back to article Nokia still in the red in Q3 sales bloodbath

Microsoft newlywed Nokia stayed in the red with an operating loss of €71m (£62m) in its third quarter ended 30 September 2011. That's a smaller figure than the company's Q2, when Nokia lost a gigantic €487m (£425m), which CEO Stephen Elop at the time blamed on its new strategy bringing with it "ambiguity" for the firm's …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Simplez

    If you have sacked most of your workforce, aren't making very much and not selling very much, then you won't be losing as much..

    It really as as simple as that, and whilst Elop and his Microsoft cronies might by trying to spin this as a positive, Nokia are fading and fading FAST, even a Windows Phone that nobody wants will save them...

    1. Karnka
      Thumb Down

      title

      I would quite like to give a Nokia Windows Phone a go. I know a few others who feel the same way. Strange that I must be part of the '1%' or some other such bollocks like that :)

    2. dotslash

      i for one am looking forward and holding out to see these nokia windows phones to replace my desire which has been with either HTC or UPS in repair for 2 months now

      To cut a long story short, the HTC repair centre lost my phone, then claimed they had no stock to replace it, and then UPS lost the package when the repair centre eventually found a load of desires in the back room. Couple all that with the fact that HTC customer support and their repair centre don't talk to each other at all. It's been a farce to say the least.

      Bottom line #1: never use the term nobody, and in this case windows phone looks like a good OS, and nokia's hardware has always been fantastic in my experience

      Bottom line #2: never buy a HTC device, and avoid UPS at all costs.

    3. Kevil

      Personally, I am very much looking forward to a phone with WP7 and Nokias build quality. Should knock HTC into a cocked hat.

      But maybe im a lone nutter...

    4. Ilgaz

      first in history

      I come from massively mismanaged amiga and it is first time I see an entire userbase no matter for what reasons hate a company which they bought a product from. The latest scandal was the ringtone contest and it happened days ago. Funny that IT Media got tired of the soap opera and they plain ignored it.

      On amiga. We had evil enemies, conspiracists and dumb public to blame. We never attacked or hated company itself. Nokia will sure make into public relation books.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Current Smartphone range underrated

    They are really pretty good, having played with a few protos.

    Only disadvantage when compared with Apple or Android is the lack of apps (although there are still lots). Advantages are the good build quality, high spec (e.g all the bells and whistles) good/excellent cameras, good media record and playback (1080p etc), fast 3D when used.

    Shame really.

  3. Horridbloke
    Unhappy

    The logical outcome...

    2015: Nokia downsizes into a patent troll and bounces back to profitability.

  4. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    Bollocks!

    "Shares in the firm rallied more than 10 per cent to €4.9, following Nokia's Q3 announcement, its best stock exchange performance in month"

    Dammit, I was hoping they were going to tumble. Then'I'd have bought a few thousand €'s of them.

    They were less than €4 a couple of weeks ago.

    Oh, and what does this mean, from Elop "...we look forward to bringing the experience to consumers in select countries..."

    "Select"?? Anyone explain? I think it's an 'Americanism' for "We will judge who gets it, and who doesn't"

    (Like 'garnish' in the world means the opposite to the US - in Europe, it means something nice added to a plate for decoration. In US, it means money taken from your pay)

  5. Mark Jan

    N9

    Elop's medium term plan is to slowly suffocate Nokia to the point of death, then rescue it by the MS knight in shining armour coming to its rescue with a buyout for a fraction of it's worth had Nokia been managed properly. Elop's ONLY answer is Windows. He can't allow even the possibilty of any other strategy to succeed, hence restricting sales of the N9 to Timbukto and the dark side of the moon!

    It's Sendo all over again but this time there's a lot more expertise, IP and hardware for MS to gorge themselves on.

    1. John Hughes
      Flame

      People queue up for the iPhone 4s...

      People fly to Burma to buy the Nokia N9.

      (This is not a joke).

      Select fucking markets.

      1. Andus McCoatover
        Windows

        Wedge me up, and I'll post you one.

        Pink OK?

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Ilgaz
      Stop

      The image of Nokia

      I am down to S40 from S60 E71 thanks to the horribly designed charger connector -finally- completely failed. The design of Nokia (speaking as an owner) is really overrated. For example there is a dedicated button in the most handy place (between volume buttons) that does nothing but waits for voice recognition. To change its function you need to do a truly absurd thing as hacking the Symbian OS.

