Richard Green?
could hold a comparable role @ NOKIA to Steve Jobs for Apple...

Doesn't matter. The point is that Vertu is profitable and Elop is selling off profitable Nokia assets to support WP7.

Elop is banking hard on Lumia success in the U.S. but I can bet you that Lumia will flop in the U.S. Microsoft was so ashamed of WP7 sales that it insisted on lumping the old Win Mobile sales together. The actual market share of WP7 in the U.S. is less than 1.5%. This is practically total rejection by consumers.

Nokia won't be able to change anything. Their reputation in the U.S. has been degraded to cheap flip phones that grandmas use. Lumia will also fail in India, China, Russia, Australia and S.E. Asia as they can't be bothered about WP7. Europe is WP7's best market but even then Elop and MS are too ashamed to reveal actual numbers sold.

So the U.S. is Elop's last great hope but this is like a drowning man grabbing at straws. Apollo even if good will not come in time to save Nokia. It will be the 3rd or 4th Q before Nokia can sell Apollo phones and by then it will be in intensive care.

The wisest thing for Nokia to do now is to stand strongly behind MeeGo and sell N9 in all markets. Then maybe, just maybe, Nokia will be able to survive 2012. But the mole Elop will not do this because it doesn't benefit Microsoft.

FT is citing an unnamed source today as saying that Nokia has retained Goldman Sachs as an advisor in a bid to sell its Vertu subsidiary, the UK-based purveyor of handmade ultra-luxury phones. Though you might think that the market for $10,000 handsets running Symbian is an extraordinarily small one, various reports over the past couple years have claimed that the division — which doesn't report its own revenue figures — is highly profitable, so it stands to reason that Nokia could end up fetching a strong price for it.

liquidating the family jewels...

Here's something for WP7 hopefuls to chew on:

Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2012

One of them happen to be Nokia.

well well well...
isn't that being overly dramatic, now?
this sounds like posts from (disillusioned) m$ fanboys, now trying to unload their frustration on NOKIA...
NOKIA still is the number ONE (dumb) cell phone maker
it certainly isn't as profitable as Vertu, but it still sells...

check this youtube vid posted 2 days back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S3TU...5aFAAAAAAAABAA

Nokia rewards one of the top salesmen. They really are counting on salesmen more rather then innovating in the right direction.

"Do you know Joe? He's T-Mobile's most enthusiastic Windows Phone sales rep. As a "thank you" for his excitement about our new Nokia Lumia line, we took him with us to CES in Las Vegas for a week of VIP treatment.

From Playboy parties to Ferraris to helicopter rides to the Grand Canyon, let's just say, what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas."

I dont know how much was spent on this trip, I'm happy for this guy who got to have fun, but about nokia, they should be paying all those meego/mer hackers to steer the company in the right direction.

^Ah ahahahah!

They need to shout all their salesman a weekend getaway just to sell those damn things!

About 247WallSt's assesment, I don't think its true. Obviously if NOKIA/WP7.5 doesn't get any traction within 9 months, they are right and will crash and fall.

But I think NOKIA will have some success and it won't happen. The problem is what then? How will Nokia be able to surpass RIM in smartphone sales, to at least be relevant?

^
see, that's what i'm talking about...

Ok that is just sad, I mean it it's not even funny any more. and btw considering the sales of WP I suppose the top salesmen dude sold like 3 of them?

so apple, with their insane $96 billion cash should send all their salesmen to these kind of awesome trips in recognition of making iphone the best single selling phone in the universe ... that is IF the salesmen made it happen

Well on a serious note, i'm not downplaying the importance of salesmen, but you *need* to have a kick***** product *first* to be able to market it and feel excited about it.

Harmattan Nokia!!!. Harmattan is the way to go.

I think nokia should just come up with more harmattan devices. Thats not against their agreement with microsoft that they cant make harmattan devcies right? Nokia owns the harmattan code, they should just quietly work on it and surprise the world, shake the ground beneath everybody, only nokia can do it. Flood the market with so many varieties of harmattan devices, big small, with/without keyboards, single core, multi core, 256mb to 1gb ram products, 3" to 4.5" devices. Just like htc, OR just like nokia has done with symbian in the past, they had all kinds of funny looking funny shaped symbian devices, devices that you could look at n think "is that a phone, that cant be a phone".

Sigh ..

anyway ..