720 --> 00:18:29.799 on another level the navi key interface that 00:18:29.799 --> 00:18:32.200 one big button that let you do almost everything 00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:34.740 it was so intuitive my grandmother could use 00:18:34.740 --> 00:18:37.099 a nokia she couldn't get her head around a motorola 00:18:37.099 --> 00:18:40.960 start and lawn snake we cannot overstate the 00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:43.079 importance of the game snake it was a killer 00:18:43.079 --> 00:18:59.430 app So by 1998, They do it. They overtake Motorola 00:18:59.430 --> 00:19:02.329 to become the best -selling mobile phone brand 00:19:02.329 --> 00:19:05.069 in the entire world. And they manufactured their 00:19:05.069 --> 00:19:08.750 100 millionth phone that same year in December 00:19:08.750 --> 00:19:11.990 1998. And the economic impact on Finland. I mean, 00:19:12.009 --> 00:19:14.210 it's hard for us to even comprehend in a country 00:19:14.210 --> 00:19:15.730 the size of the U .S. It's almost impossible. 00:19:16.630 --> 00:19:19.269 Imagine if Apple, Google, and Microsoft were 00:19:19.269 --> 00:19:22.589 all one single company, and that company was 00:19:22.589 --> 00:19:24.769 based in a country the size of, say, Minnesota. 00:19:25.230 --> 00:19:28.240 Okay. By the year 2000, Nokia alone accounted 00:19:28.240 --> 00:19:31.720 for 4 % of Finland's entire gross domestic product. 00:19:31.940 --> 00:19:35.220 4 % of the whole economy. From one company. That 00:19:35.220 --> 00:19:37.980 is staggering. And 21 % of their total exports. 00:19:38.339 --> 00:19:41.400 A fifth. One fifth of everything Finland sold 00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:43.440 to the rest of the world came from this one company. 00:19:43.599 --> 00:19:45.920 They literally called it the Nokia miracle. It 00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:48.559 lifted the entire country out of that post -Soviet 00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:50.460 depression. And they were still innovating. I 00:19:50.460 --> 00:19:51.920 think we forget this part because of how the 00:19:51.920 --> 00:19:54.640 story ends. But in the early 2000s, they were 00:19:54.640 --> 00:19:56.720 pushing boundaries that nobody else was even 00:19:56.720 --> 00:19:59.230 touching. Oh, they were way ahead. The Nokia 00:19:59.230 --> 00:20:02.809 7650. That was the first mass market phone with 00:20:02.809 --> 00:20:05.410 a built -in camera. The very concept of taking 00:20:05.410 --> 00:20:07.569 a photo and instantly being able to send it to 00:20:07.569 --> 00:20:10.609 someone. Nokia did that first. The N series phones 00:20:10.609 --> 00:20:13.690 were incredible. The N95. It launched in late 00:20:13.690 --> 00:20:16.589 2006, just before the iPhone. And people forget 00:20:16.589 --> 00:20:19.250 what a beast that thing was. It had GPS. It had 00:20:19.250 --> 00:20:23.170 Wi -Fi, a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss 00:20:23.170 --> 00:20:26.210 lens, which was unheard of. It had a proper web 00:20:26.210 --> 00:20:30.009 browser, 3G support. It was a multimedia computer, 00:20:30.250 --> 00:20:32.250 as they called it. It was a smartphone. It just 00:20:32.250 --> 00:20:34.269 didn't have a capacitive touchscreen. And then 00:20:34.269 --> 00:20:38.180 there was the N -Gage. Ah, the... It really did 00:20:38.180 --> 00:20:40.019 look like a taco when you held it up to your 00:20:40.019 --> 00:20:42.079 head to talk. It was an unmitigated commercial 00:20:42.079 --> 00:20:44.700 disaster, but you have to respect the ambition 00:20:44.700 --> 00:20:46.259 they were trying to take on Nintendo and the 00:20:46.259 --> 00:20:48.039 Game Boy Advance. Right. The head of entertainment 00:20:48.039 --> 00:20:51.440 at Nokia, Ilka Reiskanen, he famously said, Game 00:20:51.440 --> 00:20:54.220 Boy is for 10 -year -olds. The implication being 00:20:54.220 --> 00:20:56.839 that the N -Gage was for cool, mature, sophisticated 00:20:56.839 --> 00:21:00.019 gamers? It failed so miserably. it was a mess 00:21:00.019 --> 00:21:02.240 the buttons were mushy it wasn't comfortable 00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:04.980 to hold and to change the game cartridge you 00:21:04.980 --> 00:21:07.099 had to turn off the phone take the back cover 00:21:07.099 --> 00:21:09.900 off and remove the battery what a design flaw 00:21:09.900 --> 00:21:12.480 a catastrophic one but it showed their mindset 00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:14.559 at the time they thought they were invincible 00:21:14.559 --> 00:21:17.480 they thought they could conquer any market gaming 00:21:17.480 --> 00:21:20.480 included just by showing up with the nokia brand 00:21:20.480 --> 00:21:23.880 on a product and honestly If you look at the 00:21:23.880 --> 00:21:26.420 numbers in 2007, you can see why they were so 00:21:26.420 --> 00:21:28.960 arrogant. You really can. In the fourth quarter 00:21:28.960 --> 00:21:32.359 of 2007, Nokia's global market share for mobile 00:21:32.359 --> 00:21:36.200 phones peaked. At 40 .4%. That's just dominance. 