Edit: New BusinessWeek/Bloomberg article with analysts saying Nokia going to junk status within a year. Credit swaps are at all time high, so not good.
Because you listed a link to the Register and then listed a link to an American website, the majority of the folks here will invariably disregard what is being said.
No Plan B... that was always a very bad decision not to have one. I think the brink of failure isn't immediate; but it's close enough to where it will be in the next 5 years if not sooner.
i don't know how they can pull it back, i honestly think they will get bought by someone, since investors want results, and Nokia take forever to do anything, unless it's pushed by Microsoft.
there was never a plan B. One executive of Nokia said that "Nokia's plan B is to make Plan A (Windows Phone) a success."
Nokia is loosing market share badly with Windows Phone. Even Symbian was doing much better than Windows Phone. Just one announcement of Elop ruined everything for Nokia.
I am hoping that they can survive this, but their on hand cash is dwindling. They are losing money per lumia set, and the problem is each lumia 900 costs more than a 4S to manufacture. Analysts are saying 5 months to turn around, hope they are wrong.
This all shows that Nokia was batshit crazy to ditch Maemo/Meego and Symbian in favour of Windows Phone.
They should (but wont) release the N9 worldwide ASAP. And start work on a couple of extra devices - 1 a large screened phone/tablet similar to a Galaxy Note, and an N950 type device with all the bells and whistles.
While they're at it, release a E7 mark 2 with microsd, bigger battery etc etc similar to AllAboutSymbian's april fool here
I am hoping that they can survive this, but their on hand cash is dwindling. They are losing money per lumia set, and the problem is each lumia 900 costs more than a 4S to manufacture. Analysts are saying 5 months to turn around, hope they are wrong.
There's about a $10 difference in cost to manufacture. Only reason they're losing money is the temporary discounts. They have enough cash to do this game another 2 years...
Call me grievious, but I actually want WP to fail, even if it means hard times for Nokia. I feel the platform has very little to offer, and is in fact contributing to the trend of the very locked down and closed mobiles as we see with iOS and BB. Even the N9 has been subjected to this trend.
Also, the lack of support for existing open protocols on WP is disturbing, as is the lack of true multitasking. Again, while the N9 is absolute king on multitasking (beats Android hands down) the N9 also lacks support for some of these protocols. True, these features won't win the hearts of the general population as they require some technical insight which that population seems to lack.
While I don't really like Google and I wouldn't call Android truly open (Android's development is quite closed, compared to Qt, Java) I would still choose it over Windows Phone in an instant.
Btw, I do wonder if the "lack of apps" is the true reason why WP isn't really selling as hot cakes. But if it is, they have a problem. WP doesn't support OpenGL ES as 3D framework. iOS, Android and Harmattan do, which makes porting 3D apps (games!) so much easier. While it would be next to impossible to run Android-apps on WP, it wouldn't be very hard to make them run on Harmattan. That might fix the "low app count", but would also damage the support for their own platform - why write a special version of an app if the Android version works too.
There's about a $10 difference in cost to manufacture. Only reason they're losing money is the temporary discounts. They have enough cash to do this game another 2 years...
Agree with some of what you said, but not the cash. Lower margins, negative profits, constant inside costs, hammered stock price, and ratings lowered by s&p and Moody's has and will make their cash pile dwindle. I do see a junk rating in 12 months, hopefully I am wrong.
