Final Thesis: The Case of the Nokia Message Store (Teaching Case)

Abstract: This study presents a business case about the challenges that Nokia had during developing the Multimedia Message Services. At the end of 90s, Nokia was planning to make a big difference in telecommunication market with a new handset which is capable of sending and receiving multimedia content. The main purpose of the service is done by a message store. However, the vendor of the message store had some series problems in the middle of the project which also affected Nokia. Nokia had to find a way out from this chaos. They had to evaluate different risks to be able to make the right decision about the vendor. This thesis consists three main parts. The first part is the case study that tells the story of the multimedia message service and the challenges that Nokia had faced with. The second part includes the literature about the switching decisions and explains the theoretical concepts with their relation to decision making process. The last part is a teaching note which is offered as a guide how the case should be discussed in a class.

Keywords: Nokia, multimedia message service, MMS, vendor switching, challenges, product management

Reference: Begum Caynak. The Case of the Nokia Message Store: Supplier Switching Decisions. Master Thesis, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg: 2014.