00:21:36.460 --> 00:21:39.220 That's nearly half of all the phones sold on 00:21:39.220 --> 00:21:41.779 the entire planet. If you walked into a room 00:21:41.779 --> 00:21:44.779 of 10 people... Four of them had a Nokia in their 00:21:44.779 --> 00:21:47.400 pocket. And that is the precise moment at the 00:21:47.400 --> 00:21:49.400 absolute peak of their power that the ground 00:21:49.400 --> 00:21:51.619 started to crumble beneath their feet. The burning 00:21:51.619 --> 00:21:54.500 platform. Exactly. But before the famous memo, 00:21:54.660 --> 00:21:57.819 there was the device. January 2007, Steve Jobs 00:21:57.819 --> 00:22:00.299 walks on stage in San Francisco. And introduces 00:22:00.299 --> 00:22:02.980 the iPhone. And the standard narrative we all 00:22:02.980 --> 00:22:05.940 know is, iPhone arrives, Nokia dies immediately. 00:22:06.599 --> 00:22:08.420 But that's not actually what the data shows, 00:22:08.539 --> 00:22:11.190 is it? No, it's a simplification. In terms of 00:22:11.190 --> 00:22:14.950 sheer volume, Nokia had their best sales years 00:22:14.950 --> 00:22:18.710 after the iPhone launched. 2008 and 2009 were 00:22:18.710 --> 00:22:20.690 still huge for them, especially in developing 00:22:20.690 --> 00:22:24.630 markets. The rot was internal. It wasn't just 00:22:24.630 --> 00:22:27.309 that the iPhone was cooler. No, it was that Nokia's 00:22:27.309 --> 00:22:29.970 entire foundation was rotten. Okay, let's get 00:22:29.970 --> 00:22:31.769 a bit technical here. Why couldn't they just 00:22:31.769 --> 00:22:34.109 make a touchscreen phone to compete? They had 00:22:34.109 --> 00:22:35.769 the engineers, they had the money. They did, 00:22:35.869 --> 00:22:37.390 but they had the wrong operating system. They 00:22:37.390 --> 00:22:40.400 were all in on Symbian. Okay, so explain Symbian. 00:22:40.440 --> 00:22:43.039 What was the problem? Symbian was a marvel of 00:22:43.039 --> 00:22:44.980 engineering for its time. It was designed in 00:22:44.980 --> 00:22:47.400 the 90s for devices with very limited memory 00:22:47.400 --> 00:22:50.279 and very slow processors. To do that, it had 00:22:50.279 --> 00:22:52.200 to be hyper -efficient. But that made the code 00:22:52.200 --> 00:22:55.640 incredibly complex. Incredibly. As phones got 00:22:55.640 --> 00:22:58.559 more powerful, Nokia just kept piling more features 00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:01.779 and more code on top of this aging, intricate 00:23:01.779 --> 00:23:04.460 foundation. It became spaghetti code. The worst 00:23:04.460 --> 00:23:08.630 kind. By 2010, Symbian was millions and millions 00:23:08.630 --> 00:23:11.950 of lines of code. To add a simple new feature 00:23:11.950 --> 00:23:14.750 or to completely change the user interface to 00:23:14.750 --> 00:23:17.730 work well with a touchscreen was a developer's 00:23:17.730 --> 00:23:20.230 nightmare. I read some accounts from engineers 00:23:20.230 --> 00:23:22.269 who worked there at the time. They said the compile 00:23:22.269 --> 00:23:25.269 time. So the time it takes to turn the written 00:23:25.269 --> 00:23:27.769 code into a working program you can test. It 00:23:27.769 --> 00:23:30.880 was up to 48 hours. Wait. So if I'm a developer 00:23:30.880 --> 00:23:33.140 and I think I fixed a bug, I have to wait two 00:23:33.140 --> 00:23:35.420 full days to find out if my fix actually worked. 00:23:35.599 --> 00:23:38.730 In some cases, yes. Meanwhile, over at Apple, 00:23:38.869 --> 00:23:41.250 an iOS engineer could iterate on their code in 00:23:41.250 --> 00:23:43.849 minutes. You simply cannot compete with that 00:23:43.849 --> 00:23:46.809 speed. Symbian was a burning platform because 00:23:46.809 --> 00:23:49.289 it was structurally incapable of evolving fast 00:23:49.289 --> 00:23:51.509 enough to catch iOS or Android. And corporate 00:23:51.509 --> 00:23:53.329 culture had changed, too. It wasn't the nimble 00:23:53.329 --> 00:23:55.730 innovator anymore. It had become a bloated bureaucracy. 00:23:56.269 --> 00:23:58.650 Former employees described it as Soviet -style. 00:23:58.829 --> 00:24:00.789 You had these powerful middle managers fighting 00:24:00.789 --> 00:24:03.289 each other over resources. If your team had a 00:24:03.289 --> 00:24:05.390 great idea for a touch interface, the team in 00:24:05.390 --> 00:24:07.299 charge of the button interface would try to kill 00:24:07.299 --> 00:24:08.920 it because it threatened their jobs and their 00:24:08.920 --> 00:24:10.940 bonuses. So they were fighting themselves instead 00:24:10.940 --> 00:24:13.359 of the competition. They were paralyzed by their 00:24:13.359 --> 00:24:16.619 own success. So 2010 rolls around. The situation 00:24:16.619 --> 00:24:19.619 is looking shaky. The board makes a big move. 00:24:19.839 --> 00:24:22.920 They hire Stephen Elop. The first non -Finnish 00:24:22.920 --> 00:24:25.460 CEO in the company's history. And he comes from 00:24:25.460 --> 00:24:28.559 Microsoft. And soon after he arrives, he sends 00:24:28.559 --> 00:24:32.200 one of the most famous internal memos in corporate 00:24:32.200 --> 00:24:35.349 history. The burning platform. He tells this 00:24:35.349 --> 00:24:38.210 story, this parable, about a man working on an 00:24:38.210 --> 00:24:40.789 oil rig in the North Sea. Right. An explosion 00:24:40.789 --> 00:24:43.170 wakes him up. He runs to the edge of the platform. 