Nokia World: Preaching to the customer

AMSTERDAM — Nokia World, the handset maker's annual customer and analyst extravaganza, doesn't come off as the typical vendor showcase. Most manufacturers would be content to market their products to customers, but Nokia apparently feels it has to educate them, too.

In addition to the typical show lineup, Nokia brought in an unusual handful of speakers tasked with telling operator customers just how much their business has changed.

First, Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy Group, spoke about post-scarcity economics, the condition in which a consumable good is in such abundance that old rules governing producer and consumer no longer apply. Sound like gibberish? Well, Sutherland clarified his point with an analogy to the pornography industry: Digital photography and desktop production tools have become so cheap and simple that millions have found their calling as amateur pornographers. The best of those millions of videos are bound to be better than the best of the handful of professionally produced movies, Sutherland said, so consequently the porn industry lives in fear of Internet and video sharing technologies.

After him was Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, who discussed his theories — and the subject of his upcoming book — about the concept of “free”. Everything from network storage to access to media has become free in the minds of consumers because the delivery cost has become insignificant, Anderson said. So the prevailing business model is to give consumers what they want for free and sell something else.

Though tangential, the message from both speakers was clear: Carriers need to change their business models. They can't continue to sell services that customers get for free elsewhere, so they should sell access. Plus, the sheer volume of user-generated and third-party content dwarfs anything carriers can produce in both quantity and quality, so they should just get out of the business.

One thing you can't accuse Nokia of is being subtle.