Cognitive science Essay

Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective. As a discipline it links literary criticism and linguistics, but has no autonomous domain of its own. [1][2] The preferred object of stylistic studies is literature, but not exclusively â€Å"high literature† but also other forms of written texts such as text from the domains of advertising, pop culture, politics or religion. [3] Stylistics also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialisation, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism. Other features of stylistics include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and people’s dialects, descriptive language, the use of grammar, such as the active voice or passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, etc. In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is ‘going on’ within the language; what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals. * | Early twentieth century The analysis of literary style goes back to Classical rhetoric, but modern stylistics has its roots in Russian Formalism,[4] and the related Prague School, in the early twentieth century. In 1909, Charles Bally’s Traite de stylistique francaise had proposed stylistics as a distinct academic discipline to complement Saussurean linguistics. For Bally, Saussure’s linguistics by itself couldn’t fully describe the language of personal expression. [5] Bally’s programme fitted well with the aims of the Prague School. [6] Building on the ideas of the Russian Formalists, the Prague School developed the concept of foregrounding, whereby poetic language stands out from the background of non-literary language by means of deviation (from the norms of everyday language) or parallelism. [7] According to the Prague School, the background language isn’t fixed, and the relationship between poetic and everyday language is always shifting. [8] Late twentieth century Roman Jakobson had been an active member of the Russian Formalists and the Prague School, before emigrating to America in the 1940s. He brought together Russian Formalism and American New Criticism in his Closing Statement at a conference on stylistics at Indiana University in 1958. [9] Published as Linguistics and Poetics in 1960, Jakobson’s lecture is often credited with being the first coherent formulation of stylistics, and his argument was that the study of poetic language should be a sub-branch of linguistics. [10] The poetic function was one of six general functions of language he described in the lecture. Michael Halliday is an important figure in the development of British stylistics. [11] His 1971 study Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William Golding’s ‘The Inheritors’ is a key essay. [12] One of Halliday’s contributions has been the use of the term register to explain the connections between language and its context. [13] For Halliday register is distinct from dialect. Dialect refers to the habitual language of a particular user in a specific geographical or social context. Register describes the choices made by the user,[14] choices which depend on three variables: field (â€Å"what the participants†¦ are actually engaged in doing†, for instance, discussing a specific subject or topic),[15] tenor (who is taking part in the exchange) and mode (the use to which the language is being put). Fowler comments that different fields produce different language, most obviously at the level of vocabulary (Fowler. 1996, 192) The linguist David Crystal points out that Halliday’s ‘tenor’ stands as a roughly equivalent term for ‘style’, which is a more specific alternative used by linguists to avoid ambiguity. (Crystal. 1985, 292) Halliday’s third category, mode, is what he refers to as the symbolic organisation of the situation. Downes recognises two distinct aspects within the category of mode and suggests that not only does it describe the relation to the medium: written, spoken, and so on, but also describes the genre of the text. (Downes. 1998, 316) Halliday refers to genre as pre-coded language, language that has not simply been used before, but that predetermines the selection of textual meanings. The linguist William Downes makes the point that the principal characteristic of register, no matter how peculiar or diverse, is that it is obvious and immediately recognisable. (Downes. 1998, 309) Literary stylistics In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Crystal observes that, in practice, most stylistic analysis has attempted to deal with the complex and ‘valued’ language within literature, i. e.  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœliterary stylistics’. He goes on to say that in such examination the scope is sometimes narrowed to concentrate on the more striking features of literary language, for instance, its ‘deviant’ and abnormal features, rather than the broader structures that are found in whole texts or discourses. For example, the compact language of poetry is more likely to reveal the secrets of its construction to the stylistician than is the language of plays and novels. (Crystal. 1987, 71). Poetry As well as conventional styles of language there are the unconventional – the most obvious of which is poetry. In Practical Stylistics, HG Widdowson examines the traditional form of the epitaph, as found on headstones in a cemetery. For example: His memory is dear today As in the hour he passed away. (Ernest C. Draper ‘Ern’. Died 4. 1. 38) (Widdowson. 1992, 6) Widdowson makes the point that such sentiments are usually not very interesting and suggests that they may even be dismissed as ‘crude verbal carvings’ and crude verbal disturbance (Widdowson, 3). Nevertheless, Widdowson recognises that they are a very real attempt to convey feelings of human loss and preserve affectionate recollections of a beloved friend or family member. However, what may be seen as poetic in this language is not so much in the formulaic phraseology but in where it appears. The verse may be given undue reverence precisely because of the sombre situation in which it is placed. Widdowson suggests that, unlike words set in stone in a graveyard, poetry is unorthodox language that vibrates with inter-textual implications. (Widdowson. 1992, 4) Two problems with a stylistic analysis of poetry are noted by PM Wetherill in Literary Text: An Examination of Critical Methods. The first is that there may be an over-preoccupation with one particular feature that may well minimise the significance of others that are equally important. (Wetherill. 1974, 133) The second is that any attempt to see a text as simply a collection of stylistic elements will tend to ignore other ways whereby meaning is produced. (Wetherill. 1974, 133) Implicature In ‘Poetic Effects’ from Literary Pragmatics, the linguist Adrian Pilkington analyses the idea of ‘implicature’, as instigated in the previous work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Implicature may be divided into two categories: ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ implicature, yet between the two extremes there are a variety of other alternatives. The strongest implicature is what is emphatically implied by the speaker or writer, while weaker implicatures are the wider possibilities of meaning that the hearer or reader may conclude. Pilkington’s ‘poetic effects’, as he terms the concept, are those that achieve most relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures and not those meanings that are simply ‘read in’ by the hearer or reader. Yet the distinguishing instant at which weak implicatures and the hearer or reader’s conjecture of meaning diverge remains highly subjective. As Pilkington says: ‘there is no clear cut-off point between assumptions which the speaker certainly endorses and assumptions derived purely on the hearer’s responsibility. ’ (Pilkington. 1991, 53) In addition, the stylistic qualities of poetry can be seen as an accompaniment to Pilkington’s poetic effects in understanding a poem’s meaning. Stylistics is a valuable if long-winded approach to criticism, and compels attention to the poem’s details. Two of the three simple exercises performed here show that the poem is deficient in structure, and needs to be radically recast. The third sheds light on its content. Introduction Stylistics applies linguistics to literature in the hope of arriving at analyses which are more broadly based, rigorous and objective. {1} The pioneers were the Prague and Russian schools, but their approaches have been appropriated and extended in recent years by radical theory. Stylistics can be evaluative (i. e.judge the literary worth on stylistic criteria), but more commonly attempts to simply analyze and describe the workings of texts which have already been selected as noteworthy on other grounds. Analyses can appear objective, detailed and technical, even requiring computer assistance, but some caution is needed. Linguistics is currently a battlefield of contending theories, with no settlement in sight. Many critics have no formal training in linguistics, or even proper reading, and are apt to build on theories (commonly those of Saussure or Jacobson) that are inappropriate and/or no longer accepted. Some of the commonest terms, e. g. deep structure, foregrounding, have little or no experimental support. {2} Linguistics has rather different objectives, moreover: to study languages in their entirety and generality, not their use in art forms. Stylistic excellence — intelligence, originality, density and variety of verbal devices — play their part in literature, but aesthetics has long recognized that other aspects are equally important: fidelity to experience, emotional shaping, significant content. Stylistics may well be popular because it regards literature as simply part of language and therefore (neglecting the aesthetic dimension) without a privileged status, which allows the literary canon to be replaced by one more politically or sociologically acceptable. {3} Why then employ stylistics at all? Because form is important in poetry, and stylistics has the largest armoury of analytical weapons. Moreover, stylistics need not be reductive and simplistic. There is no need to embrace Jacobson’s theory that poetry is characterized by the projection of the paradigmatic axis onto the syntagmatic one. {4} Nor accept Bradford’s theory of a double spiral: {5} literature has too richly varied a history to be fitted into such a straitjacket. Stylistics suggests why certain devices are effective, but does not offer recipes, any more than theories of musical harmony explains away the gifts of individual composers. Some stylistic analysis is to be found in most types of literary criticism, and differences between the traditional, New Criticism and Stylistics approaches are often matters of emphasis. Style is a term of approbation in everyday use (â€Å"that woman has style†, etc.), and may be so for traditional and New Criticism. But where the first would judge a poem by reference to typical work of the period (Jacobean, Romantic, Modernist, etc. ), or according to genre, the New Criticism would probably simply note the conventions, explain what was unclear to a modern audience, and then pass on to a detailed analysis in terms of verbal density, complexity, ambiguity, etc. To the Stylistic critic, however, style means simply how something is expressed, which can be studied in all language, aesthetic and non-aesthetic. {6} Stylistics is a  very technical subject, which hardly makes for engrossing, or indeed uncontentious, {7} reading. The treatment here is very simple: just the bare bones, with some references cited. Under various categories the poem is analyzed in a dry manner, the more salient indications noted, and some recommendations made in Conclusions. Published Examples of Stylistic Literary Criticism G. N. Leech’s A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (1969) Laura Brown’s Alexander Pope (1985) Roy Lewis’s On Reading French Verse: A Study in Poetic Form (1982) George Wright’s Shakespeare’s Metrical Art. (1988) Richard Bradford’s A Linguistic History of English Poetry (1993) Poem The Architects But, as you’d expect, they are very Impatient, the buildings, having much in them Of the heavy surf of the North Sea, flurrying The grit, lifting the pebbles, flinging them With a hoarse roar against the aggregate They are composed of — the cliffs higher of course, More burdensome, underwritten as It were with past days overcast And glinting, obdurate, part of the Silicate of tough lives, distant and intricate As the whirring bureaucrats let in And settled with coffee in the concrete pallets, Awaiting the post and the department meeting — Except that these do not know it, at least do not Seem to, being busy, generally. So perhaps it is only on those cloudless, almost Vacuumed afternoons with tier upon tier Of concrete like rib-bones packed above them, And they light-headed with the blue airiness Spinning around, and muzzy, a neuralgia Calling at random like frail relations, a phone Ringing in a distant office they cannot get to, That they become attentive, or we do — these Divisions persisting, indeed what we talk about, We, constructing these webs of buildings which, Caulked like great whales about us, are always. Aware that some trick of the light or weather Will dress them as friends, pleading and flailing — And fill with placid but unbearable melodies Us in deep hinterlands of incurved glass.  © C. John Holcombe 1997 Metre Though apparently iambic, with five stresses to the line, the metre shows many reversals and substitutions. Put at its simplest, with: / representing a strong stress representing a weak stress x representing no stress, and trying to fit lines into a pentameters, we have -| /| x| x| x| /| -| | x| /| x| | But| as| you’d| ex| pect| | they| are| ve| ry| x| /| x| x| /| x| /| x| | x| x| Im| pat| ient| the| build| ings,| hav| ing| much| in| them| x| x| | x| /| x| x| | /| /| x x| Of| the| heav| y| surf| of| the| North| Sea,| flurr| ying| x| /| -| /| x| x| /| x| /| x| | The| grit,| | lift| ing| the| pebbl| es,| fling| ing| them| | x| /| -| /| x| | x| /| x| | With| a| hoarse| | roar| a| gainst| the| agg| re| gate| x| | x| /| | x| /| /| x| x| /| They| are| com| posed| of,| the| cliffs| high| er| of| course| | /| x| | -| /| x| / | x| | | More| burd| en| some,| | un| der| writ| ten| as| | x| /| x| /| -| /| -| /| x| /| | It| were| with| past| | days| | o| ver| cast| | x| /| x| | /| x| | -| /| x| x| And | glit| ter| ing,| ob| du| rate,| | part| of| the| -| /| x x x| /| -| /| -| /| x x| /| x x| | Sil| icate of| tough| | lives| | dist| ant and| in| tricate| -| | x| /| x| /| x| | -| /| x| | As| the| whir| ring| bu| reau| crats| | let| in| x| /| x x| /| x| | x| /| x| /| x| And | set| tled with| cof| fee| in| the| con| crete| pal| lets| x| /| x x| /| x| | x| /| x| /| x| A| wait| ing the| post| and| the| de| part| ment| meet| ing| x| | x| /| x | /| x| x| | /| x| Ex| cept| that| these| do not| know| it, | at| least| do| not| -| /| x| /| x| /| x| /| x| | x| | Seem| to| be| ing| bus| y| gen| ER| all| y| | x| /| x x| /| x| | x| /| x| /| x| So| per| haps| it is| on| ly| on| those| cloud| less| al| most| -| /| x| /| x| | x| /| x x| | /| x| | Vac| uumed| af| ter| noons| with| ti| ER u| pon| ti| ER| x| /| x| | /| /| -| /| x| /| x| | Of| con| Crete| like| rib| bones| | packed| a| bove| them| | x| /| | /| x| | x| /| /| x| | | And | they| light| head| ed,| with| the| blue| air| i| ness| | -| /| x x| /| x| /| x| | x| /| x x| | | Spin| ning a| round| and| muz| zy,| a| neu| ral| gia| | -| /| x x| /| x x| /| x| /| x x| /| | | Cal| ling at| ran| dom like| frail| re| lat| ions a| phone| | -| /| x x x| /| x| /| x x| /| x| /| x| | Ring| ing in a| dist| ant| of| fice they| can| not| get| to| x| /| x| /| x| /| x x| /| /-| | | That| they| be| come| at| ten| tive, or| we| do| these| | x| /| x x| /| x x| /| | x| /| x| /| Di| vis| ions per| sist| ing, in| deed| what| we| talk| a| bout| -| /| x| /| x x| /| x| /| x| | | | We,| con| struct| ing these| webs| of| build| ings| which| | -| /| x| /| | /| x| /| x x| /| x| | Caulk| Ed | like| great| whales| a| bout| us are| al| ways| x| /| x x| /| x x| /| x| /| x| | | A| ware| that some| trick| of the| light| or| weath| ER| | | | /| x x| /| -| /| x x| /| x| | | Will| dress| them as| friends| | plead| ing and| flail| ing| | | x| /| x| /| x| | x| /| x x| /| x x| And| fill| with| plac| id| but | UN| bear| able | mel| odies| -| /| x| | -| /| x x x| /| | /| | | Us | in| deep| | hint| erlands of| in| curved| glass| | Poets learn to trust their senses, but even to the experienced writer these (tedious) exercises can pinpoint what the ear suspects is faulty, suggest where improvements lie, and show how the metre is making for variety, broad consistency, shaping of the argument and emotive appeal. Though other scansions are certainly possible in the lines above, the most striking feature will remain their irregularity. Many lines can only roughly be called pentameters; Lines 16 and 17 are strictly hexameters; and lines 27 and 28 are tetrameters. In fact, the lines do not read like blank verse. The rhythm is not iambic in many areas, but trochaic, and indeed insistently dactylic in lines 9 and 10, 21 and 22 and 28. Line 27 is predominantly anapaestic, and line 3 could (just) be scanned: x x| / x| /| x x | /| | /| x x | Of the| heavy| surf| of the North| Sea| | flurr| ying| Reflective or meditative verse is generally written in the iambic pentameter, and for good reason — the benefit of past examples, readers’ expectations, and because the iambic is the closest to everyday speech: flexible, unemphatic, expressing a wide range of social registers. Blank verse for the stage may be very irregular but this, predominantly, is a quiet poem, with the falling rhythms inducing a mood of reflection if not melancholy. What is being attempted? Suppose we set out the argument (refer to rhetorical and other analyses), tabbing and reverse tabbing as the reflections as they seem more or less private: {8} 1. But, as you’d expect, 2. they are very impatient, the buildings, 3. having much in them of the heavy surf of the North Sea, 4. flurrying the grit, 5. lifting the pebbles, 6. flinging them with a hoarse roar against the aggregate they are composed of — the 7. cliffs higher of course, more 8. burdensome, 9. underwritten as it were with past days 10. overcast and glinting, 11. obdurate, 12. part of the silicate of tough lives, 13. distant and intricate as 14. the whirring bureaucrats 15. let in and settled with coffee in the concrete pallets, awaiting the post and the department meeting — 16. except that these do not know it, 17. at least do not seem to, being busy, 18. generally. 19. So perhaps it is only on those cloudless, almost vacuumed afternoons with tier upon tier of concrete like rib — bones packed above them, and 20. they light-headed 21. with the blue airiness spinning around, and 22. muzzy, a 23. neuralgia calling at random like 24. frail relations, a 25. phone ringing in a distant office they cannot get to, that 26. They become attentive, 27. or we do — 28. these divisions persisting, 29. indeed what we talk about, 30. we, constructing these webs of buildings which 31. caulked like great whales about us, are 32. always aware that some trick of the light or weather will dress them as friends, 33. pleading and flailing — and 34. fill with placid but unbearable melodies 35. us in deep hinterlands of incurved glass. The structure should now be clear. Where Eliot created new forms by stringing together unremarkable pentameters, {8} this poem attempts the reverse: to recast an irregular ode-like structure as pentameters. And not over-successfully: many of the rhythms seemed unduly confined. But once returned to the form of an eighteenth century Pindaric ode, however unfashionable today, the lines regain a structure and integrity. Each starts with a marked stress and then tails away, a feature emphasized by the sound patterns. {9} Sound Patterning To these sound patterns we now turn, adapting the International Phonetic Alphabet to HTML restrictions: 1. But | as | you’d | expect | u | a | U | e e | b t | z | y d | ksp kt | 2. They | are | very | impatient | the | buildings | A | a(r) | e E | i A e | e | i i | th | – | v r | mp sh nt | th | b ld ngz | 3. Having | much | in | them | of | the | heavy | surf | of | the | North | Sea | a i | u | i | e | o | e | e | e(r) | o | e | aw | E | h v ng | m ch | n | th m | v | th | h v | s f | v | th | n th | s | 4. flurrying | the | grit | u E i | e | i | fl r ng | th | gr t | 5. lifting | the | pebbles | i i | e | e | l ft ng | th | p b lz | 6. flinging | them | with | a | hoarse | roar | against | the | aggregate | they | are | composed | of | i i | e | i | e | aw | aw | e A | e | a E A | A | a(r) | o O | o | fl ng ng | th m | w th | – | h s | r | g nst | th | gr g t | th | – | k MP zd | v | 7. the | cliffs | higher | of | course | more | e | i | I e | o | aw | aw | th | kl fs | h | v | s | m | 8. burdensome | u(r) e e | b d ns m | 9. underwritten | as | it | were | with | past | days | u e i e | a | i | (e)r | i | a(r) | A | nd r t n | z | t | w | w | p st | d z | 10. overcast | and | glinting | O e(r) a(r) | a | i i | v k St | nd | gl NT ng | 11. obdurate | o U A | bd r t | 12. part | of | the | silicate | of | tough | lives | (a)r | o | e | i i A | o | u | I | p t | f | th | s l k t | v | t f | l vz | 13. distant | and | intricate | i a | a | i i e | d St NT | nd | NT r k t | 14. as | the | whirring | bureaucrats | a | e | e(r) i | U O a | z | th | w r ng | b r kr ts | 15. let | in | and | settled | with | coffee | in | the | concrete | pallets | e | i | a | e ie | i | o E | i | e | o E | a e | l t | n | nd | s tl d | w th | k f | n | th | k Kr t | p l Ts | awaiting | the | post | and | the | department | meeting | e A i | e | O | a | e | E e | E i | w t ng | th | p St | nd | th | d p tm NT | m t ng | 16. except | that | these | do | not | know | it | e e | a | E | U | o | O | i | ks pt | th | th z | d | n t | n | t | 17. at | least | do | not | seem | to | being | busy | a | E | U | o | E | U | E i | i E | t | l St | d | n t | s m | t | b ng | b z >/td> | 18.generally | e e a E | j nr l | 19. so | perhaps | it | is | only | on | those | cloudless | almost | vacuumed | afternoons | O | e(r) a | i | i | O | o | O | ou e | aw O | a U | a(r) e oo | s | p h ps | t | z | nl | n | th z | kl dl s | lm St | v k md | ft n nz | with | tier | upon | tier | of | concrete | like | rib | bones | packed | above | them | and | i | E e(r) | e o | E e(r) | o | o E | I | i | O | a | e u | e | a | w th | t | p n | t | v | k nkr t | l k | r b | b nz | p Kt | b v | th m | nd | 20. they | light | headed | A | I | e e | th | l t | h d d | 21. with | the | blue | airiness | spinning | around | and | i | e | U | (A)r i e | i i | e ou | a | w th | th | bl | r n s | sp n ng | r nd | nd | 22. muzzy | a | u E | e | m z | – | 23. neuralgia | calling | at | random | like | U a E a | aw i | a | a o | I | n r lj | k l ng | t | r nd m | l k | 24. frail | relations | a | A | e A e | e | fr l | r l zh nz | – | 25. phone | ringing | in | a | distant | office | they | cannot | get | to | that | O | i i | i | e | i a | o i | A | a o | e | oo | a | | f n | r ng ng | n | – | d St NT | f s | th | k n t | g t | t | th | | 26. they | become | attentive | A | E u | a e i | th | b k m | t NT v | 27. or | we | do | aw | E | oo | – | w | d | 28. these | divisions | persisting | E | i i e | e(r) i i | th z | d v zh nz | p s St ng | 29. indeed | what | we | talk | about | i E | o | E | aw | e ou | in d | wh t | w | t k | b t | 30. we | constructing | these | webs | of | buildings | which | E | o u i | E | e | o | i i | i | w | k nz str Kt ng | th z | w bs | v | b ld ngz | wh Ch | 31. caulked | like | great | whales | about | us | are | aw | I | A | A | e ou | u | a(r) | k kd | l k | gr t | w lz | b t | s | – | 32. always | aware | that | some | trick | of | the | light | or | weather | will | dress | them | as | friends | aw A | e (A)r | a | u | i | o | e | I | aw | e e(r) | i | e | e | a | e | lw z | w | th t | s m | tr k | v | th | l t | – | w th | w l | dr s | th m | z | Fr ndz | 33. pleading | and | flailing | E i | a | A i | pl d ng | nd | fl l ng | 34. will | fill | with | placid | but | unbearable | melodies | i | i | i | a i | u | u A(r) a e | e O E | f l | w th | PL s d | b t | n b r b l | m l d z | | 35. us | in | deep | hinterlands | of | incurved | glass | u | i | E | i e a | o | i e(r) | a(r) | s | n | d p | h NT l ndz | v | nk v d | GL s | Sound in poetry is an immensely complicated and contentious subject. Of the seventeen different employments listed by Masson {10} we consider seven: 1. Structural emphasis All sections are structurally emphasized to some extent, but note the use (in decreasing hardness) of * plosive consonants in sections 1, 5, 6, 7, 10-13, 19, 28-50; 31 and 35. * fricative and aspirate consonants in sections 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 19, 25, 28, 32, 35. * liquid and nasal consonants in sections 3, 4, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 31-35. Also: * predominance of front vowels — in all sections but 6, 7, 11, 16, 17, 19 and 31. * predominance of vowels in intermediate positions — only sections 16 and 17 having several high vowels and section 3 low vowels. 2. Tagging of sections Note sections 1, 7, 13 and 15. 3. Indirect support of argument by related echoes * Widely used, most obviously in sections 3-7, 12-13, and 15. 4. Illustrative mime: mouth movements apes expression * Sections 2, 6, 11-13, 19, 31 and 35. 5. Illustrative painting * Sections 3-6, 10-13, 15, 19 and 33. Most sections are closely patterned in consonants. Those which aren’t (and therefore need attention if consistency is to be maintained) are perhaps 8, 9, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26 and 27. Originally the poem was cast in the form of irregular pentameters. But if this is set aside in favour of the 35 sections listed above, how are these sections to be linked in a self-evident and pleasing form? A little is accomplished by alliteration: * f in sections 3 to 7. * s and t in sections 12 to 15 * w in sections 29 to 32 And also by the predominance of front and intermediate level vowels, but these do not amount to much. Certainly we do not find that the overall shaping of the poem emphasizes the argument or content. Sociolinguistics Language is not a neutral medium but comes with the contexts, ideologies and social intentions of its speakers written in. Words are living entities, things which are constantly being employed and only half taken over: carrying opinions, assertions, beliefs, information, emotions and intentions of others, which we partially accept and modify. In this sense speech is dialogic, has an internal polemic, and Bakhtin’s insights into the multi-layered nature of language (heteroglossia) can be extended to poetry. {11} Much of Postmodernist writing tries to be very unliterary, incorporating the raw material of everyday speech and writing into its creations. This poem seems rather different, a somewhat remote tone and elevated diction applying throughout. Let us see what’s achieved by grouping under the various inflections of the speaking voice. * urgently confidential But, as you’d expect, cliffs higher, of course, that they become attentive or we do * obsessively repetitious flurrying the grit, lifting the pebbles, flinging them†¦ burdensome, underwritten†¦ overcast and glinting, obdurate * over-clever silicate of tough lives  distant and intricate constructing these webs of buildings distracted and/or light-headed except that these do not know it at least do not seem to with the blue airiness spinning around calling at random like frail relations * melancholic and/or reflective some trick of the light or weather will dress them as friends pleading and flailing and fill with placid but unbearable melodies. The exercise hardly provides revelation. Heteroglossia is an interweaving of voices, moreover, not shifts of tone or reference. And yet there is something very odd about the opening line. Why should we expect the buildings to be very impatient? This is more than the orator’s trick of attracting attention, since the animate nature of buildings and their constituents is referred to throughout the poem. To be more exact, the attitude of the inhabitants — observers, bureaucrats, architects — to the buildings is developed by the poem, and is paralleled by the tone. But why the confidential and repetitious attitude at the beginning. Why should we be buttonholed in this manner? Why the But, which seems to point to an earlier conversation, and the urgency with which that earlier conversation is being refuted or covered up? Because the blame for something is being shifted to the buildings. What error has been committed we do not know, but in mitigation we are shown the effect of the buildings on other inhabitants. Or perhaps we are. In fact the whirring bureaucrats seem to grow out of the fabric of buildings, and we do not really know if the