00:24:43.849 --> 00:24:47.230 Behind him is a wall of fire. Below him is the 00:24:47.230 --> 00:24:50.029 dark, freezing cold ocean. And he has a choice. 00:24:50.230 --> 00:24:52.609 Stay on the platform and die in the fire or jump 00:24:52.609 --> 00:24:55.109 into the icy water and maybe survive. He jumps. 00:24:55.289 --> 00:24:57.750 And Elop was telling his employees, Symbian is 00:24:57.750 --> 00:25:00.170 the burning platform. If we stay on it, we will 00:25:00.170 --> 00:25:03.380 die. We have to jump. And the jump he chose for 00:25:03.380 --> 00:25:06.240 them was Windows Phone. This is the moment. The 00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:08.119 decision that business historians will argue 00:25:08.119 --> 00:25:10.980 about forever. It's the great pivot. And Nokia 00:25:10.980 --> 00:25:13.640 really had three options at that point. Option 00:25:13.640 --> 00:25:16.740 one, try to fix Symbian, which, as we said, was 00:25:16.740 --> 00:25:19.359 basically impossible. Right. Option two, go with 00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:22.440 Android, like Samsung, HTC, and Motorola were 00:25:22.440 --> 00:25:25.500 all doing. And option three, partner with Microsoft 00:25:25.500 --> 00:25:29.650 on their new Windows Phone OS. So why didn't 00:25:29.650 --> 00:25:31.769 they choose Android? In hindsight, it seems like 00:25:31.769 --> 00:25:34.309 such an obvious move. Android was free. It was 00:25:34.309 --> 00:25:36.730 gaining traction. It was getting the apps. Elop's 00:25:36.730 --> 00:25:39.930 public argument was about differentiation. He 00:25:39.930 --> 00:25:42.150 believed that if Nokia used Android, they would 00:25:42.150 --> 00:25:44.349 just become one of many manufacturers making 00:25:44.349 --> 00:25:46.630 black rectangles. A commodity hardware maker. 00:25:46.789 --> 00:25:48.950 Exactly. He worried they'd be fighting Samsung 00:25:48.950 --> 00:25:52.190 and others on price with razor thin margins and 00:25:52.190 --> 00:25:54.210 that Google would end up capturing all the value 00:25:54.210 --> 00:25:56.809 from the software and services, not Nokia. So 00:25:56.809 --> 00:25:58.960 he wanted to be the big fish in it. new smaller 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:02.000 pond. He wanted to create a third ecosystem to 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:04.819 challenge the duopoly of Apple and Google. And 00:26:04.819 --> 00:26:06.960 Microsoft was desperate for a major hardware 00:26:06.960 --> 00:26:09.240 partner. They threw billions of dollars in marketing 00:26:09.240 --> 00:26:11.660 support at Nokia. So Elop made the call. They 00:26:11.660 --> 00:26:13.480 jumped to Windows. And then came the tactical 00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:16.339 error. The Osborne effect. This was the killer. 00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.140 Elop announced the switch to Windows Phone in 00:26:19.140 --> 00:26:22.480 February of 2011. He effectively stood up and 00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:25.579 told the whole world Symbian is dead. But the 00:26:25.579 --> 00:26:28.630 first Nokia Windows Phone wasn't ready yet. it 00:26:28.630 --> 00:26:30.269 wouldn't be ready to ship for another nine months. 00:26:30.470 --> 00:26:33.230 So he told consumers, don't buy our current phones, 00:26:33.309 --> 00:26:35.910 they're obsolete. Yeah. But he had no new phones 00:26:35.910 --> 00:26:38.609 to sell them. Exactly. Sales of Symbian phones 00:26:38.609 --> 00:26:41.670 didn't just decline. They completely collapsed 00:26:41.670 --> 00:26:44.289 overnight. Revenue fell off a cliff. The company 00:26:44.289 --> 00:26:46.309 started burning through its massive cash reserves 00:26:46.309 --> 00:26:48.390 just trying to keep the lights on. The stock 00:26:48.390 --> 00:26:51.509 price tanked, falling below $2 a share by mid 00:26:51.509 --> 00:26:54.170 -2012. And when the new Lumia phones finally 00:26:54.170 --> 00:26:56.329 did arrive... They were beautiful. I will die 00:26:56.329 --> 00:26:58.369 on this hill. The hardware was stunning. The 00:26:58.369 --> 00:27:01.369 Lumia 800 with its polycarbonate unibody. The 00:27:01.369 --> 00:27:04.150 Lumia 920 with its optical image stabilizer. 00:27:04.170 --> 00:27:07.569 The colors, the bright yellow and cyan. And the 00:27:07.569 --> 00:27:10.670 cameras were incredible. The Lumia 1020 had a 00:27:10.670 --> 00:27:14.509 41 megapixel sensor in 2013. It was years and 00:27:14.509 --> 00:27:17.769 I mean years ahead of Apple and Samsung in photography. 00:27:17.849 --> 00:27:21.099 But the app gap. It was real and it was fatal. 