back to article Nokia gives up predicting sales

Nokia is predicting Q2 sales to be "substantially below" its previous estimates, and says it won't provide public targets anymore as the company tries to adjust to the new reality. In its statement to the stock market Nokia doesn't say how much worse things will be, only that "multiple factors are negatively impacting Nokia's …

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  1. DJV Silver badge
    Joke

    Nokia Sales Forecast

    A spokesman for Nokia said, "We might (or might not) sell something next quarter. But don't quote me."

  2. Ralph B
    Thumb Down

    Captain Elop

    The Good Ship Nokia was sinking slowly, so Captain Elop made a hole in the hull to let the water out. But now the ship is sinking quicker, so Captain Elop wants the hole made bigger.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Good anology

      To the rescue is the good ship Microsoft - but wait, no one noticed the skull and crossbones flying from the mast.

      "could be as much as 9 per cent off" - understatement of the year ! Who in their right minds is buying anything other than a low cost Nokia since the Microsoft announcement ?

      1. Dinky Carter

        Who in their right minds...

        My current phone is an N8. My next will be an E7. Then I'll hold on to that for a couple of years while I wait for a WinPho or Android to match its power and functionality.

  3. mr-tom
    Holmes

    Icon says it all

    Seems like Nokia are only now realising what everybody else knew all along.

  4. /\/\j17
    Facepalm

    New Reality

    "(Nokia) says it won't provide public targets anymore as the company tries to adjust to the new reality.".

    One assumes that's the new reality that no-one was buying Windows handsets before Nokia, no-one is going to buy windows handsets after Nokia and no-one is buying Symbian handsets as Nokia have nailed it to the cross.

  5. Khephren

    I wonder why?

    He's already announced the end of Symbian, so why would people want to buy into a fading platform? Personally I think Symbian is getting better all the time - but Elop has tainted it with death, as soon as he opened his mouth....And he has bugger all else to sell, the idiot.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    WTF

    Is anyone supposed to be surprised?

    Simple. They were caught with their pants down when the whole world was embracing IOs and Android and tocuhscreens and smartphones and ....whatever. Too smug in their achievements.

    This is a classic object lesson in any MBA course, how the mighty have fallen.

    1. asdf
      FAIL

      kind of like

      Sounds like the how arrogance and greed destroyed Schlitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlitz). Not that it was anything but another crap American beer even in the best of times.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Just another WinPhone vendor

    Goodbye Symbian, you served us so well, for a while.

    But Elop's Nokia will be just an outpost of Redmond, and HTC already do that so much better.

  8. Wombat 1

    D'Oh!

    What other tech company announces 12 months ahead of execution that their entire inventory of products and technology is headed for the trash can? What did Nokia expect customers to do during the interregnum, buy the old phones as collectors items? Did CEO Stephen Elop take Marketing 101, or was he drunk that semester?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Mission Accomplished!

    Elop can surely land on an aircraft carrier and wave the flag now. Transition complete!

    And in other news, Evil Villain realises his extinct volcano is actually still active. More stories of incompetence coming right up!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    for some strange reason

    I am going to enjoy watching Nokia and M$ die a slow and horrible death.

    I must be sadistic?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'm not.

      Moved from UK to Finland, met a great girl, fathered a fantastic child, no intention to visit UK again.

      I owe all that to Nokia. I could literally weep when I see what that prat Elop has done.

      Here in Oulu, many, many Nokia folks are of exactly the same mind. We shook our heads in utter amazement. Production-line workers as well as senior managers. All are gobsmacked.

      Where's Jack Ruby when you need him?

  11. Jess

    Odd ...

    ... being the last chance to purchase a decent Nokia phone.

    Perhaps it's the potential lack of future support that is doing it.

  12. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Coat

    ...and the next headline?

    Elop becomes Microsoft exec.

  13. Aaron Fothergill
    Big Brother

    Any bets?

    Any bets on exactly how long it takes Nokia to devalue itself enough to be bought by Microsoft then?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      We are guesstimating 12-18 months

      and that's from some of the Symbiandevs who are bashing their heads out over this. The sad thing is I've seen unreleased user interfaces that would have been a match of the iPhone.

