Nokia’s stocks recently went up from a meager $1.6, which was its lowest ever to $3 and resulted in a significant bit of profits for those who invested at the right time. This was good news while it lasted but it appears that the shares are falling again. Nokia’s reduction to its current level from its once dominant position is quite saddening and the company has only itself to blame. From not entering the smartphone race at the right time and keeping only one platform in its quiver and making a drastic change to the Windows Phone platform, its moves were radical and didn’t yield the expected results. Now, things are starting to look up again but there is a long way to go and a lot of ground to cover.
Though Nokia has lost a majority of its share to Apple and Samsung and it might seem like the company has done nothing significant, it has made a lot of effort to design and develop fresh lines of devices for the Windows Phone platform. The Windows Phone 7 might not have succeeded but the next version of it, WP8 sure looks promising. In addition, it sold a whole lot of its patents for $22 million to get some cash in hand and is cutting jobs and facilities to maintain a healthy cash balance.
In the future, the high end smartphone market is going to be quite competitive and since Samsung has already announced WP8 devices, the pressure is on Nokia to outperform it. However, by the looks of it, Microsoft is projecting the image that it is behind Nokia despite giving the go ahead to Samsung. The main focus for Nokia is however emerging markets such as India and South Africa where it can market its feature phones in large numbers and generate revenues. The strong base it has over there with the low price phones should strengthen its image when it reveals and launches new smartphones.
Nokia is going to announce the new WP8 devices shortly and it must do it before Apple launches its new phone, the iPhone 5. As far as the company goes, it does have a bright future but it is heavily reliant on the success of the Windows Phone 8 devices. However, it does have a strong backup of patents that amount to at least 4 billion euros from which it can earn significant licensing fees.