00:27:21.740 --> 00:27:23.859 Developers didn't want to build for a third ecosystem 00:27:23.859 --> 00:27:26.720 with a tiny market share. So you had Instagram 00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:29.220 on iPhone. You had it on Android. For the longest 00:27:29.220 --> 00:27:31.420 time, you didn't have it on Windows Phone. A 00:27:31.420 --> 00:27:33.240 customer would walk into a store, fall in love 00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:35.759 with the Nokia hardware, ask does it have Snapchat, 00:27:36.039 --> 00:27:38.599 hear the word no, and walk out with a Samsung 00:27:38.599 --> 00:27:42.059 Galaxy. It was a death by a thousand cuts, which 00:27:42.059 --> 00:27:46.200 leads to the inevitable. 2013, Nokia sells its 00:27:46.200 --> 00:27:51.119 phone business. To Microsoft. for 5 .44 billion 00:27:51.119 --> 00:27:54.579 euros. The chairman at the time, Risto Sulasma, 00:27:54.759 --> 00:27:57.980 had this heartbreaking quote. He called the decision... 00:27:58.389 --> 00:28:00.529 Rationally correct, but emotionally difficult. 00:28:00.789 --> 00:28:03.630 For Finland, it was a national trauma. The pride 00:28:03.630 --> 00:28:05.450 of the nation, the brand that put them on the 00:28:05.450 --> 00:28:07.690 global map, was being sold off to an American 00:28:07.690 --> 00:28:10.369 tech giant. Microsoft took over the factories, 00:28:10.509 --> 00:28:13.589 the designers, the Lumia brand name. It felt 00:28:13.589 --> 00:28:15.650 like the end. But, and this is the big pivot, 00:28:15.730 --> 00:28:17.890 the reason we're doing this deep dive, that wasn't 00:28:17.890 --> 00:28:20.369 the end of Nokia. No, this is the part most people 00:28:20.369 --> 00:28:22.450 completely missed. When they sold the devices 00:28:22.450 --> 00:28:24.369 and services division, they didn't sell the whole 00:28:24.369 --> 00:28:26.829 company. They kept three key assets. Okay, let's 00:28:26.829 --> 00:28:30.130 list them. What was left? Number one, Nokia Networks. 00:28:30.130 --> 00:28:33.690 This was their big, boring, but profitable infrastructure 00:28:33.690 --> 00:28:36.690 business. The cell towers, the network switches, 00:28:36.910 --> 00:28:39.650 all the back -end gear that makes mobile networks 00:28:39.650 --> 00:28:44.210 run. Number two, here, Maps. This was their world 00:28:44.210 --> 00:28:47.390 -class digital mapping division. For in -car 00:28:47.390 --> 00:28:49.250 navigation, it was actually better than Google 00:28:49.250 --> 00:28:51.529 Maps in many ways at the time. And number three, 00:28:51.589 --> 00:28:54.890 Nokia Technologies, which was basically their 00:28:54.890 --> 00:28:59.140 treasure chest of patents. Decades of R &D. Thousands 00:28:59.140 --> 00:29:01.579 upon thousands of essential patents for mobile 00:29:01.579 --> 00:29:04.339 communication. So even if you buy a Samsung or 00:29:04.339 --> 00:29:06.900 an Apple phone today. A tiny slice of that money 00:29:06.900 --> 00:29:09.740 is still going to Nokia in royalties. Essentially, 00:29:09.799 --> 00:29:12.279 yes. So they had these three pieces. They made 00:29:12.279 --> 00:29:14.460 a quick strategic decision to sell the maps division. 00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:17.140 They sold here maps to a consortium of German 00:29:17.140 --> 00:29:20.539 car makers, Audi, BMW, Daimler for 2 .8 billion 00:29:20.539 --> 00:29:22.599 euros. So they cashed that out? Cashed it out. 00:29:22.660 --> 00:29:24.480 So now they're sitting on a huge pile of hash 00:29:24.480 --> 00:29:26.359 from the Microsoft deal and the German car guys 00:29:26.359 --> 00:29:28.859 deal. What do they do with it? They double down 00:29:28.859 --> 00:29:31.099 on being the plumbers of the Internet. That's 00:29:31.099 --> 00:29:33.299 the perfect way to put it. In 2015, they made 00:29:33.299 --> 00:29:35.799 a massive acquisition. They bought their French 00:29:35.799 --> 00:29:40.500 -American rival, Alcatel -Lucent, for 15 .6 billion 00:29:40.500 --> 00:29:42.819 euros. That's a huge deal. That's almost three 00:29:42.819 --> 00:29:44.559 times what they got for the phone business. It 00:29:44.559 --> 00:29:47.579 was transformative. And it brought two absolute 00:29:47.579 --> 00:29:50.940 jewels into the Nokia crown. First, and maybe 00:29:50.940 --> 00:29:54.400 most importantly, Bell Labs. The Bell Labs. As 00:29:54.400 --> 00:29:57.000 in New Jersey, the invention of the transistor, 00:29:57.220 --> 00:30:00.299 the laser, the solar cell, Bell Labs. The very 00:30:00.299 --> 00:30:02.519 same. One of the most legendary research and 00:30:02.519 --> 00:30:04.319 development centers in the history of science. 00:30:04.579 --> 00:30:07.720 That is now a Nokia Research Center. It gave 00:30:07.720 --> 00:30:10.220 them immense R &D credibility and a pipeline 00:30:10.220 --> 00:30:12.619 of future tech. That's incredible. And the second 00:30:12.619 --> 00:30:15.119 jewel. Submarine cables. Alcatel had a division. 00:30:15.150 --> 00:30:17.950 called Alcatel Submarine Networks, or ASN. This 00:30:17.950 --> 00:30:19.349 is a part of the internet we never think about. 