      There is no selection/option to lower J2ME (Java) apps volume so unless you have a serious social disturbance fan you mute their volumes if you are lucky.

      S40 (which is a dumb OS) is more easily used than Symbian S60. The people who did these horrible design choices and wasted a state of art kernel (careful:kernel not the user interface) and network stack are still there and all staring at their Visual Studio enterprise versions now.

      If you buy a Nokia Windows phone do two things. First make sure there is trial and secondly don't buy any promises when you query a missing feature. There are people who waits for Nokia Suite for Mac over 3 years now. Yes three years and counting. Company culture has no issues blatantly lying to customers or promising things that will never happen.

  7. Spearchucker Jones

    Not really.

    Many of the software guys were sent packing. That leaves some software people, and a whole herd of hardware people. The share price rise indicates that the industry sees it as positive progress. Oh, and personally, I want a Windows Phone from Nokia. My Omnia is good, but the hardware spec is getting a bit tired.

  8. januszs
    Facepalm

    It will be interesting to watch

    If Nokia and Microsoft will manage to stand up from their current knocked-down position. And Nokia obviously have quite a lot to lose yet they decided to bet on rather poorly welcomed WP7. Obviously Elop believes that the Microsoft's weight can do miracles or maybe he has something more sinister on his mind and will be happy making sure Symbian and Meego will never see the light of a day. But again it will be interesting to watch...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Toast

    Nokia are toast. This is a simple destruction of a technology company by another company. Elop is the weapon, nothing more or less. The NOK engineers are all looking for new jobs and no more engineering will come from NOK. Sad but true. They are "just another reseller" in a crowded market peddling phones based on an OS/UI that few want and no amount of marketing money will change that. Hopefully it will all bring down Balmer and his useless minions and lead to something worthwhile. It won't however save NOK which might as well become a division of MS now and save everyone from the completely futile suspense.

    That being said, I may just get an N9. It may well be the last truly interesting smartphone for some time. Personally, I like Symbian, and as far as I can see, Android is the pits - I mean it sucks so bad only a mother could love it. So maybe Maemo/Meego or whatever it actually is on the N9 will be worthwhile. It cannot possibly be worse than Andrombinoid.

    Dweeb

  10. Ilgaz

    last warning to small investors

    As I keep hearing "windows phone couldn't come earlier" no matter what your analyst says. Symbian install base has either already fled to other operating systems or like me, bought a new battery and stuck.

    Anyone claiming users of this massively customizable operating system will queue for windows phone is either clueless or malicious.

  11. alwarming

    Why does it say 14 comments when I can see only 1 ?

    How is Nokia doing Segment wise ?

    1. Ilgaz
      Mushroom

      In process of destruction

      Nokia's S40 segment is doing perfect and seems to rescue the company from chapter 11 but Elop genius started to undermine it too. They may have caused massive panic in S40 market by spitting out things like 'linux' and 'replace S40' with their horrible (and I think on purpose) PR strategy.

      If you were a J2ME developer who is struggling with the horrible developer tools and heard 'Linux' especially in the scheme of things (like Oracle) wouldn't you stop and try to figure what is going on? Personally I would.

  12. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    Couple of fuc*king muppets

    Can't get over Ballmer's grin. Reminds me of Uncle Fester....

    http://yle.fi/ecepic/archive/00438/Stephen_Elop_Steve__438112b.jpg

  13. Dave 15

    Sack the entire marketting department NOW

    Ridiculous. Nokia are producing new model after new model yet if you go into any mobile phone shop in the UK, or most of Europe, you will find at most two, but sometimes even NO Nokia smartphones available. Why? Because no one wants them. Why doesn't anyone want them/ Because no one knows they exist or what they do. The advert for the N8 (still the best camera phone you can buy - bar none) was a blind person taking pictures of a roller coaster - hardly inspiring, and it certainly doesn't give any insight to the wealth of features, applications, capabilites built in to the device, nor does it give insight to what you can add in the way of downloads. Thats before you get to the build quality, phone call capability, robustenss, battery life, screen and other advantages.

