Nokia’s results for Q1 2012 are in: They’re not good. (See the earnings release here, Management’s Conference Call presentation here.)
Compared to the same quarter last year, Nokia overall revenue is down 29%, to $9.7B. And the company is now losing money, $1.8B, 18.5% of revenue. [Nokia’s official numbers are stated in euros, I convert them at today’s rate of $1.32 for 1€.]
One year after Nokia’s decision to jump of its “burning platform”, this yet another bad quarter and leaves one to wonder about the company’s future. Many, like Forbes’ Erik Savitz, think The Worst Is Still To Come.
I see three life-threatening problems for the deposed king of mobile phones.
First and potentially most lethal: Nokia is burning cash. As the chart above documents, Nokia’s Net Cash went down 24% in one year. From page 5 of the Earnings Release: “Year-on-year, net cash and other liquid assets decreased by $2B…. Sequentially [emphasis added], net cash and other liquid assets decreased by $.9B”. Here, the word sequentially means compared to the immediately preceding quarter, as opposed to the same quarter last year.
Elsewhere in the document, on page 6, we learn Microsoft provided $250M in “platform support payments”. If you back this amount out, you see Nokia’s operations have in fact consumed $1.15B, a significant fraction of the company’s $6.4B Net Cash. This cannot continue for very long and leads Henry Blodget to worry Nokia could go bankrupt in two years or less.
Henry’s view might be a bit extreme; Nokia has assets they could convert to cash, thus giving itself more runway for its recovery efforts. But, as we’ll see below, the company’s prospects in both phone categories don’t look stellar. And bad things happen to cash when the market loses confidence in a company’s future: vendors want to be paid more quickly, customers become more hesitant, all precipitating a crisis.
Second, the dumbphone (a.k.a. “Mobile Phones”) business, still Nokia’s largest, is now in a race to the bottom:
Volume is huge, 70.8M units; it dipped 16%, not a good sign. Worse, the ASP (Average Selling Price) went down 18% to $44 (33€). Mostly in developing countries, Nokia is now losing ground to the likes of Huawei and ZTE selling feature phones and smartphones, both very inexpensive. Unsurprisingly, Nokia claims they’ll counterattack with their Asha family of mobile phones. Few, outside of Nokia, or even inside, believe they can win a brutal price cutting fight against those adversaries.
Last, Nokia’s last hope: Their new Windows Phone “Smart Devices”.
As the chart above shows, Nokia’s smartphone business keeps sinking: -51% in volume compared to the same quarter last year. And, with a $189 (143€) ASP, it can’t make any significant money as $189 is about what it costs to build one.
As for the latest Lumia smartphones, the reviews have been mixed. So are sales, according to Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO. Going to the earnings release, I searched for the word “Lumia” in the document. It appears 29 times. — without any number attached to it, just words like “encouraging awards and popular acclaim”. Which can only mean one thing: Actual numbers better left unsaid.
Things don’t get better when, according to Reuters, mobile carriers in Europe pronounced themselves ‘‘unconvinced”, finding the new Lumia smartphones “not good enough”. It is worth noting things could be better in the US where AT&T appears to make a real effort selling Lumias, and where Verizon recently stated its interest in fostering a third ecosystem with Windows Phone devices.
Unfortunately, we also hear a puzzling rumor: Existing Lumia phones wouldn’t be upgradable to the next OS version, Windows Phone 8, code-named Apollo. Both Mary Jo Foley, a recognized authority on things Microsoft, and The Verge, an aggressive and often well-sourced blog, support that theory.
So far, in spite of the potential damage to their business, neither Microsoft nor Nokia have seen fit to comment. Should it be true, should current Lumia buyers find themselves unable to upgrade their software, Microsoft would be about to commit a massive blunder.
But why would they do this? Apparently, the current Windows Phone OS is built on the venerable Windows CE kernel. Setting veneration aside, Microsoft would have decided to use a more modern foundation for Windows Phone 8. And said modern foundation would not run on today’s hardware. For Nokia’s sake, I hope this is incorrect. The company already convinced its customer Symbian-based phones had no future. Sales plunged as a result. Doing the same thing for today’s Lumia devices would be even more dangerous.