we, constructing these webs of buildings is meant literally or metaphorically. The poem’s title suggests literally, but perhaps these constructions are only of the mind: sections 17, 20-29, 32 and 34 refer to attitudes rather than actions, and there is an ethereal or otherworldly atmosphere to the later section of the poem. So we return to heteroglossia, which is not simply borrowed voices, but involves an internal polemic, {12} that private dialogue we conduct between our private thoughts and their acceptable public expression. The dialogue is surely here between the brute physicality of a nature made overpoweringly real and the fail brevity of human lives. That physicality is threatening and unnerving. If the we of the later section of the poem is indeed architects then that physicality is harnessed to practical ends. If the constructing is purely mental then the treatment is through attitudes, mindsets, philosophies. But in neither case does it emasculate the energy of the physical world. Architects may leave monuments behind them, but they are also imprisoned in those monuments (us in deep hinterlands) and hearing all the time the homesick voice of their constituents. Conclusions: Suggested Improvements The greatest difficulty lies in the poem’s structure. An pentameter form has been used to give a superficial unity, but this wrenches the rhythm, obscures the sound patterns and does nothing for the argument. If recast in sections defined by rhythm and sound pattern the form is too irregular to have artistic autonomy. A return could be made to the eighteenth century Pindaric ode in strict metre and rhyme, but would require extensive and skilful rewriting, and probably appear artificial. A prose poem might be the answer, but the rhythms would need to be more fluid and subtly syncopated. Otherwise, blank verse should be attempted, and the metre adjusted accordingly. The internal polemic is a valuable dimension of the poem, but more could be done to make the voices distinct. http://www. textetc. com/criticism/stylistics. html1. On StylisticsIs cognitive stylistics the future of stylistics? To answer this question in the essay that follows, I will briefly discuss Elena Semino and Jonathan Culpeper’s Cognitive Stylistics (2003), Paul Simpson’s Stylistics (2004), and a recent essay by Michael Burke (2005). However, because questions are like trains – one may hide another – any discussion of the future of stylistics raises intractable questions about stylistics itself. French students of stylistics, for example, will come across definitions of the discipline like the following. According to Brigitte Buffard-Moret, â€Å"si les definitions de †¦ [la stylistique] – que certains refusent de considerer comme une scien

Marketing Strategy of Nokia Essay

INTRODUCTION The company I have chosen to analyze in my project is the Finnish mobile phone giant NOKIA. This project tells us briefly what Nokia actually is, it’s company structure and overall view on the size and sales of the company & also the Various Marketing Strategies followed by them. Nokia is a telecommunication company with headquarters in Espoo (Finland). It is best known as the world’s most famous mobile phone manufacturer, and it is, furthermore, the provider of consumer products such as set-top boxes, equipment for broadband Internet and IP and mobile networks. Nokia is also a supplier of the automotive industry and offers things like speakers for various car brands. 1.1 Purpose of the study Understanding the company as a whole. To know the facilities provided by the Company to its Customers. To know the Strategies adopted by NOKIA to re-establish itself in the cell-phones market after simultaneous decline of the company’s market share over the past few years due to competition from companies like APPLE and SAMSUNG. 1.2 Research Objectives of the Study:- To gather information about the company and its products. To study the threat, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths of the company. To make comparative analysis between top 5 phone vendors. To get the better view of Various Marketing Strategies adopted by NOKIA to reposition itself in the Smartphones’ market. 1.3 Research Methodology It is a way to systematically solve the research problem. It may be understood as a science of studying how research is done scientifically. In it we study the various steps that our generally adopted by a researcher in studying his problem along with the logic behind them. It is necessary for the researcher to know not only the research methods or techniques but also the methodology. 1.3.1 Data Source The data can be collected from two sources i.e. Primary and Secondary .I have collected most of the data for this project on NOKIA from the secondary sources like websites, search engines, books and magazines. 1.3.2 Limitations of Study The data of the research was secondary in nature and access to primary data was limited. There was also a time constraint as much more time was required in order to research more deeply about the topic. The project restricted to only telecommunication sector of the company. ABOUT NOKIA HISTORY 1865 to 1967 The predecessors of the modern Nokia were the Nokia Company (Nokia Aktiebolag), Finnish Rubber Works Ltd (Suomen Gummitehdas Oy) and Finnish Cable Works Ltd (Suomen Kaapelitehdas Oy). Nokia’s history started in 1865 when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established aground wood pulp mill on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in southwestern Finland in the Russian Empire and started manufacturing paper. In 1868, Idestam built a second mill near the town of Nokia, fifteen kilometers (nine miles) west of Tampere by the Nokianvirta river, which had better resources for hydropower production. In 1871, Idestam, with the help of his close friend statesman Leo Mechelin, renamed and transformed his firm into a share company, thereby founding the Nokia Company, the name it is still known by today. Toward the end of the 19th century, Mechelin’s wishes to expand into the electricity business were at first thwarted by Idestam’s opposition. However, Idestam’s retirement from the management of the company in 1896 allowed Mechelin to become the company’s chairman (from 1898 until 1914) and sell most shareholders on his plans, thus realizing his vision. In 1902, Nokia added electricity generation to its business activities. Industrial conglomerate In 1898, Eduard Polà ³n founded Finnish Rubber Works, manufacturer of galoshes and other rubber products, which later became Nokia’s rubber business. At the beginning of the 20th century, Finnish Rubber Works established its factories near the town of Nokia and they began using Nokia as its product brand. In 1912, Arvid Wickstrà ¶m founded Finnish Cable Works, producer of telephone, telegraph and electrical cables and the foundation of Nokia’s cable and electronics businesses. At the end of the 1910s, shortly after World War I, the Nokia Company was nearing bankruptcy. To ensure the continuation of electricity supply from Nokia’s generators, Finnish Rubber Works acquired the business of the insolvent company. In 1922, Finnish Rubber Works acquired Finnish Cable Works. In 1937, Verner Weckman, a sport wrestler and Finland’s first Olympic Gold medalist, became president of Finnish Cable Works, after 16 years as its technical director. After World War II, F innish Cable Works supplied cables to the Soviet Union as part of Finland’s war reparations. This gave the company a good foothold for later trade. The three companies, which had been jointly owned since 1922, were merged to form a new industrial conglomerate, Nokia Corporation in 1967 and paved the way for Nokia’s future as a global corporation. The new company was involved in many industries, producing at one time or another paper products, car and bicycle tires, footwear (including rubber boots), communications cables, televisions and other consumer electronics, personal  computers, electricity generation machinery, robotics, capacitors, military communications and equipment (such as the SANLA M/90 device and the M61 gas mask for the Finnish Army), plastics, aluminium and chemicals. Each business unit had its own director who reported to the first Nokia Corporation President, Bjà ¶rn Westerlund. As the president of the Finnish Cable Works, he had been responsible for setting up the company’s first electronics department in 1960, sowing the seeds of Nokia’s future in telecommunications. Eventually, the company decided to leave consumer electronics behind in the 1990s and focused solely on the fastest growing segments in telecommunications. Nokian Tyres, manufacturer of tires, split from Nokia Corporation to form its own company in 1988 and two years later Nokian Footwear, manufacturer of rubber boots, was founded. During the rest of the 1990s, Nokia divested itself of all of its non-telecommunications businesses. 1967 to 2000 The seeds of the current incarnation of Nokia were planted with the founding of the electronics section of the cable division in 1960 and the production of its first electronic device in 1962: a pulse analyzer designed for use in nuclear power plants. In the 1967 fusion, that section was separated into its own division, and began manufacturing telecommunications equipment. A key CEO and subsequent Chairman of the Board was vuorineuvos Bjà ¶rn â€Å"Nalle† Westerlund (1912–2009), who founded the electronics department and let it run at a loss for 15 years. First mobile phones The Mobira Cityman 150, Nokia’s NMT-900 mobile phone from 1989 (left), compared to the Nokia 1100 from 2003. The Mobira Cityman line was launched in 1987. The technologies that preceded modern cellular mobile telephony systems were the various â€Å"0G† pre-cellular mobile radio telephony standards. Nokia had been producing commercial and some military mobile radio communications technology since the 1960s, although this part of the company was sold some time before the later company rationalization. Since 1964, Nokia had developed VHF radio simultaneously with SaloraOy. In 1966, Nokia  and Salora started developing the ARP standard (which stands for Autoradiopuhelin, or car radio phone in English), a car-based mobile radio telephony system and the first commercially operated public mobile phone network in Finland. It went online in 1971 and offered 100% coverage in 1978. In 1979, the merger of Nokia and Salora resulted in the establishment of Mobira Oy. Mobira began developing mobile phones for the NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) network standard, the first-generation, first fully automatic cellular phone system that went online in 1981. In 1982, Mobira introduced its first car phone, the Mobira Senator for NMT-450 networks. Nokia bought Salora Oy in 1984 and now owning 100% of the company, changed the company’s telecommunications branch name to Nokia-MobiraOy. The Mobira Talkman, launched in 1984, was one of the world’s first transportable phones. In 1987, Nokia introduced one of the world’s first handheld phones, the Mobira Cityman 900 for NMT-900 networks (which, compared to NMT-450, offered a better signal, yet a shorter roam). While the Mobira Senator of 1982 had weighed 9.8 kg (22 lb) and the Talkman just under 5 kg (11 lb), the Mobira Cityman weighed only 800 g (28 oz) with the battery and had a price tag of 24,000 Finnish marks (approximately â‚ ¬4,560). Despite the high price, the first phones were almost snatched from the sales assistants’ hands. Initially, the mobile phone was a â€Å"yuppie† product and a status symbol. Nokia’s mobile phones got a big publicity boost in 1987, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pictured using a Mobira Cityman to make a call from Helsinki to his communications minister in Moscow. This led to the phone’s nickname of the â€Å"Gorba†. In 1988, Jorma Nieminen, resigning from the post of CEO of the mobile phone unit, along with two other employees from the unit, started a notable mobile phone company of their own, Benefon Oy (since renamed to GeoSentric). One year later, Nokia-Mobira Oy became Nokia Mobile Phones. Involvement in GSM Nokia was one of the key developers of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), the second-generation mobile technology which could carry data as well as voice traffic. NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony), the world’s first mobile telephony standard that enabled international roaming, provided valuable experience for Nokia for its close participation in developing GSM,  which was adopted in 1987 as the new European standard for digital mobile technology. Nokia delivered its first GSM network to the Finnish operator Radiolinja in 1989. The world’s first commercial GSM call was made on 1 July 1991 in Helsinki, Finland over a Nokia-supplied network, by then Prime Minister of Finland HarriHolkeri, using a prototype Nokia GSM phone. In 1992, the first GSM phone, the Nokia 1011, was launched. The model number refers to its launch date, 10 November. The Nokia 1011 did not yet employ Nokia’s characteristic ringtone, the Nokia tune. It was introduced as a ringtone in 19 94 with the Nokia 2100 series. GSM’s high-quality voice calls, easy international roaming and support for new services like text messaging (SMS) laid the foundations for a worldwide boom in mobile phone use. GSM came to dominate the world of mobile telephony in the 1990s, in mid-2008 accounting for about three billion mobile telephone subscribers in the world, with more than 700 mobile operators across 218 countries and territories. New connections are added at the rate of 15 per second, or 1.3 million per day. Challenges of growth The Nokia House, Nokia’s head office located by the Gulf of Finland in Keilaniemi,Espoo, was constructed between 1995 and 1997. It is the workplace of more than 1,000 Nokia employees. In the 1980s, during the era of its CEO Kari Kairamo, Nokia expanded into new fields, mostly by acquisitions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the corporation ran into serious financial problems, a major reason being its heavy losses by the television manufacturing division and businesses that were just too diverse. These problems, and a suspected totalburnout, probably contributed to Kairamo taking his own life in 1988. After Kairamo’s death, SimoVuorilehto became Nokia’s Chairman and CEO. In 1990–1993, Finland underwent severe economic depression, which also struck Nokia. Under Vuorilehto’s management, Nokia was severely overhauled. The company responded by streamlining its telecommunications divisions, and by divesting itself of the television and PC divisions. Pr obably the most important strategic change in Nokia’s history was made in 1992, however, when the new CEO JormaOllila made a crucial strategic decision to concentrate solely on  telecommunications. Thus, during the rest of the 1990s, the rubber, cable and consumer electronics divisions were gradually sold as Nokia continued to divest itself of all of its non-telecommunications businesses. As late as 1991, more than a quarter of Nokia’s turnover still came from sales in Finland. However, after the strategic change of 1992, Nokia saw a huge increase in sales to North America, South America and Asia. The exploding worldwide popularity of mobile telephones, beyond even Nokia’s most optimistic predictions, caused a logistics crisis in the mid-1990s. This prompted Nokia to overhaul its entire logistics operation. By 1998, Nokia’s focus on telecommunications and its early investment in GSM technologies had made the company the world’s largest mobile pho ne manufacturer, a position it would hold for the next 14 consecutive years until 2012. Between 1996 and 2001, Nokia’s turnover increased almost fivefold from 6.5 billion euros to 31 billion euros. Logistics continues to be one of Nokia’s major advantages over its rivals, along with greater economies of scale. 