      Oh well.

    2. multipharious

      Exactly.

      This was my first thought. You posted first, so I will reply. Devaluation. This is happening right in front of us.

  14. Neil 7

    Nokia

    A company destined to become just another chapter in a book on Marketing Blunders. A footnote in the Smartphone industry.

    By the time the Nokia WP comes out the company will have gone from a market cap of $35bn to somewhere close to single digit billions. Wouldn't surprise me if they snapped up by Microsoft, or even one of the Taiwanese or Chinese outfits.

    Elop has been nothing but a disaster for Nokia so far - it's true they were in trouble before, but all he's done is accelerate that. They may have been on a burning platform (if you believe that), but now they're under water and drowning.

    Judging by this announcement it's clear the operators are not stocking Symbian any more - and who can blame them? It's difficult to see who will now be buying the 150mn Symbian devices Nokia believed it would be able to sell back in February, and since very few appear to be buying Windows Phone devices it's hard to imagine the slack will be taken up by consumers saving their pennies for once the Nokia WP hits the shelves. If they wanted a WP device they'd already have one. They don't, and a device from Nokia will make precious little difference.

    Nokia have only two choice: stick with Elop and hope that WP7 takes off before they run out of money, or ditch Elop along with his strategy and go back to basics of running your own platform which was orders of magnitude more popular than the one from Microsoft.

    Either way Elop should be prosecuted for destroying shareholder value with his incompetence.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Devil

      It is strategy and governance - not marketing.

      A company destined to become just another chapter in a book on Marketing Blunders. A footnote in the Smartphone industry.

      Sorry, dude. It is a company which should be the shining star in a book on blunders in strategy, governance and management. It is not marketing. It is in fact its main mistake - replacing proper strategy, governance and management with marketing and thinking that it will be enough.

      1. It invested an ungodly amount of man hours in both its Network Part (now NSN) and its headset division to drive IMS through. IMS takes the power from the handset maker and gives it to the operator. App store? Software sales? In a world where all billing is through operator? Yeah right. A textbook example of ex-nerds driving strategy without counting the pennies.

      2. It reinvented the wheel with QT. It reinvented the wheel with Linux. It reinvented the wheel with everything it tried with or without necessity. A textbook example of how to break the C2M and release governance process.

      3. It build userbase loyalty on "anything but Microsoft" sentiment for years and thought that it will ignore it going against that. That one is probably the only marketing blunder here.

      4. It had a R&D division and its R&D kept wondering mindlessly trying to "sell" internally its achievements. Its current competitors (Apple, Google) have a contiguous process to drive R&D and innovation straight into product instead. No selling, downstreaming, whatever. The difference is obvious. An example of broken governance (perpetrated by many other EU tech stalwarts).

      The list can be continued.

      1. Lars Silver badge
        Flame

        "anything but Microsoft"

        As far as I remember, after Gates decided he had invented the cell phone he claimed his first goal was to beat Nokia. Then he meets with Ollila and Ballmer visits Helsinki several times to

        persuade Nokia, to stop being silly, and start seeing the writing on the wall, and start producing Win Phones without paying Microsoft anything very hefty for that wonderful opportunity to stay alive.

        I remember Ballmer's last interview on Finnish television. He was clearly pissed of for not getting the understanding he so well deserved.

        Had Ollila accepted then I am sure we would not discuss the fate of Nokia to day, Nokia is still alive, if barely.

        Still there is something funny with this Nokia/Microsoft love, (for now), equally lost at sea, with

        captains on the deck who rather played golf and cannot read the compass..

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Linux

        Re: It is strategy and governance - not marketing.

        "It reinvented the wheel with QT. It reinvented the wheel with Linux."

        Everything else you write makes sense, but not this. If you're going to support a bunch of platforms and get developers on board, you need something like Qt.