A little over a year ago, in February 2011, Nokia’s brand-new CEO, Stephen Elop issued his ‘‘memorable” Burning Platform memo. In it, the ex-Microsoft executive made an excellent point: Having no doubt observed the rise of Google’s Android and of Apple’s iOS, he concluded Nokia was no longer in a fight of devices but in a war of ecosystems. Elop next drew an analogy between Nokia’s jumbled smartphone product line and a burning North Sea oil-drilling rig. To him, the company had no choice: instead of staying on the platform and dying in the blaze, he suggested plunging in freezing waters — with a chance of staying alive. Which, as he soon revealed, meant jumping off Nokia’s Symbian and Meego software platforms and joining the Microsoft Windows Phone ecosystem.
Today, Nokia bleeds cash, its dumbphone business in a race to the bottom, and its plunge into the Microsoft ecosystem isn’t off to a good start. What’s next for the company? Can it turn itself around, and how?
With hindsight, it appears the premature announcement of the jump to Windows Phone osborned Nokia’s existing smartphones. Their sales dropped while the market waited for the new devices running Windows Phone. Some, like Tomi Ahonen, an unusually vocal — and voluminous — blogger, think Elop should be fired, and Symbian and Meego restored to their just place in Nokia’s product line. This isn’t very realistic.
Closer to reality is Microsoft’s determination to get back in the smartphone race, almost at any cost. (For reference look at the billions the company keeps losing in its online business. $449M this past quarter.)
At some point in time, if Lumia sales still barely move the needle, Microsoft would have to either drop Nokia and look for another vehicle for Windows Phone. Or it will have to assume full control of Nokia, pare down what it doesn’t need, and do what it does for the Xbox, that is be in charge of everything: hardware, software, applications.
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45 Comments
An Android injunction as a result of the current Oracle-Google trial (Probability? Is anyone paying attention?) would open the doors wide open for Nokia Windows phones, the say way iPhone ATT exclusivity opened the doors for Android.
It seems that Microsoft is playing the end car, ready to swallow several of the stragglers?
Nokia’s situation is indeed dire, but Microsoft is trying to transition from its no-growth desktop business into tablets/phones, and has just as much a problem.
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As long as Nokia can stay alive a couple more quarters, Microsoft can make some dramatic efforts: they can rebate the cost of the WP7 devices towards a new WP8 phone and cover any early-upgrade costs (or at least some large part of them). That’ll prevent the appearance of Microsoft being indifferent to the fate of their customers. With not that many WP7 phones selling, it wouldn’t be that expensive, either; certainly nothing compared to the possible loss of the phone franchise.
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But it’s still not enough. JLG accurately characterizes the reviews as mixed, but when I went back to see how other devices stacked up, there were just as many questions. The issue is that Microsoft/Nokia are late entrants into the smartphone race; they need to be clearly better, distinctively so, if they want to break people from their already-formed iPhone and Android habits.
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Why?,The 3rd platform problem is unacknowledged, and immense: I’ll divide apps into 3 categories: (1) The majors: Facebook, NYT, CNN, Angry Birds and the like, who will have a decent app everywhere. No problem. (2) Niche apps: could be a language-learning tool such as the incredible Chinese dictionary/OCR/flashcards one I use, or a knitting app, or an auto-diagnostics one. These small-market developers can only afford to build for the top platform or two. And (3), the hot/fad games & social apps. These might have a 3- to 6-month half-life, and no matter how many millions will be used, the developer can’t afford to let an idea go stale, and can not afford to hold up release for a minor platform. The latter two cases will mean that WP will have negative network effects.
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Right now, WP has two advantages: a nifty synch-to-Office (and to-your-office) capability that will actually be a negative for many people, and a pretty nice way to integrate apps (although I can’t imagine one person on the planet who will pay so much attention to ONE person’s Facebook status that they’d want it on their home screen). I’m pretty Microsoft knows that these are NOT enough to overcome their late-entrant and app-vacuum status.
