14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia is going from bad to worse, at least this is what the latest actions the company took show, such as the fact that it just lowered its forecast for the second quarter of the ongoing year, or that it started closing down some of its online services.
Nokia said on Tuesday that it can no longer offer a financial forecast for the ongoing year, while lowering the outlook for the ongoing quarter, which clearly shows that they are getting through a rough time.
Following yesterday announcement on lower Q2 2011 forecast, Nokia's shares went down by around 15 percent. Today, they dropped over 6 percent.
Nokia's shares took a hit, and they would go down even more, that's for sure. The second quarter on 2011 would be only the beginning of this hard times for Nokia, with sales set to slow down in the following months as well, and significant market share to be lost.
Moreover, it seems that Q1 was not such a great quarter either, as the company actually reported as sold units that were moved out of its warehouses but not sold/shipped to end-users.
Nokia would slash prices to ensure that sales would be boosted up, which should result in lower revenues, just as they unveiled yesterday. They also announced plans to cut costs even more.
As a result, users in Spain, France, or the Netherlands can no longer purchase phones from the company's online stores starting today. Apparently, other web storefronts are set to be closed as well, before June is over.
The company is in full transition to loading Windows Phone on its smartphones, and it seems interest in Symbian is already fading out fast, since phones are not selling as well as Nokia might have expected.
Recently, Nokia promised new upgrades for the platform for the next five years or so, but this won't make devices more appealing to users, that's for sure.
Symbian^3 handsets did not enjoy the traction Nokia hoped they would, mainly due to the high price tags they landed with, and the first Symbian Anna handsets might share a similar fate, even if they are cheaper and promise better performance.
Closing down services to cut expenses would help the Finnish giant, the same as would the sending home of thousands of people, most of which were working on the Symbian platform.
The first Windows Phones from Nokia should be launched this fall, and new, better Symbian phones are expected to arrive on shelves at that time as well, slowing down the fall.
However, it would be only next year that Nokia would ship Windows Phones in volumes, which means that things might decline even more until then.
Overall, Nokia seems confident that they would manage to regain the lost market share, and that Windows Phone would make the company profitable once again, but there's no telling on how long that would take.
Next year, we should see over a dozen Windows Phones launched from Espoo, along with a series of Symbian phones as well, as Nokia would accelerate the release of new devices, just as promised only recently.