        Of course there are a lot of people who are upset about Qt's role in Nokia and what happened to Maemo, GTK+ and so on, but GTK+ was largely drifting for a long time - there wasn't a native Mac OS X port for a while apart from one some company had done that they weren't ready to release, or something like that - and despite the supposedly substantial investment by various corporations, GTK+ was looking pretty unattractive.

        Nokia have arguably reduced the value of Qt substantially - desktop developers have been complaining that all the focus is on mobile stuff and meeting Nokia's requirements of the quarter - or at least have failed to capitalise on what Qt could offer to lots of platforms, including mobile ones like Android. And as for reinventing the wheel with Linux, which I guess is referring to Maemo/MeeGo, there's a substantial interest in something that's more GNU/Linux than Google/Android.

        Maybe you're referring to Nokia just playing their hand badly - I'd agree with that - but the motivations (Qt for development, Linux as a platform) are not bad ones: it's the way the company strategists and factions have dithered and fought, all while the business moves towards general-purpose technologies, that has cost Nokia its position. Perversely, Trolltech showed the Greenphone off about five years ago - some Chinese-built kit running Linux and Qt that the established vendors presumably scoffed at - but it heralded the age we're in right now.

        Oh, and it also makes you wonder how much value the rest of Nokia has been adding to the combination of technologies in question.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "The list can be continued."

        OK, but can we have the first one in English first, without so many acronyms and non-sequiturs?

    2. asdf
      FAIL

      not quite

      >Either way Elop should be prosecuted for destroying shareholder value with his incompetence

      Blame worthless Euro bureaucracy for that. After all in FIFA, F1, and most other large multinationals its more important to have friends in powerful places than having to actually do your job with integrity and competence.

  15. Jemma
    Big Brother

    ...sigh...

    This is not to do with the quality of Nokia phones - or the quality of the symbian OS (which is still the most powerful and optimized OS available for mobile phones).

    This is about David Einhorn putting the boot in. From one point of view he's the one who saved the people before the 2008 crash - if you look at it the other way - he is the one who started it. He is the single pebble that started a worldwide catastrophe.

    Nokia's phones are no worse than any of the other offerings - the only difference is they listened to reality and didn't jump on the touchscreen bandwagon. Maybe they've suffered for it.

    But I still use a 6 year old symbian OS phone - which after all that time on the original battery has a three days life. It will syncronise with Gmail - and more to the point - it works as a phone.

    I have had two android phones. both of them are dire when it comes to signal. both of them are utterly insecure. Both of them will not let me use my GPS THAT I PAID FOR unless i let them mine where I go, how fast, and when...

    I've given up on here trying to make it clear what people are losing by getting wonderful touchy feely kit. 1984 has just come a little late - and the really brilliant part is that its not the government - its not fascism - its not some sort of banana republic. ITS YOU, YOU, you buying the phone that tracks your movements, you buying the OS that is 'free' apart from the fact that you have to whore yourself out to use it... and your kids, if they have a An-drone or iOS phone and your mum, and your granny and the rest of them.

    Symbian doesnt tell you to drop your kecks to Nokia when you want to use the GPS on the phone YOU bought and paid for. Symbian doesn't have a rights and security system that is little more than an optimistic joke. Symbian has systems to protect both the hardware and software, so that applications have the rights they need and only the rights they need.

    True, it makes it a little harder to write for Symbian, and a little more complex - but you know what?

    I don't really mind that much if its a little harder to program - I don't mind that there aren't the number of apps on there (theres pretty much all I need). But I really really like the idea that I have some privacy. I love the idea that if I was a black man in Texas - the fact that my phone DOESN'T keep records on where I have been - means I wouldn't get pinned for the murder of that teenage girl, because I was within a mile of the location someone used her to test their new Remington 870.

    THAT is what you are selling for your wonderful blue blue shiny phone. You are selling your life, your movements, your thoughts, your interests and everything.

    Good luck with that....

    1. Alastair 7

      Tin foil hats at the ready!

      "THAT is what you are selling for your wonderful blue blue shiny phone. You are selling your life, your movements, your thoughts, your interests and everything."