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Microsoft seemingly has let WP7 come out as an advanced beta, thinking that WP8 will be competitive. To my eyes, if this is their Plan A, it may as well be called “Plan A: Fail.” They may think they have a Plan B in that it’s announced some kind of major deal with Samsung, but if it lets Nokia slip beneath the waves, developers will shun WP even more, and Samsung will simply be more incented to put more energy into their Bada OS.
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Sure looks to me that we’re down to a two-horse race, and with the challenges that @iphoned cites (plus the important fact that Samsung is the only Android manufacturer making ANY money), Android might be ready to explode, too.
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About the only decision I can be sure of: 2012 will be fascinating as RIM fails, the Moto acquisition splits the Android alliance, and Microsoft flounders. More popcorn!
I don’t think that Elop Osborned anything. I believe that this would have happened regardless, much like it is starting to happen with RIM. Tomi Ahonen has lost his mind, thinking that Nokia should have stayed with Meego and Symbian3. And he backs that up with numbers prior to iPhone expansion and Android entrenchment. He doesn’t realize that if you looked at Blackberry 2 years ago that you would have seen similar ‘growth’ and not seen the fact that trouble lay ahead.
The average person has no clue what the OS is or does…but they can quickly tell if it doesn’t have the same games or programs that their friends with iPhones do.
I still don’t understand why it went exclusive with MS. It could have chosen both MS and Android and stayed out of burning platform.For such a big company, focusing on two should not be a problem.
Microsofts OS base as we all know is huge. Once all PC’s start coming with Windows 8 and Metro as the only option people will have the Metro interface shoved in their face and they will get use to it. This is where I think seeing a Windows phone especially with a Nokia branding will take off. To what extent, who knows? But no doubt it will take off 1.5% is their current share of the smart phone market, I would expect in a couple of years that could easily be 10%. Windows 8 with the Metro interface IS the Trojan Horse here.
What most commentators have not picked up on is that the Smart Devices ASP which JLG mentions is, because of an accounting slight of hand, inclusive the MS subsidy of $250M. If one strips this subsidy from the figures you get the following development over the last 6 quarters. From Tomi Ahonen:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/04/in-bloodbath-news-nokia-q1-results-market-share-crashes-to-7-yes-one-fourth-of-what-it-was-before-el.html
“Nokia corrected ASP (when Microsoft subsidy is removed)
Q4 2010 – 155 Euros (202 US Dollars)
Q1 2011 – 146 Euros (189 US Dollars)
Q2 2011 – 141 Euros (183 US Dollars)
Q3 2011 – 131 Euros (170 US Dollars)
Q4 2011 – 131 Euros (170 US Dollars) *
Q1 2012 – 127 Euros (166 US Dollars) *
Above ASP reflects actual market price that Nokia branded smartphones actually acheived per quarter
* The two periods Q4 2011 and Q1 2012 included originally the Microsoft payment, so these are the corrected numbers when that payment is removed”
So the actual fall Q1 2011 to Q1 2012 is actually 13%!
I would also add the following list of errors/omissions in WP7, which a reader of Tomi Ahonen’s blog has listed up:
* There is a consistent moaning about the battery life of Lumias and lost connections. There is a fix for the battery problem but still people experience bad battery life and get inconsistent results from the upgrade.
* The multitasking is retarded. When an application is put in the background it often halts, if there is a phone call, the application exists and you have to restart it. For example if you use Nokia drive and receive a phone call, you have to restart Nokia drive and go through the process of entering your destination again.
* There have been reports that the bluetooth support is buggy, difficulties changing the volume of a peripheral headset.
* The volume setting is the same for everything! Due to different sound levels in recorded music this often leads to that if there is a phone call while you’re listen to music, the ring signal might give you tinnitus because it is so much louder.
* There are no sound profiles at all.
* Call waiting is not supported.
It seems incredible at MS could ship a mobile OS with such blunders, especially the multitasking, volume and call waiting.
I am with Walt French on this one; WP7 is a beta which MS rushed to the market through Nokia, hoping they could gain traction with before the real thing, aka WP8, arrives.