2000 to 2012 (October) Product releases Reduction in size of Nokia mobile phones Evolution of the Nokia Communicator. Models 9000, 9110, 9210, 9300 and 9500 shown. Nokia launched its Nokia 1100 handset in 2003, with over 200 million units shipped, was the best-selling mobile phone of all time and the world’s top-sellingconsumer electronics product.Nokia was one of the first players in the mobile space to recognize that there was a market opportunity in combining a game console and a mobile phone (both of which many gamers were carrying in 2003) into the N-Gage. The N-Gage was a mobile phone and game console meant to lure gamers away from the Game Boy Advance, though it cost twice as much. In May 2007, Nokia released its first touch screen phone, the Nokia 7710, which was also a huge success. In November 2007, Nokia announced and released the Nokia N82, its first Nseries phone withXenon flash. At the Nokia World conference in December 2007, Nokia announced their â€Å"Comes With Music† program: Nokia device buyers are to receive a year of complimenta ry access to music downloads. The service became commercially available in the  second half of 2008. Nokia Productions was the first ever mobile filmmaking project directed by Spike Lee. Work began in April 2008, and the film premiered in October 2008. In 2008, Nokia released the Nokia E71 which was marketed to directly compete with the other BlackBerry-type devices offering a full â€Å"qwerty† keyboard and cheaper prices. Nokia announced in August 2009 that they will be selling a high-end Windows-based mini laptop called the Nokia Booklet 3G. On 2 September 2009, Nokia launched two new music and social networking phones, the X6 and X3. The Nokia X6 features 32GB of on-board memory with a 3.2†³ finger touch interface and comes with a music playback time of 35 hours. The Nokia X3 is a first series 40 Ovi Store-enabled device. The X3 is a music device that comes with stereo speakers, built-in FM radio, and a 3.2 megapixel camera. On 10 September 2009, Nokia unveiled the 7705 Twist, a phone sporting a square shape that swivels open to reveal a full QWERTY keypad, featuring a 3 megapixel camera, web browsing, voice commands and weighting around 3.44 ounces (98 g). On 9 August 2012, Nokia launched for the Indian market two new Asha range of handsets equipped with cloud accelerated Nokia browser, helping users browse the Internet faster and lower their spend on data charges. Symbian The Nokia N8 smartphone is the worlds first Symbian^3device, and the first Nokia smartphone to feature a 12megapixel autofocus lens. Originally Nokia phones had a custom Nokia OS operating system developed specifically for Nokia mobile phones. The first Nseries device, the N90, utilised the older Symbian OS8.1 mobile operating system, as did the N70. Subsequently Nokia switched to using SymbianOS 9 for all later Nseries devices (except the N72, which was based on the N70). Newer Nseries devices incorporate newer revisions of Symbian OS 9 that include Feature Packs. The N800, N810, N900, N9 and N950 are as of April 2012 the only Nseries devices (therefore excluding Lumia devices) to not use Symbian OS. They use the Linux-based Maemo. Nokia stated that Maemo would be developed alongside Symbian. Maemo had since (Maemo â€Å"6† and beyond) merged with Intel’s Moblin, and became MeeGo. MeeGo was later canceled and a development is now continued under nameTizen. The Nokia N8 is the first device to function on the Symbian^3mobile operating system. Nokia revealed that the N8 will be the last device in its flagship N-series devices to ship with Symbian OS.  Instead, Nokia will use Microsoft Windows Phone for its high-end flagship Lumia devices, and revealed the Nokia N9 will function on the MeeGo mobile operating system. Alliance with Microsoft Market share of Symbian, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 among US smartphone owners from Q1 2011 to Q2 2012 according to Nielsen Company. On 11 February 2011, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop, a former head of Microsoft business division, unveiled a new strategic alliance with Microsoft, and announced it would replace Symbian and MeeGo with Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system except for mid-to-low-end devices, which would continue to run under Symbian. Nokia was also to invest into the Series 40 platform and release a single MeeGo product in 2011. As part of the restructuring plan, Nokia planned to reduce spending on research and development, instead customising and enhancing the software line for Windows Phone 7. Nokia’s â€Å"applications and content store† (Ovi) becomes integrated into the Windows Phone Store, and Nokia Maps is at the heart of Microsoft’s Bing and AdCenter. Microsoft provides developer tools to Nokia to replace the Qtframework, which is not supported by Windows Phone 7 devices. Symbian became described by Elop as a â€Å"franchise platform† with Nokia planning to sell 150 million Symbian devices after the alliance was set up. MeeGo emphasis was on longer-term exploration, with plans to ship â€Å"a MeeGo-related product† later in 2012. Microsoft’s search engine, Bing was to become the search engine for all Nokia phones. Nokia also intended to get some level of customization on WP7. After this announcement, Nokia’s share price fell about 14%, its biggest drop since July 2009. As Nokia was the largest mobile phone and smartphone manufacturer worldwide at the time, it was suggested the alliance would make Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 a stronger contender against Android and iOS. Because previously increasing sales of Symbian smartphones began to fall rapidly in the beginning of 2011, Nokia was overtaken by Apple as the world’s biggest smartphone maker by volume in Jun e 2011. In August 2011 Chris Weber, head of Nokia’s subsidiary in the U.S., stated â€Å"The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn’t matter what we do (elsewhere).† He further added â€Å"North America is a  priority for Nokia (†¦) because it is a key market for Microsoft.† Nokia reported â€Å"well above 1 million† sales for its Lumia line up to 26 January 2012, 2 million sales for the first quarter of 2012, and 4 million for the second quarter of 2012. In this quarter, Nokia only sold 600000 smartphones (Symbian and Windows Phone 7) in North America. For comparison, Nokia sold more than 30 million Symbian devices world-wide still in Q4 2010 and the Nokia N8 alone sold almost 4 million in its first quarter of sale. In Q2 2012, 26 million iPhonesand 105 million Android phones have been shipped, but only 6.8 million devices with Symbian and 5.4 million with Windows Phone. While announcing an alliance with Groupon, E lop declared â€Å"The competition†¦ is not with other device manufacturers, it’s with Google.† European carriers have stated that Nokia Windows phones are not good enough to compete with Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phones, that â€Å"they are overpriced for what is not an innovative product† and that â€Å"No one comes into the store and asks for a Windows phone†. In June 2012, Nokia chairman Risto Siilasmaa told journalists that Nokia had a back-up plan in the eventuality that Windows Phone failed to be sufficiently successful in the market. On October 29, 2012, Nokia said its high-end Lumia 820 and 920 phones, which will run on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 software, will reach first operators and retail outlets in some European markets including France and Britain and later in Russia and Germany as well as other select markets. Reorganizations Nokia opened its Komà ¡rom, Hungary mobile phone factory on 5 May 2000. In March 2007, Nokia signed a memorandum with Cluj County Council, Romania to open a new plant near the city in Jucu commune. Moving the production from the Bochum, Germany factory to a low wage country created an uproar in Germany. Nokia recently moved its North American Headquarters to Sunnyvale. In April 2003, the troubles of the networks equipment division caused the corporation to resort to similar streamlining practices on that side, including layoffs and organizational restructuring. This diminished Nokia’s public image in Finland, and produced a number of court cases and an episode of a documentary television show critical of Nokia. On February 2006, Nokia and Sanyo announced a memorandum of understanding to create a joint venture  addressing the CDMA handset business. But in June, they announced ending negotiations without agreement. Nokia also stated its decision to pull out of CDMA research a nd development, to continue CDMA business in selected markets. In June 2006, Jorma Ollila left his position as CEO to become the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell and to give way for Olli-PekkaKallasvuo. In May 2008, Nokia announced on their annual stockholder meeting that they want to shift to the Internet business as a whole. Nokia no longer wants to be seen as the telephone company. Google, Apple and Microsoft are not seen as natural competition for their new image but they are considered as major important players to deal with. In November 2008, Nokia announced it was ceasing mobile phone distribution in Japan. Following early December, distribution of Nokia E71 is cancelled, both from NTT docomo and Soft Bank Mobile. Nokia Japan retains global research & development programs, sourcing business, and an MVNO venture of Vertu luxury phones, using docomo’s telecommunications network. In February 2012, Nokia announced it was laying off 4000 employees to move manufacturing from Eu rope and Mexico to Asia. In March 2012, Nokia announced it was laying off 1000 employs from its Salo, Finland factory to focus on software. Acquisitions The Nokia E55 from the business segment of the Eseries range On 22 September 2003, Nokia acquired Sega.com, a branch of Sega which became the major basis to develop the Nokia N-Gage device. On 8 August 2006, Nokia and Loudeye Corp. announced that they had signed an agreement for Nokia to acquire online music distributor Loudeye Corporation for approximately US $60 million. The company has been developing this into an online music service in the hope of using it to generate handset sales. The service, launched on 29 August 2007, is aimed to rival iTunes. Nokia completed the acquisition on 16 October 2006. In July 2007, Nokia acquired all assets of Twango, the comprehensive media sharing solution for organizing and sharing photos, videos and other personal media. In September 2007, Nokia announced its intention to acquire Enpocket, a supplier of mobile advertising technology and services. In October 2007, pending shareholder and regulatory approval, Nokia bought Navteq, a U.S.-based su pplier of digital mapping data, for a  price of $8.1 billion. Nokia finalized the acquisition on 10 July 2008. In September 2008, Nokia acquired OZ Communications, a privately held company with approximately 220 employees headquartered in Montreal, Canada. On 24 July 2009, Nokia announced that it will acquire certain assets of cellity, a privately owned mobile software company which employs 14 people in Hamburg, Germany. The acquisition of cellity was completed on 5 August 2009. On 11 September 2009, Nokia announced the acquisition of â€Å"certain assets of Plum Ventures, Inc, a privately held company which employed approximately 10 people with main offices in Boston, Massachusetts. Plum will complement Nokia’s Social Location services†. On 28 March 2010, Nokia announced the acquisition of Novarra, the mobile web browser firm from Chicago. