cBeam | # 81 | 2011-06-07, 21:22 | Report

Ericsson, your posts are refreshingly optimistic (or hellofalot naive).

Here is how it went:

• Nokia’s share price is on a downward trajectory since fall 2007.
• Finally (way too late) the board decides to act and brings in a new CEO to turn the company around.
• During the first few months on the job the share price stabilizes and increases (Qt-strategy with MeeGo and Symbian; S40).
• Feb 2011: The CEO burns the platform, announces death of Symbian, and commits Nokia to WP.
• Nokia’s share price loses more than 40% since the announcement. Fitch downgrades Nokia’s bond rating two notches to one notch above junk.
• Nokia is falling off the cliff. There will be no more Nokia as an independent concern of any relevance pretty soon.

Is Elop the only culprit? No, but he is the CEO and was hired to make Nokia successful again.

40% down is no success.
Investors do not buy his strategy (20% drop after WP announcement 2/11) nor his execution (20% down after profit warning 5/11).

nwerneck | # 82 | 2011-06-07, 21:36 | Report

I remember reading some time ago that Nokia's problem was not salling. First problem was that profit margins were too low. And while they were also selling more and more phones, the total size of the market grew above their sales, and this is how they lost share.

olighak | # 83 | 2011-06-07, 21:53 | Report

The downgrade in ratings will make it harder/more expensive for them to raise funds for the whole operation.

Puts them 2 steps closer to the grave.

Any more profit / sales warnings and they might drop further down in ratings. Then there´s no independent Nokia any more, Elop will sell them out, get a nice fat bonus and ride on to his next gig.

Vinh | # 84 | 2011-06-07, 22:18 | Report

That's for sure. Even when a CEO fails miserably, s/he can claim that s/he is more experienced now and knows what *not* to do the next time. Company boards seem to go for that every time...

momcilo | # 85 | 2011-06-07, 22:30 | Report

After this he does not to be CEO or anything else.
He can retire.

gerbick | # 86 | 2011-06-07, 22:37 | Report

Microsoft's sales of WP7 have been far less than stellar. It has not created a buzz with many people, developers nor has it earned itself a spot as one of the initial 3 OS's when you talk about mobile phone OS's. As it stands right now, it's still a baby and an oddity.

Nokia has not really gone far in terms of introducing anything that was not Symbian based since February 2010 - the same month they announced their movement to MeeGo (later rescinded) or the announcement to move to WP7 in February 2011. It's now June 2011 and neither a MeeGo, Harmattan or WP7 device has been released by Nokia.

So on one hand, you have a company with a new mobile OS (WP7) that's not selling well. It's been all but panned so far by AT&T, it was late to hit Verizon, and I'm willing to bet that no overseas carriers are even concerned with it thus far. That's one wrong.

On the other hand, you have a company that has announced two different OS strategies in the last 18 months and so far, they've only seen their market share drop to something not seen since 1997 and have yet to produce one new OS, be it any of the aforementioned, derived device(s) as of yet. That's the other wrong.

Now let's put them together. Low selling WP7 + lack of releases = two wrongs. There's nothing right in that equation.

Savvy?

lohner | # 87 | 2011-06-07, 22:56 | Report

(-1) * (-1) = 1

just kidding...

gerbick | # 88 | 2011-06-07, 23:00 | Report

lol - I used a + sign though... so it would be (-1) + (-1) = (-2)

bobh | # 89 | 2011-06-07, 23:02 | Report

Tiny companies? 120,000 employees is not tiny. You have never heard of them, but that is because they failed. They were both well-known "blue chip" companies at the time. They didn't see the PC revolution coming and were destroyed by it.

I don't actually think MS as a company will fail anytime soon. They do have their desktop monopoly and Office cash-cow. However, other than the XBox, they don't have a very good track record of getting into new markets. So it is entierly plausible that WP7 won't go anywhere.

In the long run, there is a danger for MS. The world is changing again, maybe as much as it did when the PC came along. The track record of technology companies across a paradigm shift is not a good one. At best they seem to "do an IBM", which is to say they remain large and profitable but no longer lead the market. A lot of signs point to MS heading down that path.

I think WP7 and Windows 8 are their shot at remaining relevant. If they fail they will continue to exist but will no longer dominate the industry the way they have for the last 20 years. If they succeed, it will be one for the history books.

ericsson | # 90 | 2011-06-07, 23:41 | Report

Rather naive than a sorry pessimistic whiner

About 1% of Nokias shares are actually in the wild. The rest of the shares are owned by long term investors that have one single goal in life, and that is to see Nokia thrive, and they are loaded with money. Nokia is very similar to VW group, virtually indestructible.

It is those investors that hired Elop to gang up with MS and put Symbian to sleep. You may cry and whine that Nokia is doing bad, WP is doing bad, two bads don't make it good and so on, but it is nothing but brainless whining any way you look at it.

The phones and devices coming this fall from Nokia will truly kick some serious ***. The HW will make you scream, and the integrated OS/ecosystem that follows will make you pee in your pants. And lots of them will come, cheap ones, expensive ones, phones, tablets, communicators, camera monsters. What is happening is the larger part of the entire tech industry including the most powerful investors in the world swamping the world market with exactly the thing people want, and it is happening in one single long lasting blow. There is no way this will fail.

So, if you can get hold in some Nokia shares, for gods sake get some now.