Is this the end for Nokia?

Is this the end for Nokia?

In this Reuters report, it appears that Nokia is still on the downward spiral. The most worrying thing is that S&P has downgraded (from BBB+) to BBB- their view of the Nokia Unfortunately, we could not get stock quote HEL:NOKIA this time. stock.

This means that the following the companies recent announcement that earnings are likely to be substantially lower, the markets don't appear to believe that Nokia can be turned around.

The primary driver appears to be that the high-end phone buyers are not comfortable with Symbian's current status, and the move to adopt Windows Phone is still a ways off, with none of their current phones running the operating system. There are, however, desperately trying to attract those with deeper pockets to their phones, with a significant advertising campaign underway showing that smartphones are really useful. The trouble is, I don't think it's working for them correctly and is more likely attracting non-smartphone users into the smartphone fold, but not necessarily to Nokia specifically.

And to cap it all, their current CTO, Richard Green is on long-term leave, with rumours of a split over the selection of Windows Phone over the Meego platform (the Nokia and Intel mobile Linux platform, born from Maemo and ). As always it's the content and usability of the platform that matters. At the moment neither can deliver for Nokia, so we have great hardware, supported by an ancient operating system. (Symbian came from the old Psion EPOC operating system and supported the ARM chipset which Nokia first started to use in the 9210 Communicator.) Nokia also has a marketplace with a few applications. This is not a right place to start from.

I don't think this is going to end well, either, and while Nokia has in the past made some significant changes (most notably moving from rubber goods and cables into telecommunications). I'm not so sure that the current leaders have the opportunity to drive the company forward with its turn-around, or to make the switch into something different (even more difficult since it no longer has any of the subsidiaries that previously allowed such a move). So perhaps one of the market-leading brands (in both volume and technology) will be consigned to the waste heap of history..

John Dixon

John Dixon is the Principal Consultant of thirteen-ten nanometre networks Ltd, based in Wiltshire, United Kingdom. He has a wide range of experience, (including, but not limited to) operating, designing and optimizing systems and networks for customers from global to domestic in scale. He has worked with many international brands to implement both data centres and wide-area networks across a range of industries. He is currently supporting a major SD-WAN vendor on the implementation of an environment supporting a major global fast-food chain.

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