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Novarra is a privately held company based in Chicago, IL and provider of a mobile browser and service platform and has more than 100 employees. On 10 April 2010, Nokia announced its acquisition of MetaCarta, whose technology was planned to be used in the area of local search, particularly involving location and other services. Financial details of acquisition were not disclosed. Nokia has acquired Smarterphone in 2012. Also Nokia acquired Scalado in 2012. Financial difficulties and restructuring LAmid falling sales, Nokia posted a loss of 368 million euros for Q2 2011, while in Q2 2010 had still a profit of 227 million euros. On September 2011, Nokia has announced it will lose another 3,500 jobs worldwide, including the closure of its Cluj factory in Romania. On 8 February 2012 Nokia Corp. said to cut around 4,000 jobs at smartphone manufacturing plants in Europe by the end of 2012 to move assembly closer to component supplier in Asia. It plans to cut 2,300 of the 4,400 jobs in Hungary, 700 out of 1,000 jobs in Mexico, and 1,000 out of 1,700 factory jobs in Finland. On 14 June 2012, Nokia announced to cut 10,000 jobs globally by the end of 2013 and shut production and research sites in Finland, Germany and Canada inline with continues loss and the stock fell to the lowest since 1996. Today, Nokia’s market value is below $10 billion. In total, according to actualized and planned laid-offs Nokia will have laid off 24,500 employees by the end of 2013. Nokia has already l aid off 7,000 employees in the first stage: 4,000 staff and transferred also 3,000 to services firm Accenture. Nokia also closed its  factory in Cluj, Romania that decreased the workforce by 2,000 employees, and restructured the Location & Commerce business unit that decreased the workforce by 1,200 employees. In February 2012, Nokia unveiled a plan to cut 4,000 more jobs at its plants in Finland, Hungary and Mexico as it moves smartphone assembly work to Asia. The most recent plan is to cut further 10,000 jobs globally by the end of 2013. Nokia had 66,267 personnel in its Devices & Services, NAVTEQ and Corporate Common Functions units combined, this has been calculated by subtracting the personnel of Nokia Siemens Networks from the total personnel of Nokia Group based on the full year report of 2010. Therefore, the personnel would decrease by approximately 36 percent by the end of 2013 when compared to the end of 2010 that best depicts the lay-offs that have resulted from the str ategy change in February 2011 and competition in the central mobile phone business units recently. On 18 June 2012 Moody’s downgraded Nokia rating to junk. Nokia CEO admitted on 28 June 2012 that company’s inability to foresee rapid changes in mobile phone industry was one of the major reasons for the problems company was facing. On 4 May 2012, a group of Nokia investors filled a class action against the company as a result of disappointing sales of Nokia phones running on the Windows Phone platform. On 22 August 2012, it was reported that a group of Finnish Nokia investors were considering gathering signatures for the removal of Elop as CEO. Operations Nokia House, Nokia’s headquarters in Keilaniemi, Espoo, Finland In 2011 Nokia had 130,000 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries, global annual revenue of over â‚ ¬38 billion, and operating loss of â‚ ¬1 billion.[1] It was the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones in 2011, with global device market share of 23% in the second quarter. The Nokia Research Center, founded in 1986, is Nokia’s industrial research unit consisting of about 500 researchers, engineers and scientists; it has sites in seven countries: Finland, China, India, Kenya,Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Besides its research centers, in 2001 Nokia founded (and owns) INdT – Nokia Institute of Technology, a R&D institute located in Brazil. Nokia operates a total of 9 manufacturing  facilities located at Salo, Finland; Manaus, Brazil; Cluj, Romania; Beijing and Dongguan, China;Komà ¡rom, Hungary; Chennai, India; Reynosa, Mexico; and Cha ngwon, South Korea. Nokia’s industrial design department is headquartered in Soho in London, UK with significant satellite offices in Helsinki, Finland and Calabasas, California in the US. Nokia is a public limited-liability company listed on the Helsinki, Frankfurt, and New York stock exchanges. Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland. It is an important employer in Finland and several small companies have grown into large ones as its partners and subcontractors. In 2009 Nokia contributed 1.6% to Finland’s GDP, and accounted for about 16% of Finland’s exports in 2006. Divisions Since 1 July 2010, Nokia comprises three business groups: Mobile Solutions, Mobile Phones and Markets. The three units receive operational support from the Corporate Development Office, led by Kai Ãâ€"istà ¤mà ¶, which is also responsible for exploring corporate strategic and future growth opportunities. On 1 April 2007, Nokia’s Networks business group was combined with Siemens’s carrier-related operations for fixed and mobile networks to form Nokia Siemens Networks, jointly owned by Nokia and Siemens and consolidated by Nokia. Mobile Solutions The Nokia N900, a Maemo 5 Linux based mobile Internet device and touchscreen smartphone from Nokia’s Nseries portfolio. Mobile Solutions is responsible for Nokia’s portfolio ofsmartphones and mobile computers, including the more expensive multimedia and enterprise-class devices. The team is also responsible for a suite of internet services under the Ovi brand, with a strong focus on maps and navigation, music, messaging andmedia. This unit is led by AnssiVanjoki, along with TeroOjanperà ¤ (for Services) and Alberto Torres (forMeeGo Computers). Mobile Phones Mobile Phones is responsible for Nokia’s portfolio of affordable mobile phones, as well as a range of services that people can access with them, headed by Mary T. McDowell. This unit provides the general public with  mobile voice and data products across a range of devices, including high-volume, consumer oriented mobile phones. The devices are based on GSM/EDGE, 3G/W-CDMA andCDMA cellular technologies. At the end of the year 2007, Nokia managed to sell almost 440 million mobile phones which accounted for 40% of all global mobile phones sales. In 2011, Nokia’s market share in the mobile phone market had dropped to 27% (417 million phones). Anssi Vanjoki resigned a few days before Nokia World 2010 and under new leadership team Jo Harlow will look into the affairs of Smartphones portfolio. On 27 April 2011, The Register reported that Nokia was secretly developing a new operating system called Meltemi aiming at the low-end market. It was believed it would be replacing th e S30 and S40 operating systems. Due to low-end market customers’ demand of having smartphone features in their feature phone, the OS would have included some features exclusive to high-end smartphones. On 26 July 2012, it was announced that Nokia had abandoned the Meltemi project as a cost-cutting measure. Markets The flagship Nokia store in Sao Paulo, Brazil Markets is responsible for Nokia’s supply chains, sales channels, brand and marketing functions of the company, and is responsible for delivering mobile solutions and mobile phones to the market. The unit is headed by NiklasSavander. Subsidiaries Nokia has numerous subsidiaries. The largest in terms of revenues is Navteq, a Chicago, Illinois-based provider of digital map data and location-based content and services for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. Navteq was acquired by Nokia on 1 October 2007. Navteq’s map data is part of the Nokia Maps online service where users can download maps, use voice-guided navigation and other context-aware web services. Nokia Maps is part of the Ovi brand of Nokia’s Internet based online services. Other notable subsidiaries include, but are not limited to Vertu, a British-based manufacturer and retailer of luxury mobile phones; Qt Software, a Norwegian-based software company, and OZ Communications, a consumer e-mail and instant messaging provider. Until 2008 Nokia was the major shareholder  in Symbian Limited, a software development and licensing company that produced Symbian OS, a smartphone operating system used by Nokia and other manufacturers. In 2008 Nokia acquired Symbian Ltd and, along with a number of other companies, created the Symbian Foundation to distribute the Symbian platform royalty free and asopen source. Nokia Siemens Networks B.V. is a multinational data networking and telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Espoo, Finland and a joint venture between Nokia (50.1%) and Siemens (49.9%). It is the world’s fourth-largest telecoms equipment manufacturer measured by 2011 revenues (after Ericsson, Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent). Nokia Siemens Networks has operations in around 150 countries. The creation of Nokia Siemens Networks was announced on 19 June 2006, when Nokia and Siemens announced that they would merge their mobile and fixed-line phone network equipment businesses. The Nokia Siemens Networks brand identity was subsequently launched at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February 2007. Nokia Siemens Networks provid es wireless and fixed network infrastructure, communications and networks service platforms, as well as professional services to operators and service providers. Nokia Siemens Networks focuses in GSM, EDGE, 3G/W-CDMA and WiMAX radio access networks; core networks with increasing IP and multiaccess capabilities; and services. Corporate affairs Corporate governance The control and management of Nokia is divided among the shareholders at a general meeting and the Nokia Leadership Team, under the direction of the Board of Directors. The Chairman and the rest of the Nokia Leadership Team members are appointed by the Board of Directors. Only the Chairman of the Nokia Leadership Team can belong to both, the Board of Directors and the Nokia Leadership Team. The Board of Directors’ committees consist of the Audit Committee, the Personnel Committee and the Corporate Governance and Nomination Committee. The operations of the company are managed within the framework set by the Finnish Companies Act, Nokia’s Articles of Association and Corporate Governance Guidelines, and related Board of Directors adopted charters. Stock Nokia is a public limited liability company and is the oldest company listed under the same name on the Helsinki Stock Exchange, having been listed since 1915. Nokia has had a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange since 1994. Nokia shares were delisted from the London Stock Exchange in 2003, the Paris Stock Exchange in 2004, the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2007 and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2012. In 2007, Nokia had a market capitalisation of â‚ ¬110 billion; by May 2012 this had fallen to â‚ ¬14.8 billion. Financial results For fiscal Q2 2011 ending in June 2011, Nokia reported a net loss of â‚ ¬492 million, despite a â‚ ¬430 million payment from Apple. Nokia cited decline in its mobile phone business as the primary cause of the loss. In Q1 2012 results were bleak. Nokia lost â‚ ¬1.34 billion. Revenue is down almost a third from a year ago. By May 2012, Nokia share price had fallen 37.5 percent since the beginning of the year, and was down 61 percent in the last year. Corporate culture Nokia’s official corporate culture manifesto, The Nokia Way, emphasises the speed and flexibility of decision-making in a flat, networked organization, although the corporation’s size necessarily imposes a certain amount of bureaucracy. The official business language of Nokia is English. All documentation is written in English, and is used in official intra-company spoken communication and e-mail. Until May 2007, the Nokia Values were Customer Satisfaction, Respect, Achievement, and Renewal. In May 2007, Nokia redefined its values after initiating a series of discussions worldwide as to what the new values of the company should be. Based on the employee suggestions, the new values were defined as: Engaging You, Achieving Together, Passion for Innovation and Very Human. Online services 1) .mobi and the Mobile Web Nokia was the first proponent of a Top Level Domain (TLD) specifically for the Mobile Web and, as a result, was instrumental in the launch of the .mobi domain name extension in September 2006 as an official  backer. Since then, Nokia has launched the largest mobile portal, Nokia.mobi, which receives over 100 million visits a month. It followed that with the launch of a mobile Ad Service to cater to the growing demand for mobile advertisement. 2) Ovi Nokia Ovi logo. Ovi, announced on 29 August 2007, is the name for Nokia’s â€Å"umbrella concept† Internet services. Centered on Ovi.com, it is marketed as a â€Å"personal dashboard† where users can share photos with friends, download music, maps and games directly to their phones and access third-party services like Yahoo’sFlickr photo site. It has some significance in that Nokia is moving deeper into the world of Internet services, where head-on competition with Microsoft, Google andApple is inevitable. The services offered through Ovi include the Ovi Store (Nokia’s application store), the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, Ovi Mail, the N-Gage mobile gaming platform available for several S60smartphones, Ovi Share, Ovi Files, and Contacts and Calendar. The Ovi Store, the Ovi application store was launched in May 2009. Prior to opening the Ovi Store, Nokia integrated its software Download! store, the stripped-down MOSH repository and the widget service WidSets into i t. On 23 March 2010, Nokia announced launch of its online magazine called the Nokia Ovi. The 44-page magazine contains articles on products by Nokia, what Ovi stands for, tips and tricks on the usage of Nokia mini laptop Booklet 3G, latest reviews of mobile applications, news about the mobile maker’s services and apps such as Ovi maps, files and mail. Users can download the magazine as a PDF or view it online from the Nokia website. 3) My Nokia Nokia offers a free personalized service to Nokia owners called My Nokia (located at my.nokia.com). Registered My Nokia users can get free services as follows: Tips & tricks alerts through web, e-mail and also mobile text message. My Nokia Backup: A free online backup service for mobile contacts, calendar logs and also various other files. This service needs GPRS connection. Ringtones, wallpapers, screensavers, games and other things can be downloaded free of cost. 4) Comes With Music In 2007 Nokia set up their â€Å"Nokia Comes With Music† service, in partnership with Universal Music Group International, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, and hundreds of independent labels and music aggregators, to allow 12, 18, or 24 months of unlimited free-of-charge music downloads with the purchase of a Nokia Comes With Music edition phone. Files could be downloaded on mobile devices or personal computers, and kept permanently. In January 2011 Nokia withdrew this program in 27 countries, due to its failure to gain traction with customers or mobile network operators; existing subscribers could continue to download until their contracts ended. The service continued to be offered in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa where take-up had been better. 