00:30:19.490 --> 00:30:21.710 We talk about the cloud, but the cloud is actually 00:30:21.710 --> 00:30:24.849 at the bottom of the ocean. It is. 99 % of all 00:30:24.849 --> 00:30:27.089 international data traffic travels through these 00:30:27.089 --> 00:30:29.309 undersea fiber optic cables, not satellites. 00:30:29.670 --> 00:30:32.430 And Nokia, through this acquisition, now owns 00:30:32.430 --> 00:30:35.190 a fleet of cable -laying ships. I looked these 00:30:35.190 --> 00:30:40.539 up. The C .S. Aldousan. The C .S. Aldousan. These 00:30:40.539 --> 00:30:43.640 are massive high -tech vessels. They're floating 00:30:43.640 --> 00:30:46.460 factories. They sail out into the middle of the 00:30:46.460 --> 00:30:49.359 Atlantic or the Pacific, spooling out thousands 00:30:49.359 --> 00:30:52.000 of miles of fiber optic cable, thinner than a 00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:54.619 human hair, onto the ocean floor. They have these 00:30:54.619 --> 00:30:56.940 underwater plows to bury the cable so fishing 00:30:56.940 --> 00:30:59.400 nets don't snag it. They have robot submarines 00:30:59.400 --> 00:31:02.140 to go down and fix breaks. So while we were all 00:31:02.140 --> 00:31:04.559 mourning the loss of our unbreakable brick phones, 00:31:04.859 --> 00:31:08.440 Nokia was... busy literally wiring the planet 00:31:08.440 --> 00:31:10.940 together. They completely shifted their focus 00:31:10.940 --> 00:31:12.819 from the device in your hand to the invisible 00:31:12.819 --> 00:31:15.440 network that makes that device useful. If you're 00:31:15.440 --> 00:31:17.740 listening to this deep dive right now, the data 00:31:17.740 --> 00:31:19.960 packets carrying our voices probably traveled 00:31:19.960 --> 00:31:22.099 through a Nokia -made switch or a Nokia -laid 00:31:22.099 --> 00:31:24.059 cable at some point on their journey to you. 00:31:24.180 --> 00:31:26.319 But they did have a weird little identity crisis 00:31:26.319 --> 00:31:27.920 for a bit there, didn't they? Do you remember 00:31:27.920 --> 00:31:30.680 the OZO camera? Oh, the VR camera. The big black 00:31:30.680 --> 00:31:32.440 ball that looked like a probe droid from the 00:31:32.440 --> 00:31:35.259 Empire Spikes back. That was 2015. VR was supposed 00:31:35.259 --> 00:31:38.559 to be the next big thing. And Nokia jumped in 00:31:38.559 --> 00:31:41.500 with this professional -grade 360 -degree camera. 00:31:41.740 --> 00:31:45.569 It cost $60 ,000. $60 ,000. Who was buying that? 00:31:45.829 --> 00:31:49.069 Disney bought some major movie studios. But the 00:31:49.069 --> 00:31:51.849 consumer VR revolution didn't really happen, 00:31:52.009 --> 00:31:54.130 at least not as fast as everyone thought. So 00:31:54.130 --> 00:31:56.910 Nokia killed the whole product line in 2017. 00:31:57.329 --> 00:31:59.029 They also bought that digital health company, 00:31:59.190 --> 00:32:02.329 Withings. They did in 2016. They made those smart 00:32:02.329 --> 00:32:04.549 scales and watches. I actually have a Withings 00:32:04.549 --> 00:32:07.289 scale. I had no idea it was owned by Nokia for 00:32:07.289 --> 00:32:09.309 a while. It was branded Nokia Digital Health 00:32:09.309 --> 00:32:11.690 for about two years. And then they seemed to 00:32:11.690 --> 00:32:14.119 realize, you know what? We're a business to business 00:32:14.119 --> 00:32:16.740 company now. We're not good at consumer marketing 00:32:16.740 --> 00:32:19.519 anymore. So they sold it back to the original 00:32:19.519 --> 00:32:22.400 founder of Withings in 2018. Yeah. Which feels 00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:25.079 like a very mature, disciplined decision. We 00:32:25.079 --> 00:32:27.299 tried it. It didn't fit our core mission. Let's 00:32:27.299 --> 00:32:29.420 cut our losses and move on. It's very different 00:32:29.420 --> 00:32:31.779 from the Kyra Moe era in the 80s where they tried 00:32:31.779 --> 00:32:34.119 to do everything at once. The modern Nokia is 00:32:34.119 --> 00:32:36.200 very quick to kill things that don't fit the 00:32:36.200 --> 00:32:39.339 core strategy. Except. I can still walk into 00:32:39.339 --> 00:32:41.500 a Best Buy today and see a Nokia phone on the 00:32:41.500 --> 00:32:44.480 shelf. I saw a rugged Nokia smartphone last week, 00:32:44.480 --> 00:32:47.500 so explain that. That is a clever bit of branding, 00:32:47.740 --> 00:32:50.440 sleight of hand. That is a company called HMD 00:32:50.440 --> 00:32:53.920 Global. Okay. Who are they? In 2016, the new, 00:32:54.059 --> 00:32:56.819 focused Nokia realized that the brand name itself 00:32:56.819 --> 00:32:59.579 still had a lot of value and nostalgia attached 00:32:59.579 --> 00:33:02.119 to it, even if they themselves didn't want to 00:33:02.119 --> 00:33:04.059 be in the risky business of manufacturing phones. 00:33:04.279 --> 00:33:07.140 Right. So a new, separate company was formed 00:33:07.140 --> 00:33:10.519 in Finland called HMD Global. It was run mostly 00:33:10.519 --> 00:33:13.200 by former Nokia executives who had left during 00:33:13.200 --> 00:33:15.759 the Microsoft years. So the band got back together. 