      No, you aren't. To take Android as an example- you don't have to use Gmail. Just use IMAP email. You are asked when you first turn the phone on whether you want to send location data to Google. You can say no. Scared of the Maps app? Download a different one (an OSM-based one, perhaps) - and not even from the Market, you can side-load apps over USB.

      All I'm seeing in your post is a load of paranoid nonsense. If you are very security conscious, you can take steps to secure your phone (perhaps not iPhone, I don't know enough about it). "Selling your life", indeed. You CAN sell your life, and get services in return. But you don't have to.

  16. This post has been deleted by its author

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All according to plan

    Elop's plan to make Nokia like the US smart phone manufacturers is working: fairly soon they will have gone from being the world market leader with over 30% of global cellphone sales to having just 3%, just like Apple or Motorola. Once he's lowered Nokia's market share by an order of magnitude, I guess Elop will move on to his next victim.

    1. multipharious

      Not quite...

      Lowering the value of the company allows another company to step in and purchase it for less. In this case Microsoft. Look at the pattern: Nokia takes Elop on, Symbian is ditched, Nokia announces support for WP7, during press conference for Mango Nokia gets center billing and much larger logo, then an unbelievable "we have no idea how much we are going to sell" sales forecast? I mean please. Pull the other one. That is devaluation.

      Expect that Microsoft purchases Nokia...and soon.

      1. Tom 13
        Pirate

        Why would M$ buy soon?

        Is there really anyone besides MS who wants them? If not, MS let's them drop the maximum amount before purchasing. I mean after all, there's no sense in taking the hit on your own balance sheet by purchasing a failing company too early.

        1. multipharious

          Good question

          If MS announces intent, then the stock price will spike upwards. My experience with devaluation is something over months. My bet is an all cash purchase announcement after the fiscal year close. Perhaps in conjunction (or lead up to) with the Win8 Build conf to get the developers into a real Ballmer frenzy.

          Personally I doubt Elop popped up at Nokia without some long term thought.

  18. Pseu Donyme

    Uh-oh

    >"accelerate the pace of our transition"

    "Rush it out half-baked thereby ensuring a substandard product, at an enormous total expense and r&d staff tied in fixing bugs when they should be working on future products."

  19. Lars Silver badge
    Flame

    Programmers

    According to Ollila they did not have the programmers they would have needed when they needed them. A poor excuse, indeed.

    The problem was that they never knew why a company needs programmers in the first place.

    Programmers are a pain in the arse, and to lessen that pain, the bare minimum was hired as cheap as possible from India.

    And do not get this wrong, there are plenty of good programmers in India, but it showed that Nokia did not consider programming and programmers an asset but a damned pain in the arse.

    I feel sorry for Nokia. The fact that I am a Finn makes me damned sorry.

    I have a feeling that less than ten people in the top of that company destroyed it bye share stupidity (or should I be nice, and talk about lack of understanding).

    So now I have this "hope" of Microsoft and Nokia doing something together to save Nokia.

    Very funny, do I like Microsoft, NO, do I belivee in them NO.

    Elop, I would advice to put a hell of an effort on plan B, with Meego and Qt and Symbian too.

    And why not try to produce good hardware where the customer decides what OS he wants to load onto it.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    "You CAN sell your life, and get services in return."

    And that is exactly what 99+% of punters will do, completely unaware that is what they are doing. At least in the UK. Some of them will even pay their operator for the privilege.

    I have a ZTE Blade, acquired as a 'free' contract upgrade. Having tried it for a few weeks I decided I don't like it that much, and the privacy thing is part of the reason why I have for now abandoned Android for phones and bought myself a 2nd hand Nokia E7x, with an actual keyboard, and a battery which doesn't need recharging every day.

    My 'new' old Symbian phone also still runs a couple of apps which are important to me and are available on Symbian but not on Android (yes such things do exist). I used to run Google Maps for Symbian too, till I realised how it was (ab)using my phone for wardriving, in return for offering me free navigation so long as I had a signal...

