I like the honesty of Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new chief executive, in a memo leaked to technology website Engadget, he writes:

“We are standing on a burning platform. We have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

There is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time.”

The first iPhone shipping was in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to that experience. Android came on the scene just over two years ago, and this week they took our leadership in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.”

And of course he’s right, whilst competitive manufacturers have developed ever appealing smartphones, Nokia has lagged behind.

OK – so it’s easy to blame a lack of NPD (or at least a lack in what is perceived as really innovative NPD) for their plight – but I think there’s been another issue at play, at least in the UK anyway.

Nokia in the UK is still a great brand, it generates high sales volumes & people, business customers and private individuals, love Nokia’s intuitive user interface.

For many of us, we couldn’t do without it. It’s a classic mainstream brand in the innovative technology sector.

And here’s the challenge – how to market to the people you serve best? Some of whom will want the latest technical wizardry, but many of whom just want a mobile phone that works brilliantly.

I think Nokia lost their way a couple of years ago – up to that time the advertising was mainstream, the sponsorship was mainstream (remember the X Factor), retail promotions were mainstream – it was a good fit.

Then a change in UK personnel brought a change in marketing focus – an almost manic focus on ‘youth’ and ‘new media’.

Of course it’s easy to understand why such a fundamental mistake was made – the youth market is seductive for marketers:

‘it’s fun & sexy’; ‘catch consumers young and benefit from higher lifetime value’; ‘technology brands need to appeal to the youth market to maintain credibility’

…all this is fine, if you have the products to back it up – but as acknowledged by Mr Elop, Nokia didn’t have the products. And by pursuing the dream of appealing to a youth market, Nokia also neglected its core consumers – and so many of them left the brand.

Hopefully today’s announcement of the establishment of a new relationship between Nokia and Microsoft will herald the development of new phones which will knock the iPhone (and HTC, Samsung, Blackberry, LG) off their perch – and when that happens, it’ll give Nokia the opportunity to make inroads into the youth market – in the interim, I hope it focuses on meeting the needs of its existing consumers.