00:33:16.190 --> 00:33:19.230 Sort of. Kind of. And HMD cut a deal. They licensed 00:33:19.230 --> 00:33:21.490 the Nokia brand name. They designed the phones. 00:33:21.589 --> 00:33:24.609 But the actual manufacturing is done by Foxconn, 00:33:24.609 --> 00:33:26.930 the same company that makes iPhones. It's a smart 00:33:26.930 --> 00:33:29.670 asset -light model. Nokia gets paid a royalty 00:33:29.670 --> 00:33:32.549 for the use of its name, but takes zero risk 00:33:32.549 --> 00:33:35.509 on inventory or factories. Exactly. And HMD has 00:33:35.509 --> 00:33:37.849 played the nostalgia card perfectly. One of the 00:33:37.849 --> 00:33:39.950 first things they did was re -release an updated 00:33:39.950 --> 00:33:43.230 version of the 3310. I remember that. They also 00:33:43.230 --> 00:33:46.230 re -released the 8110, the banana phone from 00:33:46.230 --> 00:33:49.509 the Matrix. It got them tons of headlines. But 00:33:49.509 --> 00:33:52.710 alongside that, they also make solid, no -nonsense 00:33:52.710 --> 00:33:55.890 Android smartphones that get good reviews for 00:33:55.890 --> 00:33:58.569 their clean software. So the brand we knew lives 00:33:58.569 --> 00:34:01.170 on in our pockets as a kind of ghost, an Echo. 00:34:02.220 --> 00:34:04.279 But the real Nokia, the corporation, is doing 00:34:04.279 --> 00:34:06.940 something very different in the 2020s. They are 00:34:06.940 --> 00:34:09.780 now strictly a business to business or B2B company. 00:34:10.059 --> 00:34:12.900 They're the world's third largest network equipment 00:34:12.900 --> 00:34:15.480 manufacturer, right up there with their old rival 00:34:15.480 --> 00:34:19.639 Ericsson and the Chinese giant Huawei. And geopolitics 00:34:19.639 --> 00:34:21.400 is helping them again, isn't it? Just like in 00:34:21.400 --> 00:34:23.360 the Cold War, international politics is shaping 00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:25.539 their profit margins. It's amazing how history 00:34:25.539 --> 00:34:27.989 repeats itself. When the U .S. government and 00:34:27.989 --> 00:34:29.969 other Western nations started banning Huawei 00:34:29.969 --> 00:34:32.570 and ZTE from their 5G networks due to national 00:34:32.570 --> 00:34:35.090 security concerns. There were only two major 00:34:35.090 --> 00:34:38.130 non -Chinese suppliers left. Nokia and Ericsson. 00:34:38.269 --> 00:34:40.989 Suddenly, if you're a carrier like AT &T or Verizon 00:34:40.989 --> 00:34:43.610 in the U .S. or a carrier in the U .K. or Australia, 00:34:43.809 --> 00:34:46.690 and you need to build out your 5G network and 00:34:46.690 --> 00:34:48.650 you're forbidden from using the Chinese gear, 00:34:48.769 --> 00:34:51.369 you call the Finns or the Swedes. Nokia became 00:34:51.369 --> 00:34:54.789 the safe. geopolitical choice for the West. A 00:34:54.789 --> 00:34:57.389 trusted partner. It's been a huge boost for their 00:34:57.389 --> 00:34:59.989 business. And now they're looking beyond Earth 00:34:59.989 --> 00:35:02.570 entirely. We tease this at the very beginning. 00:35:02.710 --> 00:35:04.929 The moon. This is my favorite part of the modern 00:35:04.929 --> 00:35:08.929 Nokia story. In 2020, NASA awarded Nokia a $14 00:35:08.929 --> 00:35:13.110 .1 million contract as part of its Tipping Point 00:35:13.110 --> 00:35:15.969 technology program. To build a 4G network on 00:35:15.969 --> 00:35:19.789 the moon. My first question is, why? Why do astronauts 00:35:19.789 --> 00:35:22.309 need LTE? It's not so they can check Instagram 00:35:22.309 --> 00:35:24.989 from the lunar surface. No, it's all about creating 00:35:24.989 --> 00:35:27.070 reliable communications infrastructure for the 00:35:27.070 --> 00:35:29.349 Artemis missions. Right now, when a lunar rover 00:35:29.349 --> 00:35:31.289 talks to the lander or the lander talks back 00:35:31.289 --> 00:35:33.769 to Earth, it's all point -to -point radio, it 00:35:33.769 --> 00:35:35.969 uses a lot of power, and the bandwidth is relatively 00:35:35.969 --> 00:35:38.469 low. So if you want to send back high -definition 00:35:38.469 --> 00:35:41.010 video of a moonwalk or control a robot arm in 00:35:41.010 --> 00:35:43.570 real time, traditional radio is a bottleneck. 00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:47.280 Exactly. A 4G LTE network is incredibly efficient. 00:35:47.519 --> 00:35:50.099 It provides high bandwidth and low latency over 00:35:50.099 --> 00:35:53.360 long distances with very compact, low power hardware. 00:35:53.840 --> 00:35:56.760 Nokia is essentially building a network in a 00:35:56.760 --> 00:35:59.239 box. The base station gets mounted on the side 00:35:59.239 --> 00:36:01.599 of the lunar lander, and then the rovers and 00:36:01.599 --> 00:36:03.719 the astronauts gear can connect to it just like 00:36:03.719 --> 00:36:05.619 your phone connects to a cell tower. What are 00:36:05.619 --> 00:36:08.119 the technical challenges there? I have to imagine 00:36:08.119 --> 00:36:10.719 the moon is a slightly harsher environment than 00:36:10.719 --> 00:36:13.440 downtown Helsinki. Just a bit. You have extreme 00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:16.519 cosmic radiation that can fry electronics. You 00:36:16.519 --> 00:36:18.679 have temperatures that swing hundreds of degrees 00:36:18.679 --> 00:36:21.440 from boiling hot in the sun to cryogenically 00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:24.260 cold in the shade. And you have the intense vibration 00:36:24.260 --> 00:36:27.519 and shock of a rocket launch and landing. The 00:36:27.519 --> 00:36:30.639 hardware has to be, well, Nokia tough. Bomb proof. 