Unfortunately the dynamics of the market have wrong footed Nokia and MS. I cannot see how they can catch up on the ecosystem-front, especially with the iPad-trojan which is now eating its way into the corporate sector, after already having won the consumer battle.
Nothing is said about the immense cost to Nokia business and to Finland economy done by Elop’s decision. Even if moving to an ecosystem was a long-term right decision, the way he did, by pre-announcing the death of its own ecosystem, couldn’t be worse, and clearly destroyed the company’s value.
The scenario along which Microsoft took control of Nokia’s Board to put its own man in command and simply “give” the (once immense) company to itself doesn’t look too far fetched.
A US company taking control of a foreign one to improve its future at the very great expense of the controlled one, in many countries, this would be called a state crime.
But even by capitalism standard, this is a clear rip-off of Nokia stake holders (which, as we all know, are so much more important than the tens of thousands of workers who devoted their life to Nokia brand). And these stake-holders have rights, including the one to investigate if they were stolen.
Tomi Ahonen’s basic premise is that if Nokia stuck with MeeGo and Symbian3 that all would be well, which is preposterous. He thinks that Symbian3 was basically on par with iPhone at the time Elop deprecated it. Again, preposterous.
I would like Tomi to explain how much of the market Nokia would have retained if they stayed with Symbian3. The fact of the matter is, like RIM, Nokia would have been in the tank because their OS was deficient and because their platform was 2nd rate versus iOS and Android.
Where one could certainly fault Elop for is putting all of Nokia’s eggs with MSFT, who themselves are slow and ponderous. The ‘Burning Platform’ memo didn’t cause consumers to run away from Nokia. Consumers are running away from RIM without any such memo. The cause is/was the same – a deficient platform and ecosystem.
Something strange is going on Nokia in the USA..
I see job ads for one of their mobile services units as they have an office in Hammond, IN near me.
One of the mobile platforms they shoot for as providing mobile services is android..even the job ads several months ago.
That could mean that Nokia might be running a project in which they are using current mobile hardware to see if they can come over to Android..
I agree with Vikram333. Tomi Ahonen’s basic premise, that if Nokia stuck with MeeGo and Symbian3 then all would be well, is preposterous. However his blog does have some interesting data, and it is often very amusing to read his contortious arguments to prove himself right (and Elop wrong). The comments section to his blogs are also humorous reading.
Ahonen’s idea of the Elop effect (Osbourne effect plus Ratner effect) is great. However, I believe Nokia was on the way down before Elops burning memo. They had been channel stuffing, and it was only after the event that it became clear, with sales supposedly tanking.
I am unsure of Elop’s role. Is he a mole planted by MS and US share owners to destroy the inner value of Nokia so that MS can take over the IPR? Or is it all an unfortunate trail of events, where both Nokia and MS have been caught with their pants down by the fast moving disruption which the iPhone started and Android followed up with?
Good points but it’s more a consolidation of what everybody else has already written than a proper analysis. You don’t mention one-off charges coming from the restructuring and they are big payments which occur only once.
You conclusions seem also unlikely (at least to me). If MS buys Nokia, how can you licence your OS to the rest of the OEMs (given they won’t be pleased by the move)? And if MS cannot make it with Nokia, how can you convince the operators that you can make it with other OEMs?
@vikram333, mind if I quote you for effect? “[Tomi Ahonen] thinks that Symbian3 was basically on par with iPhone at the time Elop deprecated it. Again, preposterous.”
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Nice choice of words … uhh, word.
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And to @srikanth, who wrote, “I still don’t understand why it went exclusive with MS. It could have chosen both MS and Android…”, you are witnessing the utter implosion of Nokia’s S40 business that many people think is in significant part due to Nokia’s announcement that it was not behind Symbian for the long haul. I’ve previously said that the problem is mostly that the OS is no longer competitive, so I don’t think that’s completely true, but it must play a part. And another point: among Android players, only Samsung is prospering. Yes, many phones going out around the world, but in terms of a business where Nokia can be at least competitive, it’s hard to see how they’d out-cheap ZTE, or out-run Samsung, which has a couple of years’ head start in customized Android, while it’s building its proprietary stores/ecosystems.
