Rumours, speculation on Lumia sales weighing on Nokia

Given Nokia’s (OMX: NOK1V) global reach, analysts struggle more with predicting the company’s sales than is the case with most stocks. This was evident with the Q3 results, when dual-SIM phone sales in developing countries helped the company to fare far better than expected. Nokia still stirs up emotions, which is evident from the following issues raised in just few days that are explained in the following paragraphs.

Couple weeks ago Forbes quoted experts who believed Nokia's new Windows Phone Lumia's sales will disappoint in Q4. Many analysts and investors had been searching with Google Trends to analyze the interest created by the product line. The latest trends would suggest the interest has picked up a bit. The comparison is always difficult, as you need to get the words that are compared against each other correctly, so for a better estimate, several potential searches should be used and cross-compared.

Since then some media outlets were also reporting that used Lumia phones are already selling at massive discounts. This seems to be false and some even attribute that to competitors selling their test phones or to outright competitor bashing. Nokia has since commented in positive light on Lumia’s sakes in chosen countries. The stock price is down over 20% in a month, erasing all the gains from post-Q3 report hullabaloo, where as the rest of the stock market has been staging a bit of a rally. The Street also added more heat to the debate on Nokia's future prospects with an article questioning the maintainability of Nokia’s dividend.

In the most recent and most outlandish rumour to date, the grapevine in China was whispering that Nokia had gone bankrupt and exited the stock market. Nokia still boasts quite a large cash vest and is about to add to it with a windfall from Microsoft from the partnership due later on, so a bankruptcy is certainly not in the cards near-term. It might be that someone there misinterpreted Nokia's announcement that the company plans to exit Frankfurt stock exchange to mean it is about to go belly up. The other rumour from China was that Nokia is having technical issues in China ahead of the Lumia launch. This one might have more legs stand on, but Lumia is not due there until next April, so there is still time to address any potential issues.

Nokia already has a software update for Lumia 800 out, couple weeks post-launch. Lumia 800 will launch in Asia shortly, with Singapore first to enter the fray on December 10th. Nokia rebounded a little in late US session when media got a hold of T-Mobile’s invitation for an event with Nokia next week. Markets were speculating that this would mean Nokia Windows Phone coming to America. Tomorrow Nokia will partake in Barclays Capital Global Technology Conference.