    On German TV, I know one channel's motoring programme (VOX's auto mobil) has already done a feature or two on the privacy snags with modern smartphones. What chance Top Gear doing something similar?

  21. json

    havent had a 'No'kia for 10 years now

    .. their products are a) too expensive b) lacks apps and c) not sexy.

  22. J. R. Hartley
    Terminator

    Aaaah.

    Mehdi Ali is back at the top!

  23. Da Weezil
    FAIL

    Farewell to the Finns

    Two things stopped me from buying Nokia for the first time this century.

    The announcement that Symbian was being phased out - I don't change my phone frequently, so I want an operating system that is going to be supported in the long term for security fixes etc, add to this the only decent looking models were at the "ridiculous" price point and that pretty much ended my long and (until now) happy relationship with Nokia and I know I am not alone in taking this stance even amongst my small circle of friends. I am sick of Windows - its been relegated to a back up machine here - why would I buy a damn phone that relies on it?

    I might have settled on a "dumb phone" (this was to replace my trusty 6230i that drowned) if I was still able to get a pop port model to fit on the cradle in my car. That was a brilliant idea. a simple clip into place cradle that connected the phone to the Nokia CARK kit AND allowed it to charge without plug in crap draped all over the place. The Cark bluetooth unit still functions with my new Android unit but as well as charging I have lost the "auto answer" function too.

    Why is it that "progress" usually means moving backwards?

    Nokia need to go back to being an innovator rather than getting into bed with the Redmond mob. Heres another repeat customer who wont be back for winfone.

    I reluctantly got into bed with Google, and I'm being very careful about what they get from me data-wise. Apple was never an option either, they are as over priced as the high end Nokias.

    How the mighty have fallen.

  24. Andus McCoatover

    Slight correction to article

    We have to wait till 2 JULY for the 2Q results.

    http://investors.nokia.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=107224&p=irol-irhome

  25. Neil 7
    Alert

    And the share price continues to slide...

    1 June 2011 - Goldman Sachs downgraded[1] Nokia from Buy to Neutral and cut their price target from $12.40 to $7.30, stating "lower Q2 revenue expectations just six weeks after giving guidance has materially increased downside risks."

    That's one hell of a downgrade/cut.

    "Goldman said the company's rapid market share loss threatens its distribution advantage, and will make it harder to regain share with Windows phones."

    Banking on Windows Phone is what ultimately may kill the company, whereas sticking to it's Symbian/MeeGo/Qt strategy which was actually starting to work out quite nicely (Symbian was certainly improving with it's UI updates, and selling in increased numbers with increased app downloads, Qt is by all accounts a fantastic development platform) now looks like the better bet.

    "They also note the company's balance sheet is weakening and another 30% drop in sales would use up its EUR 6 billion cash pile."

    A 30% drop in sales when the current platform has been liquidated with no immediate replacement (and not even one anywhere near as popular) is entirely possible.

    Could it really be the case that Nokia run out of money in just a few quarters as a direct consequence of this crazy change of strategy? While Microsoft walk away relatively unscathed.

    Incredible.

    Maybe Apple will use their enormous cash pile to snap up a bankrupt Nokia for their IP portfolio and excess manufacturing capacity, before Microsoft does. Apple buying Nokia would make more sense, if only for the IP.

    Nokia need to come to their senses ASAP. This is not looking pretty and doesn't look like it's going to work out well for the poor old Finns who have been taken for a ride by Redmond.

    1. http://www.streetinsider.com/Downgrades/Goldman+Sachs+Downgrades+Nokia+%28NOK%29+to+Neutral/6550617.html

  26. Peter Snow
    Pirate

    Windows? - Wrong Call.

    "In a statement Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, said the company must "accelerate the pace of our transition" and that he remained confident that Nokia would have Windows Phone handsets out this year."

    What makes Stephen Elop, so sure that I would trade my E72 running Symbian S60v3 for a Window's phone? No thanks Nokia, looks like my next phone will be running Android, maybe on an HTC handset, since Nokia won't be supplying Android.

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