5) Nokia Messaging On 13 August 2008 Nokia launched a beta release of â€Å"Nokia Email service†, a push e-mail service, since incorporated into Nokia Messaging. Nokia Messaging operates as a centralised, hosted service that acts as a proxy between the Nokia Messaging client and the user’s e-mail server. The phone does not connect directly to the e-mail server, but instead sends e-mail credentials to Nokia’s servers. IMAP is used as the protocol to transfer emails between the client and the server. Logos Nokia Company logo. Founded in Tampere in 1865, incorporated in Nokia in 1871. The brand logo of Finnish Rubber Works, founded in Helsinki in 1898. Logo from 1965 to 1966. The Nokia Corporation â€Å"arrows† logo, used before the â€Å"Connecting People†logo. Used since 1967 until 1991. Nokia introduced its â€Å"Connecting People† advertising slogan, coined by Ove Strandberg and used since 1992. This earlier version of the slogan used Times Roman SC (Small Caps) font. Nokia’s current logo used since 2006, with the redesigned â€Å"Connecting People† slogan. This slogan originally used Nokia’s proprietary ‘Nokia Sans’  font, designed by Erik Spiekermann. This was replaced in 2011 with the ‘Nokia Pure’ font designed by Dalton Maag. Environmental record Electronic products such as cell phones impact the environment both during production and after their useful life when they are discarded and turned into electronic waste. Nokia is listed in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics that scores leading electronics manufacturers according to their policies on sustainability, climate and energy and how green their products are. In November 2011 Nokia ranked 3rd out of 15 listed electronics companies, falling two places due to its weaker performance on the Energy criteria and scoring 4.9/10. All of Nokia’s mobile phones are free of toxic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) since the end of 2005 and all new models of mobile phones and accessories launched in 2010 are on track to be free of brominated compounds, chlorinated flame retardants and antimony trioxide. Nokia’s voluntary take-back programme to recycle old mobile phones spans 84 countries with almost 5,000 collection points. However, the recycling rate of Nokia phones w as only 3–5% in 2008, according to a global consumer survey released by Nokia. The majority of old mobile phones are simply lying in drawers at home and very few old devices, about 4%, are being thrown into landfill and not recycled. All of Nokia’s new models of chargers meet or exceed the Energy Star requirements. Nokia aims to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by at least 18 percent in 2010 from a baseline year of 2006 and cover 50 percent of its energy needs through renewable energy sources. Greenpeace is challenging the company to use its influence at the political level as number 85 on the Fortune 500 to advocate for climate legislation and call for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2015. Nokia is researching the use of recycled plastics in its products, which are currently used only in packaging but not yet in mobile phones. Since 2001, Nokia has provided eco declarations of all its products and since May 2010 provides Eco profiles for all its new prod ucts. In an effort to further reduce their environmental impact in the future, Nokia released a new phone concept, Remade, in February 2008. The phone has been constructed of solely recyclable materials. The outer part of the phone is made from recycled materials such as aluminium cans, plastic bottles, and used car tires. The  screen is constructed of recycled glass, and the hinges have been created from rubber tires. The interior of the phone is entirely constructed with refurbished phone parts, and there is a feature that encourages energy saving habits by reducing the backlight to the ideal level, which then allows the battery to last longer without frequent charges. Controversies NSN’s provision of intercept capability to Iran In 2008, Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens AG, reportedly provided Iran’s monopoly telecom company with technology that allowed it to intercept the Internet communications of its citizens to an unprecedented degree. The technology reportedly allowed it to use deep packet inspection to read and even change the content of everything from â€Å"e-mails and Internet phone calls to images and messages on social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter†. The technology â€Å"enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes,† expert insiders told The Wall Street Journal. During the post-election protests in Iran in June 2009, Iran’s Internet access was reported to have slowed to less than a tenth of its normal speeds, and experts suspected this was due to the use of the interception technology. The joint venture compan y, Nokia Siemens Networks, asserted in a press release that it provided Iran only with a ‘lawful intercept capability’ â€Å"solely for monitoring of local voice calls†. â€Å"Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran,† it said. In July 2009, Nokia began to experience a boycott of their products and services in Iran. The boycott was led by consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement and targeted at those companies deemed to be collaborating with the Islamic regime. Demand for handsets fell and users began shunning SMS messaging. Lex Nokia In 2009, Nokia heavily supported the passing of a law in Finland that allows companies to monitor their employees’ electronic communications in cases of suspected information leaking. Contrary to rumors, Nokia denied that the  company would have considered moving its head office out of Finland if laws on electronic surveillance were not changed. The law was enacted, but with strict requirements for implementation of its provisions. As of 2010, the law has become a dead letter; no corporation has implemented it. The Finnish media dubbed the name Lex Nokia for this law, named after the Finnish copyright law (the so-called Lex Karpela) a few years back. Nokia–Apple patent dispute In October 2009, Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc. in the U.S. District Court of Delaware citing Apple infringed on 10 of its patents related to wireless communication including data transfer. Apple was quick to respond with a countersuit filed in December 2009 accusing Nokia of 11 patent infringements. Apple’s General Counsel, Bruce Sewell went a step further by stating, â€Å"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours.† This resulted in an ugly spat between the two telecom majors with Nokia filing another suit, this time with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), alleging Apple of infringing its patents in â€Å"virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers.† Nokia went on to ask the court to bar all U.S. imports of the Apple products including the iPhone, Mac and the iPod. Apple countersued by filing a complaint with the ITC in January 2010, the details of whic h are yet to be confirmed. In June 2011, Apple settled with Nokia and agreed to an estimated one time payment of $600 million and royalties to Nokia. The two companies also agreed on a cross-licensing patents for some of their patented technologies. Research cooperation with universities Nokia is actively exploring and engaging in open innovation through selective research collaborations with major universities and institutions by sharing resources and leveraging ideas. Major research collaboration is with Tampere University of Technology based in Finland. Current collaborations include: Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Finland ÉcolePolytechniqueFà ©dà ©rale de Lausanne, Switzerland ETH Zurich, Switzerland Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States Stanford University, United States Tampere University of Technology, Finland Tsinghua University, China University of California, Berkeley, United States University of Cambridge, United Kingdom University of Southern California, United States Awards and recognition The Brand Trust Report published by Trust Research Advisory has ranked Nokia in the 1st position among the brands in India. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS SWOT Analysis SWOT Analysis, is a Strategic planning tool used to evaluate the Strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities, and threats involved in a project or in a Business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving that objective. SWOT analysis conducts an external and internal scan of nokia’s business environment; it is an important part of the strategic planning process. Environmental factors internal to the firm usually can be classified as strengths (S), or weaknesses (W), and those external to the firm can be classified as opportunities (O) or threats (T). Such ananalysis of the strategic environment is referred to as a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis provides information that is helpful in matching the firm’s resources and capabilities to the competitive environment in which it operates. As such, it is instrumental in strategy formulation and sele ction. Strengths of Nokia: Great phone designing capability (Shining example N9 and lumia series) and great product quality reputation. Great price point coverage (Very low to Very High) Supply chain and distribution experience. Two very competitive in-house software platforms in Belle and Meego along with an alliance with Microsoft. Weaknesses of Nokia: Poor marketing skills (excluding few markets like India) Could not use its global presence to create a viable ecosystem. Not able to leverage production and software knowledge to create other product families (Camera and Tablets could have a natural choice) Windows operating system has marginally less number of applications as compared to that of Apple’s IOS and Google’s Android. Threats: Android ecosystem covers all the bases from low to high-end price points and has a booming ecosystem. Apple’s iphone is still a big threat in high-end market Very bad press coverage and poor image projection by tech media. Huge portion of market share already captured by Google’s Android (72.4 percent) and Apple’s IOS (13.9 percent). Opportunities: Nokia has a great market disruption with N9; Lumia and Asha series and it has a great chance of creating a unique winning product category. (Example is iphone’s own small but disruptive start). Symbian belle and upcoming versions of the OS. If nokia keeps the new product introduction fast paced, chances are that Symbian can make a turnaround. QT can help to create a unique app ecosystem for Nokia for Meego, Symbian, Meltemi (upcoming). Windows phone platform has already got all the ingredients for a powerful ecosystem. Major competitors The following cell phone companies holding major market share give tight competition to Nokia: 1. APPLE Inc. 2. Samsung 3. Sony 4. HTC 5. Research in Motion Black Berry 6. ZTE 7. LG According to IDC, July 26, 2012 – The worldwide mobile phone market grew 1%  year over year in the second quarter of 2012 (2Q12), as Samsung and Apple shipped almost half of the world’s smartphones. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 406.0 million units in 2Q12 compared to 401.8 million units in the second quarter of 2011. Samsung and Apple have more than doubled their combined market share over the past two years, which has created more distance between the companies and the competition. â€Å"Samsung and Apple have quickly become the global smartphone heavyweights though both employ somewhat different approaches to the market,† said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. â€Å"Samsung employs a ‘shotgun’ strategy wherein many models are created that cover a wide range of market segments. Apple, in contrast, off ers a small number of high-profile models. While both companies have expanded their geographic presence in pursuit of market share, the two companies will inevitably come into greater conflict as both try to generate additional gains.† Market share gains will be harder to generate, however, if the worldwide smartphone market grows at rates similar to the 42.1% year-over-year rate at which the market increased in 2Q12. This was the lowest growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2009. Vendors shipped 153.9 million smartphones in 2Q12 compared to 108.3 million units in 2Q11. The 42.1% year-over-year growth was one percentage point lower than IDC’s forecast of 43.1% for the quarter. The spectre of further economic woes puts growth prospects for the mobile phone market at risk. â€Å"With half of 2012 behind us, vendors are looking ahead to 2013 and how key markets – particularly Europe and emerging markets – will play out,† said Ramon Llamas, senior res earch analyst with IDC’s Mobile Phone Technology and Trends team. â€Å"Despite recent maneuvers to shore up several countries within the Eurozone, the effectiveness of these efforts remains to be seen. Meanwhile, emerging markets will continue to be strong contributors due to their sheer size and growth trajectory, but how much they can offset potential declines in other countries is unclear.