Moody's downgrades Nokia to near-junk status Ratings agency Moody's has lowered its debt rating for Nokia to near junk status, and warned that the company is facing even tougher times ahead. In a note to investors today Moody's cut the world's largest mobile handset manufacturer's rating from Baa2 to Baa3, its lowest rating for investment grade stock. While the trigger …
Windows Phone is seriously suffering because there are no cool vendors selling them. Nokia is hurting Windows phone, not the other way around.
Really, who wants to buy a smart phone from a company who's coolest public face is Stephen Elop? It's the granny phone company.
Windows Phone 7.5 is actually really quite nice, only problem is, I would never release software into the Windows Phone App store where it's displayed side by side with "Hottest babes on your phone."
It will take another 12 - 18 months, but Nokia will come good and their share price will improve. You can't move for adverts for Windows Phone and people will warm to it as they seek a change from the tired old iOS interface and the sheer mess that Android is. How companies can release new devices with old versions on is beyond me it really is
I've not been 'able to move for WP7 adverts' for quite some time now. Posters, stickers, giant window displays, C5 sponsorship and so on. So far only the blind can have missed the WP7 push in the UK.
But I've still not seen an actual phone. Not in a users hand and the shops plastered with the adverts don't have them on display anywhere. Hell, it's no so long since a trip to TheRegister revealed fawning reviews of Nokia's folly on a near weekly basis!
Somehow I don't imaging the latest ploy of turning Windows into a massive WP8 advertising billboard will change much, how do you go past saturation coverage ;)
@ Paul Shirely,
"Somehow I don't imaging the latest ploy of turning Windows into a massive WP8 advertising billboard will change much..."
You know, I think you've hit the nail on the head perfectly there.
I think it's a dangerous game for MS to play. Win 8 CP isn't exactly going down well (I hate it, staying with Win7). If Win 8 Desktop gets a poor reputation then that might actually put people off Win Phone 8, even though the interface itself seems to be really quite good for mobiles / tablets. Customers can be very fickle like that.
Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Windows 8 is amazing. If you lack a tablet, use the desktop style you're used to instead. Windows 8 is great.
That said, when you eventually do get a Windows tablet to run it on, you'll fall in love. It's wonderful :)
P.S. - Typing this on a Windows 8 tablet.
Well, they are currently totally bound to the fate of Windows Phone. Their future is in Microsoft's hands. The lure of their admittedly good hardware engineering isn't anything like strong enough on its own to attract customers. Windows Phone shows some very decent promise, but they've got a long way to go before we're all clamouring for one.
Having read about various things Nokia over a couple of decades I'm not entirely surprised that it has sunk to this level. From the very beginning of the smartphone revolution when Nokia first acquired Symbian from Psion (yes, a looooong time ago) they started making a mess of things. It would appear from interviews with former Psion guys that Nokia just didn't understand it. I mean, consider how awesome a Psion 5 would have been had Nokia just added a phone to it and left everything else exactly as was? That was in 1998, but instead Nokia spent three years 'improving' it before finally puking up the 9210 which was, erm, worse.
My view is that Nokia is first and foremost a hardware company with no one high up who really, really understood software and its market power. They didn't see the way in which it would revolutionise mobiles as soon as the CPU power was there to support it. And they continued to do so all the way through the 2000s. All their recent software decisions have been poor, and give the impression that engineering pride is more important than commercial reality. Dented pride is nothing like as bad as corporate extinction. Ask Saab. Oh wait, you can't.
Like it or loathe it, or even loathe it a lot, and despite the mess, Android is the only money spinner available to outfits like Nokia at the moment. Even if they adopted it just for a few years it could save the company. In a weird way I think Microsoft need Nokia to adopt Android for a few years to make sure that Nokia is still there for when Windows Phone starts attracting larger sales. I mean, if Nokia don't make high spec Windows Phone mobiles, who will?
Get real! No one gives a toss how good or bad an O/S is, seriously they don't!
In the real world where average Joe and Janice live, work and play, they see a mates phone, it makes calls, had a usuable interface some good games and they're sold. They don't give two flying monkey's f**ks what the name of the manufacturer of the phone or the O/S is, they just want a usable gadget that will still be OK 12-18 months into standard 2 year sign up.
At the moment Joe and Janice only see Apple and Android. They see some celebutard in Hello waving their iPhone about and they want one. Their baby-sitter comes round with a Samsung S2, they talk, next thing another sale to Samsung/Android, that's how it works out here.
That my friend is the harsh reality of life in the real world where all the bollocks and blind faith that we techno geeks spout, makes less impact than a fly hitting the windscreen of artic truck at 60 mph.
Or Google in 5 or Microsoft, or Amazon or Facebook
Look at AOL and Yahoo! A lead doesn't mean you'll keep it.
May be Yahoo! will make a come back apple style. Who knows. 10 years ago, everyone said apple was dead. Doing OK at the moment though.
Instead of a crystal ball, you should try a magic 8 ball. Just as likely to be right.
More like push them off. Nobody, perhaps not even Elop, thought this Windows Phone switch would end well. Nokia desperately need a plan B right now, because no Microsoft phone OS has ever had any sort of useful mindshare. It's always going to be an also ran in the industry.
Sadly I suspect the plan B is to sell their smart devices business to Microsoft.
