Nokia's (OMX: NOK1V, NYSE: NOK) master Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has announced plenty of news also concerning the Finland-headquartered mobile phone manufacturer this week. Microsoft will start to make tablets under its own brand, something which places it in direct competition with its licensers. Hints of a Nokia tablet have been dropped every now and then. Therefore it would seem that either Nokia was unable to deliver in time and the development program is now one of those going under or there was some kind of a back-office deal. Mostly the market chose to think it is anyhow good for Nokia if the ecosystem grows and that tablets would have been away from its comfort zone no matter what.
More immediate pains concerning sales are to be expected since just as rumoured, current Lumia phones will not be updateable to Windows Phone 8 operating system known as Apollo. There will however be a separate OS update for the current devices. Yesterday news from Germany suggested this is one reason why the current Nokia’s flagship phone Lumia 900 hasn’t been taken for sale.
News from China are speaking off further deterioration of Nokia’s business. I have noticed that Nokia Lumia phones are placed in a remote corner with most vendors, while Symbian phones rarely even around anymore. This is the case even in Tier 4 cities and smaller, a previous stronghold of the company.
According to Microsoft, Nokia Maps or rather Navteq maps will be coming to all Windows 8 phones, as the Finnish company will apparently license them. This would perhaps take away some of its competitive advantage vs. other Windows-phone manufacturers but on the other hand give it another revenue stream. All and all, it is not like Nokia has so far been able to communicate its big advantage in map and navigation quality to consumers. Analysts are diverging in their view of the stock. Target prices have certainly been cut, but while others think there is way more room to drop, some feel that we could be close to bottom.
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