† Nonetheless, IDC expects long-term mobile phone and smartphone shipment demand to grow steadily in 2012 and through the years ahead due to the central role mobile phones play in people’s lives. â€Å"For many users, the mobile phone has become the essential communications link to others and to the world,† noted Llamas. Smartphone Vendor Highlights Samsung extended its lead over Apple during the second quarter, taking advantage of Apple’s release schedule and launching its flagship Galaxy S III. In addition, Samsung experienced continued success of its smartphone/tablet hybrid device, the Galaxy Note. As a result, Samsung topped the 50 million unit mark and reached a new quarterly smartphone shipment record in a single quarter. What remains to be seen is how the company’s smartphones will fare against Apple’s next-generation iPhone expected later this year. Apple posted an expected sequential decline last quarter, similar to years past. The quarter-over-quarter shipment decline came six months after it unveiled its latest iPhone. The decline is not unusual as iPhone shipment volume is highest in the first two quarters after its release. The company’s once-a-year release cycle usually results in two quarters of lower volumes leading up to the next-generation model introduction. Nonetheless, Apple made significant inroads into new markets and segments, including smaller regional carriers and prepaid service providers. Nokia smartphone business underwent another quarter of transition. Demand for Symbian and MeeGo units declined, reaching levels not seen since 2005 though the company almost doubled its Windows Phone shipments from the previous quarter. Nokia’s Lumia sales were not terribly affected by Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 announcement, which will prevent current Lumia owners from upgrading to the new mobile operating system. However, Lumia sales have remained steady and key enhancements available on the new platform will eventually become available to current Lumia owners. Nokia, however, has a long path to travel before it can reclaim previous volume levels and challenge Apple and Samsung for smartphone supremacy. HTC rebounded from its struggles in the two previous quarters to reclaim the number 4 spot in the smartphone vendor rankings. Its relatively strong performance in the Asia/Pacific region allowed it to climb back up the rank order as did the correction of its channel inventory issues. The company’s streamlined portfolio means future share gains will be predicated upon the success of its One products. ZTE climbed into the smartphone Top 5 for the first time thanks primarily to shipments of its lower-cost entry-level smartphones in China, where it’s based. However, the vendor has also grown  its international smartphone sales, particularly in the U.S. where its smartphones can be found under other brands. Latin America is another source of significant smartphone growth for the vendor. Despite impressive gains last quarter, brand equity may prove to be an issue for ZTE in future. Strong brand recognition is a necessity if high-growth smartphone sales abroad are a priority for the company. Top Five Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q2 2012 (Units in Millions) Vendor 2Q12 Unit Shipments 2Q12 Market Share 2Q11 Unit Shipments 2Q11 Market Share Year-over-year Change Samsung 50.2 32.6% 18.4 17.0% 172.8% Apple 26.0 16.9% 20.4 18.8% 27.5% Nokia 10.2 6.6% 16.7 15.4% -38.9% HTC 8.8 5.7% 11.6 10.7% -24.1% ZTE 8.0 5.2% 2.0 1.8% 300.0% Others 50.7 32.9% 39.2 36.2% 29.3% Total 153.9 100.0% 108.3 100.0% 42.1% Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, July 26, 2012 Note: Vendor shipments are branded shipments and exclude OEM sales for all vendors. Top Five Total Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q2 2012 (Units in Millions) Vendor 2Q12 Unit Shipments 2Q12 Market Share 2Q11 Unit Shipments 2Q11 Market Share Year-over-year Change Samsung 97.8 24.1% 75.4 18.8% 29.7% Nokia 83.7 20.6% 88.5 22.0% -5.4% Apple 26.0 6.4% 20.4 5.1% 27.5% ZTE 17.7 4.4% 16.3 4.1% 8.6% LG Electronics 13.1 3.2% 24.8 6.2% -47.2% Others 167.7 41.3% 176.4 43.9% -4.9% Total 406.0 100.0% 401.8 100.0% 1.0% Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, July 26, 2012 Note: Vendor shipments are branded shipments and exclude OEM sales for all vendors. Marketing strategy An organization’s strategy that combines all of its marketing goals into one comprehensive plan is known as marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy should be drawn from market research and focus on the right product mix in order to achieve the maximum profit potential and sustain the business. The marketing strategy is the foundation of a marketing plan. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS In order to diversify its business in to mobile network market, Nokia needs to make use of its leading mobile phones manufacturer image. As Nokia has build loyalty among its mobile phone users, it can use this for attracting customers towards its SIM cards and thereby gain market share. Also with its world class R & D department, it can offer many services to its customers which will help them to differentiate in their service offering from its competitors. For instance, video calling, free roaming, outgoing call restriction, etc. By focusing more on rural market which is untap to a certain extent, Nokia can satisfy its customers in rural areas which most of the existing players are not successful. Also by offering customize service plans to its customers such as offering SmS package, unlimited internet package, Free Hello tune, and so on with minimum price. Nokia can also make tie-ups with existing players such as Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel in order to gain larger market share. It can also offer better deals to customers who are buying Nokia handsets on its SIM cards which will increase its sales as well as customer base. This will help them to develop loyalty among its  customers. In order to diversify in to SIM cards segment, Nokia needs to use mass marketing by implementing various promotion strategies such as Advertisements, Hoardings, Sponsoring events, canopies outside colleges and so on. Nokia also needs to plan its distribution strategy in order to reach to maximum people. They can also use their ‘Connecting People’ tagline in its SIM card, thereby giving additional meaning to it. Thus, to diversify in to SIM card market is a better option for Nokia to increase its market share and revenue. Also this will help them to build larger customer base which will ultimately result in one of the leading brands in the telecommunications industry. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing-strategy.html http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=120850 http://mktg-plan.blogspot.in/ http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/11/technology/nokia_microsoft/index.htm http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/nokias-comeback-strategy-in-smartphones/ http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/brands/nokia/ http://iimtmarketing.blogspot.in/2012/03/marketing-mix-nokia.html

Carolines Real Bread Company SWOT Analysis

Caroline’s Real Bread Company are a small village bakery who produce and sell a variety of niche breads to cater for specific needs. Emphasis is placed on high-quality, fresh organic products. Their products are sold through their website, farmers markets, food festivals and other outlets. They also provide bread for specialist restaurants and cafe’s. This report provides an analysis and evaluation of the current state of the grocery market, and provides recommendations on the possible actions that should be undertaken for Caroline’s Real Bread Company to expend and take advantage of the current state of the industry. Methods of analysis used in this report include PEST analysis which analyses the external factors effecting companies operating within the grocery market, and SWOT analysis which is a method used to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a company, and the opportunities and threats that are currently presented to them. This research draws attention to the fact that grocery retailers have changed during the past few years in order to react to customer demand. As a result of technological advantages, the demand for convenience is increasing and all major supermarkets now sell their products online. Further research has shown that the market size for fresh organic bread is increasing, and is forecasted to increase even further in the future. The growth of the market size of their products can be attributed to two things. The increase in health awareness amongst consumers who are slowly becoming more conscious of the foods they eat due to a growth in political campaigns alongside new food labelling laws, and the increase in demand for gluten free bread as a result of a steady increase in the amount of gluten intolerant people in the UK. The store competes in an expanding, competitive niche market. It has steadily grown whilst staying true to the ideologies behind it, resulting in Caroline and her company winning many awards. We recommend that the next step that Caroline’s should take is to expand their production capacity in order to take advantage of their distribution channels already in place. They should also refrain from distributing to large supermarkets who do not share their beliefs in order to keep their unique selling point and maintain their current customer base. Instead, they should aim to increase online orders through increased marketing and promotions. We suggest they should get involved in social media in order to increase awareness of their wide variety of products, and to generate more traffic to their website. Due to their limited budget, Caroline’s Real Bread Company should directly target those with special dietary needs as the niche is expanding and these are the customers most likely to buy their products. This could bring opportunities for them to increase their number of deliveries across the UK. The report also investigates the fact that the research conducted has some limitations. Some of the limitations include the fact that secondary data has been used, and that our recommendations assume that the state of the UK economy will not severely worsen in the near future. 2. Introduction and Aims Caroline’s Real Bread Company is a small bakery in Mid/South Wales since 1992. It has two partners Nigel Devlin and Caroline Frampton. Caroline is the baker and Nigel does the accounts. Their products are sold through farmer’s markets, food festivals, local organic box schemes and other outlets. It also supplies restaurants specialist cafes, outside caterers and one off events. Caroline won the Gold Welsh True Taste Awards in 2005 after expanding her business. They offer over 30 varieties of bread which are wheat-free and yeast free. In recent years they have been trying to expand themselves through technology, through online orders which can be collected from in-store or delivered (Carolinesbreadcompany, 2013). The aims of this report are to outline the Political, Economic, Social and Technological issues that impact the Grocery Market Environment. The Product specific market will be explored through a SWOT analysis. The report will highlight the recommendations to Caroline concerning her company and its current position in the market. 3. The Grocery Market 3. 1 Political The government launched an advertising campaign in early 2013 to promote healthier eating habits in the UK (BBC 2013). The main aim of this campaign is to increase the awareness of â€Å"hidden nasties† such as fat and sugar in popular foods. This campaign is the latest in a long line of government aided movements in order to increase health awareness in the UK, some examples of others being change4life and 5 A Day. This latest movement shows that healthy eating is high on the agenda of the current government. The government are under pressure to introduce new legislation to reduce the salt content in foods. The coalition is currently working with the industry, through the ‘Responsibility Deal’, to improve food content and labelling (Department of Health, 2013); however they are being challenged by labour to scrap this voluntary approach and to introduce tougher regulation and legislation in fighting foods high in fat, salt and sugar. One proposition includes a 30% cap on sugar content in cereals aimed at children. The on-going debates and propositions are increasing public awareness of healthy eating habits which benefit specialist local producers such as Caroline’s Real Bread Company. According to new government rules, the UK’s food industry will be required to include clearer information regarding the ingredients on product packaging from summer 2013 (FSA 2013). The new arrangement is front of pack labelling that combines the food content with the guideline daily amounts, showing consumers the percentage of their daily allowance that they will be consuming with the product. As a result of this, suppliers of foods high in salt, sugar or fat may need to rethink their production process or risk losing customers. This change, combined with the growing healthy eating awareness of the UK will again benefit companies who are producing organic foods with natural ingredients. 3. 2 Economic An increase in interest rates has led to less disposable income which may change their shopping pattern from buying luxury goods to necessities, thus restricting the growth of a company like Caroline’s (Times, 2013) (Keynote, 2012, p. 13). Additionally, a rise in inflation would increase the price of any grocery product, resulting in lack of growth in the overall market (Gurdian, 2012). Adverse weather conditions in Europe had a negative effect on wheat supplies, thus increasing the cost of wheat (Keynote, 2012, p. 11) (Julia Glotz, 2011). Retailers can either let their profits decrease, or raise their prices and risk losing customers, to combat this rise (Keynote, 2012, p. 33). The price of flour has also risen, by ? 75/tonne (Gyton, 2012). In recession, most companies face decreased revenue. As this particular business is more focused on providing good quality products, they charge more than supermarkets would, again resulting in a change in consumer spending habits. It has been noted (Keynote, 2012, p. 16) that people are spending over 30% more on bread but this is solely due to the rising price of bread – consumption is in decline. Corporate taxation has fallen; this provides businesses with a better financial environment in which to expand (PwC, 2011). 3. 3 Social Due to the worsening economy, consumers have increasingly attempted to recreate the restaurant experience in their own homes; thus the sales of speciality breads have increased (Keynote, 2012, p. 10). The market share for specialist breads is currently roughly 30% and it is thought that these breads are acting as replacements for the more expensive premium breads (Keynote, 2012, p. 25). Foreign breads have also increased in popularity, creating a niche (Keynote, 2012, p. 32) which could save craft bakeries that are now at risk due to the growth of the supermarket in-store alternatives (Keynote, 2012, p. 33). White bread sales are beginning to decline as consumers become increasingly health-conscious (Keynote, 2012, p. 32) and switch to brown, wholemeal, and ‘best-of-both’ type breads. These, and foreign breads, are more expensive than conventional loaves leaving retailers with the potential for greater profits. It is expected that part-baked white breads will keep white bread sales from dropping too severely (Keynote, 2012, p. 41). There are three major bakers, Warbutons covers a range of qualities while Associated British Foods and British Bakeries both have a high and a low end bread product (Mother’s Pride, Hovis and Sunblest, Kingsmill respectively). The low end products are targeting people who shop for everyday value. The premium loaves are often purchased by those looking for quality rather than value. Warburtons is the most direct competitor for small village bakeries due to the broadness of budgets it caters for and the range of qualities it produces. Small village bakers tend to hold monopolies as the villages for which they cater are often remote and without other stores. Caroline’s Real Bread Company is located in Merthyr Cynog, a village six miles from the nearest town (Brecon) and stores (Google, 2013). It is over four miles from the village to the nearest bus stop from which there is a mere thrice-daily service (Sirgarfyrddin. gov. uk, 2013), so the village is isolated and the baker has a monopoly. 