    Nokia STILL build the best smartphones, just no one knows it because the marketting department is sitting on its fat laurels expecting people to continue to buy Nokias despite the fact they can't be found in most shops out of some old fashioned brand loyalty. Apple are running rings aorund Nokia's marketting - when was the last time the BBC or even The Register report the launch of a Nokia (or Samsung, Blackberry, Sony, LG...) phone?

    When he has sacked and replaced the marketting department the 'head honcho' should also fall on his own sword - Elop anouncing to the world that S60 and Symbian was dead 2 or more years before a replacement will be available, when millions are tied up in new products being developed and launched was a blunder far in excess of anything that even the muppets in charge of the banks managed to get wrong. Small wonder he was allowed to leave Microsoft to persue other interests....

  14. Dave 15

    When I worked for MS

    They had posters showing their phone shooting down Nokia - then the only smartphone of any significance. Looks like Microsoft have succeeded with a cunning ploy of putting a puppet at the top of Nokia armed with a large knife.

    The real truth is that Nokia could have succeeded, could have beaten off both Android and iPhone. Simply all they had to do was get shot of the lazy incompetent and useless marketing department and put some people that had some get up and go in their place.

    I mean - the N8 is a FANTASTIC phone with a brilliant camera, brilliant build, brilliant phone call quality, superb applications, neat user interface and a store of bolt ons if the myriad of built in apps finally bores you (it will take some time). But how did Nokia advertise it? They had a blind guy taking photos of a roller coaster - I mean, come on what the ***** was that all about?

    I have seen films made for internal Nokia consumption showing the phone in use through out the day - it was brilliant, I have seen the wonderful feature film actually shot entirely using an N8 (and no, you can't tell it wasn't shot using a huge expensive film camera), the strange film shot of flying bugs - shot by phones attached to the bugs themselves.

    Come Nokia shareholders - get shot of Elop, get shot of the current marketting failures, put some new markettign people in place, get your wonderful products in the shops, let people know they are there and get back to number 1 in the smartphone stakes.

    And, yes, sue the BBC for its continual advertising of iPhone - it really isn't supposed to advertise and it clearly is - any balanced reporting would cover the frequent Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry launches as well as the iPhone launches, but as they don't then they are clearly biased.

  15. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    Self-Immolation.

    From the top of a burning platform?

    This is a bit like watching Col. Gadaffi being hunted down like a dog, and inevitably and predictably destroyed.

    There's not much difference in the end result.

    ( @(Dave 15 - I was interrupted typing as my N8 rang...;-) )

  16. AB
    Mushroom

    I just want to buy a 64GB N9...

    ...but as it stands I'll have to import it, if I can even find somewhere semi-reputable which is selling one.

    So Meego wasn't ready, and that's why the platform had to be set on fire? Well Meego's ready now, although you'd barely know it if you weren't paying attention. Where're the WP phones? Oh right, they're coming. Eventually. But no-one cares.

    No-one will fly to another country to pick up a WP anything, but that's exactly what people are doing for the N9, as John Hughes notes above.

    US corporate moneygrab >> beauty, form, fashion, function, Euro-centric design, bright future that sadly will never be.

    Mine's the one with the large bundle of notes burning a hole in my pocket until I can buy an N9.

    Augh.

  17. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    We need a visionary.

    There aren't many in the world. Elop's not one.

    Nokia needs to get to the point of Hoover. "I'm gonna hoover the carpet". I'd love to hear "I'll Nokia you later".

    With Elop's strange decisions, (Windows on a phone, for Chrissake!) and not letting the N9 into UK or the massive American market, I think the cheese has slid off his cracker.

    Having worked for Nokia for 12 years, and knowing the "Grunt/determination" (Sisu) of the Finns, I'm still gobsmacked that Jorma Ollilla (ex. CEO) sat back and allowed this to happen. He (Ollilla) directed Nokia to the best, greatest mobile phone company the world has seen so far. Remember, Nokia made the first ever GSM call.

    Shareholders need to get rid of Wallop, minimise the MS deal (i.e., produce A Win-phone), then sort out their relationship with Accenture (Symbian) and Intel (Meego).

    That's what I'd do if I was in charge. Which I'd like to be.

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