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rffrydr
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 Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 3:37 pm Post subject: Nokia (NOK) |
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"Nokia's Fall from Grace"
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_39/b4196007421255.htm
Article sees it as europe's best and worst. The truth is that Nokia was, and is great at being a phone. And this doesn't just mean making calls but includes data storage, video calls, GPS and even preset connectivity (a la "T-zones") And it was the failure of (windows) "smart" phones and its internet umbilical cord that kept Nokia on top--longer than it deserved, and more to the reward of its shareholders. But that time has passed. No move to Silicon Valley could have stopped it. "Connectivity" is now built into everything the world is going to do--african farmers no exception.
Watch for the mini green-laser projector on phones to split market again.
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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Well, having taken the L900 for a test drive I just might have to pick up a few shares. Still prefer the (data gelded) iPhone but the design/software has what it takes--and mighty Microsoft won't cut and run on this. Hey... 
Nokia is for all practical purposes a national champion so it's not going anywhere either. This is just one of those things you can stick in a drawer for a few years. RIM? That's the "pair" trade.
| Quote: | How painful can it get? After Nokia’s post-Easter profits warning, long-suffering investors in the Finnish mobile phone maker were gritting their teeth in advance of Thursday’s first-quarter 2012 earnings. Sadly, there was little in them to help anyone sleep easier – and Nokia’s battered share price, which has halved during the past year alone, slid a touch further. Sales of smart devices were down 52 per cent from a year ago, and mobile phones 32 per cent – contributing to an operating loss of €1.3bn. In greater China – Nokia’s second-biggest market after Europe a year ago – combined devices and services sales were only €577m, compared with €1.9bn in the first quarter of 2011.
The problem is that Nokia’s difficulties are now multiple. Ramping up the new Windows-based Lumia smartphones, launched in October, while shifting away from the previous Symbian system, remains a huge challenge. But the blurring of the smartphone and feature phone markets – due to the emergence of cheaper smartphones and development of feature phones with more smartphone-like qualities, such as touchscreens – is undercutting its mobile business, too.
The response of chief executive Stephen Elop, who has spearheaded the Windows leap after joining Nokia from Microsoft, is to push faster, expand market coverage, add features and address product gaps. He also talks of asset sales and more cost-cutting – although details are scant – as Nokia’s cash cushion (down 24 per cent to a net €4.9bn in a year) starts to be eroded. It could all come good – and pigs could also fly. Already, pundits are proffering alternative strategies, from a more selective approach to products and markets, to a radical rethink of the choice of a smartphone operating system. None is easy. Mr Elop may have a little more time to produce results, but the clock is ticking. |
--FT
| Quote: | Nokia faces premium challenge
Central to Nokia’s turnround strategy is “connecting the next billion” mobile users to the internet. But a sharp fall in sales from emerging markets such as China at the struggling phone manufacturer underscores the grim reality that consumers are choosing rival handsets to do just that.
The Finnish group is facing challenges across its portfolio of mobile devices and regions, not least in its stuttering attempts to reclaim share in the premium segment from Apple and Samsung with its recently launched Windows-based Lumia range. Chief executive Stephen Elop admitted on Thursday to “mixed” results so far as he announced first-quarter profits, promising extra efforts.
However, the fall in first-quarter sales at the cheaper, or the so-called feature phone end of the mobile phone market, which make up about a third of revenues, and where it was going to connect that billion, also worried analysts.
Feature phones, which are equipped with much less technology than smartphones, and an expansion in emerging markets were at the core of Nokia’s turnround from a troubled conglomerate selling rubber boots and timber in the early 1990s to become the world’s leading phonemaker – a position it could lose this year to Samsung.
Worryingly, Nokia’s shares dropped on Thursday to near the level since the eve of that previous restructuring, a textbook success story that it will have to pull off again to convince investors of its future.
Thursday’s results raised the question whether its reputation for reliable quality can see off the challenge of cheaper and increasingly technologically advanced competition from Asian manufacturers, with lower costs and profit targets, not least in China. There, sales dropped 70 per cent in the first quarter of 2012 to €577m. Sales in the wider Asia-Pacific region also dropped by a fifth.
Pierre Ferragu, analyst at Bernstein, argues that the feature phone market is being cannibalised by the rapid expansion lower-end smartphones, such as those from Huawei and ZTE. “I am worried that this phenomenon continues to drag Nokia’s sales down for some time, as the firm doesn’t have any credible smartphone product for the low end.”
Nokia’s aggressive price competition reduced the average sales price of its mobile devices by a fifth and Mr Elop told the Financial Times he would keep “driving down into lower price points” as well as continue to bring out new products. The slump in its feature phone operations also means that there is less of a cushion for the group to take teething pain of launching the fledgling Windows-based Lumia smartphone range.
Nokia’s decision to exclusively use Microsoft’s Windows platform for its handsets is being questioned by analysts after initially low sales and software bugs that hamstrung the recent launch of its first premium smartphone in the key US market where sales are surging.
Apple’s iPhone still dominates the high end – and high margin – smartphone business, with the challenge so far coming from Android-based devices made by Samsung and HTC as consumers have so far been slow to engage with the rival Windows system.
Mr Elop promised to take action to drive improvements in sales in 45 countries of its Windows-based Lumia range. He said that sales had exceeded expectations in markets including the US, but that countries such as the UK remained “challenging”.
A sales drop in the Symbian smartphone system that will be phased out by 2016 meant that overall sales of smartphone units fell by half to 11.9m in the first quarter, with the gross profit margin on smartphones dropping to 15.6 per cent compared with a 28.9 per cent margin in the first quarter of 2011.
Net sales fell 29 per cent in the first quarter to €7.4bn and Nokia made a pre-tax loss of €1.5bn, from a profit last year of €403m.
The immediate future looks tough, with downbeat margin forecasts and analysts warning that the operators that support Nokia’s phone launches will not remain patient much beyond the end of the year. Nor, for that matter, will investors given the slump in its share price.
Mr Elop talks of a “clear sense of urgency to move our strategy forward even faster”, reflecting the pressure for a sales turnround. This, however, is not just in its smartphones, which represent the future of its market given the move towards mobile data, but also the feature phone market that represents Nokia’s illustrious, and still fairly recent, past. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 6:20 am Post subject: |
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All those rosy prognostications that follow Apple analysts saying iPhone less than 5% of handsets puts paid to fact that the great majority of world users not only don't use them....but never will. The phone IS their "smart phone." We forget how many things that simple device achieves (like proper wholesale prices for crops).
Nokia hangs tough. --But still wouldn't buy it 
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