3. 4 Technological Businesses use ecommerce and social media such as Facebook and Twitter to reach a wider audience. This can be used for advertising and to collect feedback from the customer, for example: Tesco has made a Facebook page where they get connected with bigger audience where they post offers of their products and gain feedback from consumers. They are targeting a wider audience, separating themselves from the norms of company (Tesco, 2013). Development in technology also means the reduction in first hand skills. Skilled workers have been replaced by technology, improving efficiency and productivity. In 2011, British Food Plc was investing millions in upgrading its baking business by installing new equipments. Thus modernising its production pattern, improving efficiency and reducing production costs (Keynote, 2012). Premier Foods has increased automation and thus laid off workers to cut costs (Edwards, 2013) after their profits fell by 48% in 2012 (Edwards, 2013). Hovis used to have the concept of using only British wheat as their unique selling point, due to a plummet in profits they have had to abandon this and redesign their packaging, to survive (Edwards, 2013) showing how challenging the bakery sector is today. 4. Description of Product Specific Market The main competitors for Caroline’s Bread Company are supermarkets, bakeries and in-store bakeries. Bread retailers have faced increasing competition over the past few years due to new entrants in the market who believe they can make a profit. The main competitors are supermarkets and convenience stores who now have in-store bakeries making them a one-stop-shop. They can further their influence by having freshly baked products in their petrol stations, increasing convenience. Supermarkets will invest in their bakeries to provide a quick, easy and fitting shopping experience (SmartCompany, 2012) as a result revenue should rise. The increasing price of wheat and fluctuations in household income due to the economic crisis has caused demand and preferences to change, leading to consumers becoming more aware of the products they buy. The main consumers targeted are a small but expanding segment of the niche market. To combat the growth of competition, more innovative loaves and marketing campaigns are needed to increase brand awareness. Caroline offers courses that cement her brand ethic of fresh organic produce making consumers aware of the health benefits associated with eating wholegrain, rye and gluten free breads. Consumers who prefer quality produce, and are concerned with chemical additives, will benefit from Caroline’s speciality breads. By carefully geographically selecting her location and creating her brand to suit this, Caroline is maximising her brand exposure to the local market encouraging a loyal customer base. The main trend in the market that Caroline specialises in is the emphasis of healthy living. This enhances her opportunity to break into the catering market and supply her products to people for special occasions offered on her website. By displaying her products without packaging she adheres to the attractive product presentation that many customers desire with their organic purchases (SmartCompany, 2012). Consumers would find this appealing as there would be enough different varieties to appeal to various customers, which expands her segmentation and increases her client base. 4. 1 Strengths As a dietary staple and a cemented establishment, bread is a necessity. Caroline’s business is versatile and consumer-centric. Her company suffered losses due to under developed management skills (Guardian, 2006) but the company soon recovered and studied business management elements to become a recognised bread company. Caroline’s company has taken product innovation and expanded this to their benefit. To avoid high salt levels she ensures only organic ingredients are used, keeping salt to a minimum (Caroline’s real bread company, 2013) as 80% of UK bread is processed (LoveFood. com, 2013). Alongside organic, the company specialises in making rye and soda breads as well as gluten free and yeast free products in order to cater to precise dietary needs. These can be delivered freshly door to door via the delivery service. The company also supplies local restaurants and caterers with various breads (Caroline’s real bread company,2013). This efficiency, versatility and product care linked with their customers specific detailing alongside their expanding availability of products enlarges their segment of the bread market from local people to people that may live further away as well as those that may not have considered the purchase of organic foods before but would now as they can buy into the ideals behind organic foods. 4. 2 Weaknesses With the bread market being dominated by branded products such as ‘Hovis’ and ‘Kingsmill’, it is difficult for a business so small to penetrate this market. Many consumers are unwilling to pay extra for organic bread. Competition between craft bakeries, such as Caroline’s, and supermarkets is fierce and harsh to penetrate due to the brand association and prices (Keynote, 2012). Due to the entrenched ideological beliefs that are indoctrinated into Caroline’s real bread company, the company is restricted to a small segment of the bread market. Caroline’s is restricted to those who believe in the organic wellbeing and are willing to pay extra for it. The company produces their bread so that it can be frozen for individuals who purchase in bulk (Caroline’s real bread company, 2013) to avoid waste, however this was not their intention for the businesses they were supplying. Nigel reports â€Å"we started supplying a local specialist food shop; selling the bread at just over cost price it later turned out that the shop was freezing the bread, undermining the whole premise of the bread company† (Guardian, 2006) in turn losing a customer and revenue as an effect. Due to their target market being so limited, their market segmentation is smaller than other brands that produce and promote to all customer types. A downside to bread is the shelf life is short for mass produced bread, and even shorter for freshly baked bread, resulting in 1 million loaves of bread being thrown away (Keynote, 2012). This becomes a further disadvantage for a small business such as Caroline’s real bread company. 4. 3 Opportunities There has been an increasing demand for healthier bread and bakery products in the UK economy due to healthy living becoming a more significant factor in people’s everyday lives. Larger bread companies will already be aware of this and will have targeted products towards this; however Caroline’s company is unique in that all products are completely healthy and have already targeted their products. This company has exclusive principles unlike larger suppliers (eg Hovis) who use bulking agents to increase the shelf life of their products, and are completely against using anything that isn’t natural or fresh. On their website it says ‘our business ­ is about producing products that meet the needs of those small but growing numbers of customers who demand only the finest quality food’ (carolinesrealbreadcompany. co. uk) which shows that the quality of their products is more important than quantity. This is a perfect opportunity for Caroline’s bread company to expand and grow due to the higher demand in the products that they already offer. As there is already an increasing demand for healthier bread products, there are also an increasing number of consumers who are adopting a gluten-free diet which is pushing up the demand for these products. Caroline’s offers over 30 different varieties of bread and already offer wheat-free bread so this is another opportunity for them to break into a new market and expand their customer base. They already offer gluten free and yeast free products so it wouldn’t cost them anything more to produce these products, it would just benefit their company due to a higher demand. 4. 4 Threats The increasing niche for freshly baked produce has created further competition by supermarkets against craft bakeries matching quality for less. Consumer perceptions are stimulated through the sensory system of smell. This could result in a change of brand loyalty once people realise that freshly made products could be purchased in similar quantities for less money. Although the ‘Real Bread Campaign’ has disclosed that only Marks and Spencer out of all big supermarkets actually make their bread from scratch and even then not all of it is freshly made from scratch. These companies use the sensory perception to lure in customers from independent bakeries (LoveFood. com, 2013). According to ‘Keynote’, craft businesses are dying out in favour of in-store bakeries (Keynote, 2012) due to their parallel innovation of fresh products. Part-baked and specialised breads, e. g. half and half, dietary, brown, are now being produced by Tesco (Tesco, 2013) and other supermarkets. ‘Food prices are expected to rise after the second wettest summer on record’ (Guardian) which has resulted in a poor harvest leading to an increasing price of grain hence an increase in food prices. The National Farmers Union (NFU) reported that wheat yields in England are down by almost 15% which has added to already been rising prices caused by a heat wave in Russia that destroyed a large majority of their crops. Richard Dodd of the British Retail Consortium said: â€Å"The most recent figures are that wheat prices are up 29% compared with a year ago† (Guardian 2012). This is a major threat towards Caroline as this rise could result in a fall in profits as it would cost more for them to purchase their supplies. As a small company there will be more of an impact than larger bread companies. However, even ‘Hovis’ (premier foods) are struggling to sell their breads and they are known as the best-selling bread brand (the mirror 2012). They ‘struggled with soaring costs and cut-throat competition’ resulting in them losing its co-op contract to their rival company allied bakeries. 5. Recommendations and Conclusion Our recommendations for ‘Caroline’s Real Bread Company’ are that they should continue to distribute to the grocery market but not to large supermarkets as they do not share her ideological beliefs. As they have enough vans to distribute the products, we recommend that they should expand their production space so they are able to produce more products and try to distribute to places further across the country to establish their brand and attract more customers. In terms of their products there is an increasing demand for speciality breads which supermarkets do not sell many varieties of, so Caroline should see this as a product innovation and her bakery should focus on expanding into this market more. People are now more conscious of healthy lifestyles so we recommend that they should continue to focus on organic, dietary, gluten-free and wheat-free breads to continue to appeal to this expanding niche market. The target consumers for Caroline’s Real Bread Company should continue to be those who favour organic products over products that are not. Her beliefs on organic foods are the foundation of her business ideology and therefore this is unlikely to change. By targeting more directly those with dietary needs, such as gluten and wheat free products as these consumers already pay higher prices in supermarkets than other customers, therefore they may wish to look into Caroline’s company if she promotes these product more vigorously. Promotion can also be carried out by encouraging brand switching, existing consumers to purchase more, raising awareness of the brand and attracting new customers to her brand by trialling new products. This can be carried out by implementing multi-buys and incentives for example free vouchers and gifts. These can be promoted via online social media networks, for example Facebook, Twitter and other forms they will be able to make consumers aware of their brand and ideologies so that they can expand their customer base further. By doing this it can bring opportunities for the company to expand their delivery services to larger regions of the UK. 6. Limitations The majority of the data used was online secondary data. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of information obtained. The report evaluates long term performance; looking so far ahead, economic conditions could change affecting the PEST analysis. For instance, our economic condition could for now be described as recovering from a double-dip recession, so in the near future the economy might be at a better or worst stage of recovery and this would affect the company’s target market. The bread market is constantly evolving and is susceptible to massive changes as a result of crop failures, adverse weather conditions, or the general economic climate. While it was argued that people who no longer go to restaurants due to the cost may now be buying more specialist and foreign breads to compromise, it must be noted that the breads in the restaurant were purchased from somewhere, perhaps even from the same wholesale baker, so this may not affect overall bread sales. What is also worth noting is that Caroline’s Real Bread Company operates within a small isolated community and has a monopoly in the grocery market for that village. This means it most likely has a steady flow of repeat customers, though the company also provides a delivery service and supplies commercial clients. Therefore expansion in their wholesale/commercial supply operations might be more beneficial than the suggested expansion in consumer retail operations due to the limited customer base. Another issue is the approach of the company – Caroline’s Real Bread Company pride themselves on being independent and local, if the desired method of expansion was in any way to threaten these attributes then the expansion would be to the detriment of the company. What must also be noted along these lines is that the bread is currently handmade; the company should consider the ultimate savings of automation against the attraction of handmade bread. The former might lose former clients who chose the brand for their traditional bread, yet it might gain customers looking for more inexpensive bread by a local company.