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Android might’ve been a good strategy in 2008 or 2010 (when Froyo made the OS competitive and more). But that ship has sailed.
Nokia should have bought Palm Web OS and stayed clear of the damaged Windows brand. Windows is the kiss of death.
Interesting read his week end I just published a podcast (in french sorry) coming to the same conclusions about Nokia’s future….
http://wp.me/p1B4Oa-BH
I met last week a finnish entrepreneur, and guess what… we talked about Nokia…
In his eyes, the future of Mr Elop (and more largely Nokia) was indeed put on Lumia sales IN THE US, seen rightly or wrongly, as the key market that sets the trends…quite far from its geographical roots..
The perception is thus that Nokia cannot make it in Europe (no market or operator has the volume to sustain a long term bet on Nokia’s recovery…) probably due to previous difficult relationships, or Asia, or by becoming the king of low cost smartphones for developing countries, or (name one but please stick to it)..
Is it really true that the Nokia brand has lost completely its mojo ???
Couldn’t we think about its future by looking at what they are perceived to do well…(may be just low end phones btw).. and FOCUS on that for the time being, while abandoning all hope of remaining a worldwide player….
Sure it will entail further restructuring, carve-outs and the like but there might be a core to save… for a further rebound in ten years… provided that a new vision is brought forward..
So far becoming the hardware arm of Windows does not seem to be appealing.. fellow JLG_followers what would you do/suggest ??
So, I just got back from 2 weeks in China, Shanghai and Zhengzhou to be exact, and to my surprise, I didn’t see one Nokia phone that I recognized while doing extensive amounts of traveling on the subways. Sure, I could have seen one, but didn’t recognize it from any of the hundreds of generic feature phones out there. This is surprising in that just a few years ago, China was one of Nokia’s best markets. Everywhere you went, you saw China Mobile, Unicom and Telecom advertising and promoting Nokia handsets. What was more telling is that early in the morning, just like newspaper deliveries or fresh bread deliveries, you’d see small shipments of phones on the sidewalk. Really. Those used to be stacks of Nokia phones. You don’t see that anymore. Now, that could be for any number of reasons, like thieves making off with stacks of phones, but it just supports the story that Nokia is passé in China at least.
In Shanghai, my observation on the subways was that over 50% of phones visible were iPhones. Sure, the sample is skewed, but Shanghai is China’s trendsetter. It’s the NYC of China. What starts there, eventually trickles down to the hinterlands, just like 10 years ago, you saw so many people walking around with white earbuds in NYC, showing that they were using an iPod, eventually that happened everywhere.
Of course, the market is dynamic in China. The rise of ZTE and Huawei from the bottom up and Apple and Samsung and HTC from the top down have squeezed Nokia from a dominant position in China to that of also-ran, in a matter of a few years. They could make a comeback, but I am skeptical.
First impressions are important in China. It’s hard to be both an aspirational brand and an everyman brand, as Nokia tried to do. Volkswagen in China is a successful everyman brand in China. They didn’t try to up sell the Chinese to buy high-end Volkswagens. Okay, I admit to seeing one Phaeton, this past trip. Volkswagen has succeeded by selling luxury Audis, and not luxury VWs. Nokia needs to decide what it wants to be when it grows up. Can WinPhones really replace low-cost Symbian hardware? Doesn’t going WinPhone mean Nokia has to abandon the notion of being the everyman phone? Can Nokia afford to continue making feature phones? Doesn’t Nokia need to focus?
@ iphoned: A court order (injunction) stopping Android phones sales? Fascinating. Likely? If you’re Google’s CEO, would you rather pay $2B to Oracle? Or a bit more? Google would rather male amends and pay Java licensing fees rather than not keeping their position in the smartphone revolution.
@ Fafnir: I assume you mean MS could take control of less successful players, as they effectively did with Nokia, sort of “owning” the company without paying the price. HTC a candidate?
I’m inclined to think MS might either drop Nokia, no necrophilia, or go the way of the xbox, that is really own everything hw/OS/apps…
Can MS not be in the smartphone biz? Probably not. Then again, they keep losing beaucoup $$ in the online biz, $449M last quarter…
@ Walt French: My apologies for not responding to your comments in recent weeks.
