HELINSKI, FINLAND: Like most Finns, Perttu Iso-Markku always bought mobile phones made by his country's biggest company, Nokia Oyj. Then in February, he invested in an Apple Inc iPhone and started loading it with applications.

Iso-Markku’s switch shows how Espoo-based Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, is struggling against application-rich competitors such as Apple as customers increasingly want their handsets to be catch-all devices. As more and more of the industry’s battles are fought on content, Nokia’s piece of the $50 billion market for smartphones, the industry’s fastest-growing segment, is shrinking.

So here are the nine points that are hurting the world's largest handset maker.

Market Share
The failings on software are costing Nokia some market share even as it ramps up its own Ovi Store for applications.

Management Focus
Nokia’s weakness has been one of execution rather than of technology. It courted software developers for years, registering more than four million of them on its Forum Nokia service in the last decade.

Developer support
Nokia’s multiple devices with different configurations make designing more difficult, time consuming and expensive, developers said.

Execution flaw
The company’s software efforts included Club Nokia for images and ringtones, N-Gage for games, Mosh for content sharing, WidSets, Software Market, and Download!

People in service
The Finnish company is hiring more managers to improve the services experience

Skepticism
Nokia’s not the most creative handset company, but they seem to be making a concerted effort.

Apple applications
Nokia has a network of games users and its acquisition of Navteq helped it build a maps service based on GPS locations. Apple is ahead in categories.

Ease of Use
People are already using their iPhones in ways no one could have imagined less than a year ago, thanks to the runaway success of the App Store with over 50,000 apps available and more than 1 billion downloaded.

‘Lost the Game’
Nokia was “very good at the beginning of the mobile era, when the interface was just characters, but now with the complexity and graphical nature of phones, they’ve lost the game.

Source:
Bloomberg.com

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Nokia Failure to Beat IPhone Software Puts Market Share at Risk