00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:33.679 If they pull this off, and the mission is expected 00:36:33.679 --> 00:36:37.199 to deploy fully this year or next, It's a massive 00:36:37.199 --> 00:36:39.480 technological flex. It's the ultimate marketing 00:36:39.480 --> 00:36:41.840 campaign. It proves to the world that their technology 00:36:41.840 --> 00:36:43.980 is robust enough for space exploration, which 00:36:43.980 --> 00:36:46.179 means it's definitely robust enough for a factory 00:36:46.179 --> 00:36:49.460 floor or a shipping port on Earth. Okay, let's 00:36:49.460 --> 00:36:51.820 bring it right up to the present day. February 00:36:51.820 --> 00:36:56.260 2026. The company looks very different. Even 00:36:56.260 --> 00:36:58.420 than it did just five years ago. They went through 00:36:58.420 --> 00:37:02.059 a huge rebrand in 2023. The logo changed. Remember 00:37:02.059 --> 00:37:05.199 the controversy online? They ditched that classic 00:37:05.199 --> 00:37:07.559 familiar Yale blue type face that we all knew 00:37:07.559 --> 00:37:09.460 from the phones. And they replaced it with this 00:37:09.460 --> 00:37:13.139 jagged, abstract, very modern looking logo. Some 00:37:13.139 --> 00:37:15.219 of the letters have strokes missing. It's very 00:37:15.219 --> 00:37:17.599 stylized. People hated it at first. Of course 00:37:17.599 --> 00:37:19.519 they did. People always hate change. But the 00:37:19.519 --> 00:37:21.559 message behind it was strategically brilliant. 00:37:21.739 --> 00:37:24.039 They were shouting from the rooftops. We are 00:37:24.039 --> 00:37:28.059 not the phone company. We are a B2B deep tech 00:37:28.059 --> 00:37:30.659 innovation company. The old logo was consumer 00:37:30.659 --> 00:37:33.320 friendly. The new logo is enterprise focused. 00:37:33.619 --> 00:37:36.179 And the leadership has shifted. Pekka Ludmark 00:37:36.179 --> 00:37:38.980 was the CEO who steered them through that tough 00:37:38.980 --> 00:37:41.880 restructuring in the early 2020s. But as of last 00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:44.420 year, there's a new face at the top. Justin Hotard. 00:37:44.809 --> 00:37:47.849 He was announced as the new CEO in February 2025 00:37:47.849 --> 00:37:50.750 and officially took the reins in March. So he's 00:37:50.750 --> 00:37:52.750 been in the job for almost a full year now. And 00:37:52.750 --> 00:37:54.949 his background tells you everything you need 00:37:54.949 --> 00:37:58.130 to know about where Nokia is heading. He didn't 00:37:58.130 --> 00:38:00.369 come from telecom. He came from HP Enterprise. 00:38:00.590 --> 00:38:03.090 His background is in high performance computing 00:38:03.090 --> 00:38:06.369 and artificial intelligence. So Nokia isn't just 00:38:06.369 --> 00:38:09.280 about. connecting people anymore. It's about 00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:12.460 connecting massive AI data centers. Precisely. 00:38:12.460 --> 00:38:15.260 Just look at their recent strategic moves. In 00:38:15.260 --> 00:38:17.880 June of 2024, they acquired a company called 00:38:17.880 --> 00:38:21.019 Infinera for $2 .3 billion. What do they do? 00:38:21.400 --> 00:38:23.820 They're a leader in optical networking. Basically, 00:38:23.880 --> 00:38:26.000 they make the hardware that makes fiber optic 00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:28.579 pipes faster, more efficient. And then in late 00:38:28.579 --> 00:38:31.340 2025, they announced a major partnership with 00:38:31.340 --> 00:38:34.230 Supermicro. Who are big in the AI server space. 00:38:34.409 --> 00:38:36.949 So Nokia is betting their future on the idea 00:38:36.949 --> 00:38:39.590 that the AI boom is going to require a massive 00:38:39.590 --> 00:38:42.010 upgrade to the underlying data movement infrastructure 00:38:42.010 --> 00:38:44.590 of the Internet. And they want to be the ones 00:38:44.590 --> 00:38:46.750 selling the picks and shovels for that gold rush. 00:38:46.989 --> 00:38:49.269 It's the same logic as the 19th century. Back 00:38:49.269 --> 00:38:51.309 then, they provided the power and the cables 00:38:51.309 --> 00:38:54.469 for the first industrial revolution. Now they're 00:38:54.469 --> 00:38:56.369 providing the bandwidth and the optical systems 00:38:56.369 --> 00:38:59.650 for the AI revolution. And to bring things full 00:38:59.650 --> 00:39:02.949 circle. They had to exit Russia completely in 00:39:02.949 --> 00:39:05.929 2022. It's a sad closing of a circle. It really 00:39:05.929 --> 00:39:08.769 is. The company that grew fat and powerful on 00:39:08.769 --> 00:39:11.349 Soviet trade in the 70s and 80s had to completely 00:39:11.349 --> 00:39:13.929 sever those ties after the invasion of Ukraine. 