This said… You’re right, let’s get more popcorn! MS still hasn’t acknowleged the Windows Phone 8 no-upgrade question. True, this also happens on some Android phones. But today’s Lumia phones are the one and only horse for MS. If you’re a carrier, how do you react? How will AT&T deal with the problem in the US?
The no-upgrade problem also exists for Blackberries: most if not all of today’s BB phones won’t run the new OS…
@ vikram333: You’re right. Tomi Ahonen’s enthusiasm is impressive, so is the volume of his posts…
Sticking with the antiquated Symbian is precisely what ailed Nokia. And loving Meego is also misguided. It’s not very good. Everything today is somehow Linux/Unix based. It’s what’s above that very basic layer that makes OS X, iOS and Android work for app developers and customers.
Still, I think Elop was wrong to announce the move to WP before having new WP phones to sell. Carriers hated to see Nokia obsolete their inventory. And how will they trust Nokia again?
@ srikanth: In today’s extremely competitive race, more than one (new) platform is very dangerous. Yes, Samsung sell dumbphones and kind of pushes its own Bada platform and more. But Samsung is much better run, more agressive, much richer than Nokia. (I also look forward to Samsung’s reaction to the Googorola allaince once the acquisition closes…)
@ shane blyth: Windows 8 UI is great. I have a preview on one of my Macs. My impression is it’s skin-deep, you quickly fall into the Windows 7 UI. Good news: familiar. Bad news: nothing really new. And the tablet version on ARM is really different, a “fork”. This is months away, many things will change. For reference, I was a Vista (and Office) beta-tester and loved it. But the shipping product was horrible, as we all know.
@ RobDK: Thanks for the “deconstruction” of ASPs. As you point out, Lumias are sold at a loss. How will this change once Samsung ships a new Galaxy, or Apple a new iPhone later this year?
@ RobDK: You confirm why MS has to drop the “noble and worthy” Windows CE kernel and move to a more modern foundation. Will the move happen soon enough to save WP and Nokia?
@ Nokia: You’re right, this looks like a rip-off. Now, let’s ask: Who allowed it to happen? Passively by letting OPK run the company while ignoring what Apple and Android/Samsung were doing? Or actively, by letting Nokia’s Board recruit a MIcrosoft exec — and approve the premature announcement? The people to blame the most are Nokia’s directors. They let shareholders, employees and Finland down.
@ Fred Grott: Fascinating, Nokia hedging its WP bet. And/or making sure some Nokia services such a smusic or maps also work on Android?
@ Reda: You’re right. My idependent observations of Nokia’s numbers jibe with what others also said. But no one pointed to the (letthal?) combination of three threats.
Regarding MS buying Nokia: You’re right, this would preclude licensing WP to others. This would be ”going Apple”, owning the while stack — as MS already does with the xbox, as mentioned in the MN.
@ Mike: Yes, that would have been a neat move. Nokia would have stayed independent, untethered to PMS, or Google.
@ Greg: Thanks. I _do_ speak French
@ Jacques Demaël: [Disclosure: Jacques is a business partner]
I’m afraid Nokia is to big, complicated. It might continue to exist as some kind of walking wounded. As I wrote in earlier responses to comment, I still can’t believe Nokia’s Board consented to Elop’s moves and _timing_. Are they so disconnected from what customers and carriers feel?
@ KenC: Thanks for the Chine trip report! As you point out, Nokia should focus. But they can’t let go of the dumbphone business, in a race to the bottom, and they’re not showing good signs of making it in the smartphone biz.
Aaahh, it’s very trendy to predict Nokia’s failure. It’s boring, try to find something new.
Someone here called Elop a Microsoft Moll.
When it was first reveled that Elop would head Nokia, the first thought in my head was Rick Belluzzo and his role in the demise of Silicon Graphics.
History repeats itself, perhaps?
I meant to write “mole”. Sorry, I was thinking of American actor, Richard Moll. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Moll
Nokia killed their good will with me personally in their handling of the N900 and refusal to honor basic warranty service. Many unwise and arrogant missteps, in strategy and service, led to the current downfall.
