Nokia, while trying to find their way back into the smartphone market, is finding it difficult to deal with their shareholders who are increasingly short on patience. After losing to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, Nokia is now betting on Windows Phone devices to pull it out of the red. Risto Siilasmaa, the new chairperson, addressed this recent move by Nokia.
Siilasmaa is confident that the company will make it through this period of transition with the support of the right team, strategies and products which are being introduced. However, by far, Nokia hasn’t seen a rise in the sale of their new smartphone series and have failed in balancing the falling sales of their previous products.
Stephan Elop, CEO, admitted that dealing with the transition has been harder than they expected.
With Nokia being pushed to the second position in the mobile phone business by Samsung after their successful run for 14 years, investors understandably upset over the 90 percent drop in the value of Nokia holdings in the last five years. Two third of this drop in value has occurred following the CEO’s decision to switch the company’s preferred mobile platform to Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Making matters worse are ratings given out by S&P and Fitch that reduced Nokia’s earlier glorious ratings to ‘junk’. Shareholders are well aware of the fact that Nokia’s current position is rather disastrous.
Nokia has been one of the best in the market so far and this could be one of the reasons why investors continue to hope and hold on to their shares, even though the company’s status in the market is dwindling. Shareholders like Ari Rikkila who heads a Finnish software company had opted to buy shares in Nokia with Siilasmaa expected to turn the company’s state around, a couple of months back. However, with things not working out too well, investors are hoping they will see results of strategies being implemented by next year at least.
To probably help cope with their troubles, Jorma Ollila, who held office before Siilasmaa, promised to introduce a series of new products that world include hybrid smartphones and tablets.
Once Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system becomes available, Nokia is expected to launch their tablet computer sometime later this year. This move into the tablet market could be tough for the company to deal with, according to analysts. With Microsoft by their side, Nokia is still hoping to be able to compete with Apple and Google soon.