00:39:14.250 --> 00:39:16.849 They dismantled their networks there and left 00:39:16.849 --> 00:39:19.690 the country for good. It shows how much the world 00:39:19.690 --> 00:39:22.250 has changed and how Nokia has had to change with 00:39:22.250 --> 00:39:24.829 it. OK, so let's try to synthesize this whole 00:39:24.829 --> 00:39:27.610 epic journey. We've gone from a pulp mill in 00:39:27.610 --> 00:39:30.010 the Russian Empire to a 4G base station on the 00:39:30.010 --> 00:39:34.469 moon in 2026. What is the ultimate takeaway here? 00:39:34.670 --> 00:39:36.889 For me, the takeaway is that Nokia is a lesson 00:39:36.889 --> 00:39:39.809 in the brutal, painful necessity of letting go. 00:39:39.969 --> 00:39:41.869 Letting go of the thing that made you famous 00:39:41.869 --> 00:39:44.210 and successful. Exactly. Most great companies 00:39:44.210 --> 00:39:46.489 die because they hug their cash cow to death 00:39:46.489 --> 00:39:49.170 long after it stopped. giving milk. Kodak couldn't 00:39:49.170 --> 00:39:51.429 let go of photographic film. Blockbuster couldn't 00:39:51.429 --> 00:39:53.670 let go of physical video rentals. And Nokia was 00:39:53.670 --> 00:39:55.969 the absolute king of mobile phones. It was their 00:39:55.969 --> 00:39:58.650 entire identity. For Finland, it was their national 00:39:58.650 --> 00:40:01.969 pride. And they let it burn. They accepted that 00:40:01.969 --> 00:40:04.510 the platform was on fire and they made the jump. 00:40:04.730 --> 00:40:07.230 They gave up the consumer glory and the brand 00:40:07.230 --> 00:40:10.349 recognition to survive in the boring, invisible 00:40:10.349 --> 00:40:13.230 world of infrastructure. They prove that a brand 00:40:13.230 --> 00:40:16.210 can effectively die in the consumer's hand, but 00:40:16.210 --> 00:40:18.309 thrive in the unseen machinery of the world. 00:40:18.449 --> 00:40:20.449 They are the invisible giants now. And it was 00:40:20.449 --> 00:40:22.969 the right move. I think it's undeniable. If they 00:40:22.969 --> 00:40:25.250 hadn't sold the phone division to Microsoft when 00:40:25.250 --> 00:40:27.150 they did, they would almost certainly be bankrupt 00:40:27.150 --> 00:40:29.789 today. Instead, they are profitable, they own 00:40:29.789 --> 00:40:32.309 Bell Labs, and they're putting a network on the 00:40:32.309 --> 00:40:34.969 moon. Before we wrap up, I want to leave our 00:40:34.969 --> 00:40:37.309 listeners with a final thought experiment. A 00:40:37.309 --> 00:40:40.900 big what if. Go for it. If Nokia... Back in 2011, 00:40:41.179 --> 00:40:43.539 under Steven Elop, had made a different choice. 00:40:44.119 --> 00:40:46.900 They had chosen Android instead of Windows Phone. 00:40:47.400 --> 00:40:50.119 Would we all be carrying Nokia devices today? 00:40:50.300 --> 00:40:52.920 It's the great counterfactual of the mobile industry. 00:40:53.219 --> 00:40:55.840 Would Samsung just be a minor player in the phone 00:40:55.840 --> 00:40:59.460 market? Would Nokia have used its superior hardware 00:40:59.460 --> 00:41:02.980 engineering and brand loyalty to become the undisputed 00:41:02.980 --> 00:41:07.639 king of the Android world? Or... Was their transition 00:41:07.639 --> 00:41:10.320 into becoming the plumbers of the internet the 00:41:10.320 --> 00:41:12.780 only way they could have truly survived the smartphone 00:41:12.780 --> 00:41:16.079 wars? It's a tough one. My personal take. If 00:41:16.079 --> 00:41:17.880 they'd gone with Android, they'd be fighting 00:41:17.880 --> 00:41:21.139 a brutal Lomregen war with Samsung and a dozen 00:41:21.139 --> 00:41:23.760 Chinese manufacturers today. They might still 00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:25.920 exist as a phone brand, but they would have been 00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:28.280 a shadow of their former selves. I don't think 00:41:28.280 --> 00:41:30.079 they would have had the capital or the focus 00:41:30.079 --> 00:41:33.280 to buy Alcatel -Lucent, to own Bell Labs, or 00:41:33.280 --> 00:41:35.880 to go to the moon. So the jump into the icy water 00:41:35.880 --> 00:41:37.659 was the right call? I think the jump into the 00:41:37.659 --> 00:41:40.519 icy water, the painful, humiliating sale to Microsoft, 00:41:40.579 --> 00:41:42.820 was the move that actually saved the organism. 00:41:43.079 --> 00:41:45.480 in the long run. A truly fascinating history, 00:41:45.599 --> 00:41:48.159 from the riverbanks of Tampere to the craters 00:41:48.159 --> 00:41:49.940 of the moon. Thank you for walking us through 00:41:49.940 --> 00:41:51.739 this. My pleasure. It's an incredible story. 00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:54.440 And to our listener, thanks for spending your 00:41:54.440 --> 00:41:57.360 Valentine Saturday with us. Keep connecting people, 00:41:57.619 --> 00:42:00.159 however you choose to do it. We'll see you in 00:42:00.159 --> 00:42:00.880 the next Deep Dive.