> It is worth noting things could be better [for Nokia] in the
> US where AT&T appears to make a real effort selling Lumias,
> and where Verizon recently stated its interest in fostering
> a third ecosystem with Windows Phone devices.
It doesn’t matter how much a carrier promotes these phones. There are no customers.
Since AT&T adopted iPhone (5 years ago,) 6 out of every 10 sales they make are iPhones. (Across all phones, not just “smartphones.”) The same is true at Verizon (2 years) and Sprint (6 months.) That means the non-Apple phone market at AT&T/Verizon/Sprint is only 4 out of every 10 customers. And that includes feature phone customers, all of Android, all of BlackBerry, all the other phones. There is no great untapped market of potential smartphone buyers out there. Same as there was no great untapped market of music player buyers out there for JVC in 1990 or Zune in 2005. If you were going to buy a full-on iPod-style digital music player in 2005, you were already on your second iPod by then. Everybody else was happy with whatever music player was already in their car or their home, or with an MP3 player that was built into waterproof headphones or some other niche. Today, there are lots of people who want a free phone with a low monthly cost and they make calls only. Those people were able to resist a $0-$99 iPhone for almost 2 years now, when an iPod nano with a fraction of its features goes for $149. They are not pumped up to buy Lumia smartphones for $99.
> With hindsight, it appears the premature announcement
> of the jump to Windows Phone osborned Nokia’s existing
> smartphones.
I couldn’t believe they didn’t have an actual phone to ship that day.
> Microsoft
No chance for them. Their users are dying out, and not being replaced. Their technology is stuck in the 1990′s. It’s not relevant to people today. You can’t get somebody who had an iPod since they were 10 to get excited about rebooting Windows. They want to make YouTube movies, not defrag their disks. They want immediately functionality, not virus-scans and software licensing keys. When something goes wrong, they want one (1) company to call and they fix it ASAP, because today’s user is relying on their devices to not only be their PC, but also their book reader, maps, notebooks, address book, and so on. They cannot have any serious downtime.
And they have no time for manuals and training. They need to go into an app like iMovie for the first time one day and by lunch they have the 2 minute YouTube movie that their boss wants, and he assumes that anyone can make a YouTube video because kids do it, and when Apple helps them to accomplish that, they do not forget that. When has Microsoft every helped anyone to accomplish something they thought they couldn’t do? NEVER.
So even though Microsoft’s technology is hideously out of date, what is killing them is their culture is hideously out of date. They have always made their products for themselves and other “power user” nerds (that is what they call themselves) and the idea is that the other 90% is SOL. That is not the case anymore. The other 90% are at Apple Store. So at best you are looking at a maintenance Microsoft, selling Windows to the same small group of truly lost souls who bought Vista.
Nokia needs to improve their phones and change their functions ,In Africa nokia has the biggest population wild but we the Africans are recommanding orginal product and not the fake ones , we love nokia
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On one other hand, one’s body needs time for you to adjust to your diet plan because it is habitual in your overeating habits. This app allows users find exercises and learn how to do them through step-by-step instructions and photos. Ever since we could remember, we’ve been
taught that in order to lose weight naturally, we have to
stay away from sweet things, right.
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[...] Nokia: 3 Big Problems (Monday Note) [...]
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[...] the tax beginning in 2014, or when the federal government requires it. – Suzanne SpectorNokia: 3 Big Problems Mondaynote.com | An absorbing analysis of Nokia’s problems. It won’t give you much [...]
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[...] Via Monday Note [...]
[...] CISPA and truly terrible Nokia quarterly financial results to Adobe’s official unveiling today of CS6 and its $50 a month Creative Cloud service [...]
[...] Jean-Louis Gassée: Nokia is burning cash. As the chart above documents, Nokia’s Net Cash went down 24% in one year. From page 5 of the Earnings Release: “Year-on-year, net cash and other liquid assets decreased by $2B…. Sequentially, net cash and other liquid assets decreased by $.9B”. Here, the word sequentially means compared to the immediately preceding quarter, as opposed to the same quarter last year. [...]