This post has been deleted by its author
It did cross my mind that this could play into Microsoft's hands quite well, rescue Nokia with some cash and you have a tight relationship with a hardware manufacturer and could maybe influence the model designs a bit more. Things get tough and you need to scale back you can cut your manufacturing partner loose.
Of course MS would never do anything like that....
When I can buy and Intel based Windows 8 Phone with full Windows and Intel WiDi and wireless charging, it'll be the best phone on the market by a huge gap.
Too bad Nokia is hopeless. They couldn't make a good looking phone if their whole company depended on it. But selling grandma phones will keep them going.
Funny how everyone talks about Nokia's smart phones which are meaningless, but no one mentions their bread and butter, the cheap shit phones no one else wants to build.
Wasn't there some kind of PR statement where Elop said their goal was 3rd place in the phone market? Doesn't really inspire confidence does it? Leaping from a burning platform to a sinking platform.
Looking forward to the multitude of I-told-you-sos on El Reg forums when Nokia finally gets Borg'd by the Microsoft cube.
Further to what King Jack says, the Carl Zeiss lenses that Nokia have always thought to be a huge selling point have always been a bit of a joke as far as I'm concerned; nobody who knows and cares about Carl Zeiss lenses is going to think that a full-automatic device with a point-and-shoot sized sensor is going to be significantly constrained by lens quality or that at the price points the devices are sold at this is anything more than a vanity labelling exercise, and people who just want to point and shoot aren't likely to have heard of Carl Zeiss.
Kodak is sad but was hardly inevitable — compare and contrast with the trajectory of Fujifilm, currently riding high on the well-received X series of enthusiast cameras.
"Further to what King Jack says, the Carl Zeiss lenses that Nokia have always thought to be a huge selling point have always been a bit of a joke as far as I'm concerned; "
Show's what you know really, Carl Zeiss optics as used by Nokia and Sony Eriksson are far superior to *any* of the competition. I have used SE and Nokia N-Series phones for a looong time now and nothing from Apple or the Android mob can compare for picture quality.
Nokia's downgrading by Moddy's actually makes me laugh. Remember this is a private company who make profits out of their "ratings". Also remember these people are part of a financial system that rewards short termism and punishes long term strategies.
So why is Nokia doing so badly ? are their phones that crap ? I have the N8 and it is no iPhone but then again I am not forced to live in a walled garden. You can read in here how the iOS is the best OS since sliced bread. Really ? I am mean honestly ?
IOS has a great front end, but it took me about 5 minutes to realise that it's all front end. I found that I had to apply security settings on an ad-hoc basis for apps. My Symbian OS can do it globally, and RIM's OS does it even better.
So why is Nokia doing so badly ? Here's a test for you, go looking for a new phone. Check websites, shops etc. You will be pushed Samsung's aggressively, then maybe you'll get pushed towards the iPhone if you talk about premium contracts etc. I had to insist that I got the N8 from Vodafone, the tw@ on the phone told me that the N-series phones were dead.
Really ? yes he said.... "but the new Samsung.... blah blah sales patter like watter blah de blah"
So why is Nokia doing so badly ? Because their rivals are spending millions in advertising and subsidies to get *their* devices out their. Simples.
The Lumia 900 has been doing better than expected in America, and once we see the WP8 devices, I'm sure sales will increase.
Obviously, they'll never reach their former monopoly, but as their devices improve, sales will increase somewhat, and their share price will be higher.
Most car makers don't go bribing their dealers to take on their phones with massive kickbacks. Apple do, in fact Apple do it big time as does Samsung.
Car analogy is actually a piss poor analogy so you get a big fat f**k off Fail for that one like.
For Windows Phone to break into the market it needs a market leading phone - if they don't get one soon they will always be known as a third rate OS.
I hoped Nokia could deliver, but unless they do soon they are likely to pul out of the phone market and where will that leave Windows Phone?
MS need this to succeed as much as Nokia do - they have both invested a lot and Windows Phone could be good, but it needs market leading hardware to show it off first - with it they could both succeed, without, I'm not sure.
I would like to see a third player in the mobile OS arena but unless they do something soon it will remain a two horse race.
When/if it can do everything Symbian can. From what I've read it's gonna take a while.
Elop must have known this right? This whole saga is starting to smell worse by the day..
Just make phones that can do tons of different things wrapped up in some lovely hardware. Not that hard is it? Nokia did it with the N8/9 already ffs, 808 just takes the biscuit on the mobile tech front too.
Phones are phones, 6310 as an example but these are converged devices. Make better, you don't need to copy apple, just skin Symbian on the quiet.
As usual management f*cked up.
They thought they were smarter than everybody elsen that common sense and cause and effect didn't matter on their rosy planet.
Incompetence and arrogance often come together and they are a deadly combination.
Nokia = game over.
The sad thing is: there were people in the company that knew better.
But how do you call the lemming that warns for the cliff ahead?
A negative element in the group.
I switched from using an iPhone for three years to a Nokia 800. It was difficult at first, being so used to iOS but after a few weeks it really began growing on me and I have been happily using it for several months now. I will probably stick with Nokia / Windows for the foreseeable future. I am seriously considering going for the 900 when it becomes available.
If you get a chance to try one for any length of time its worth doing so, the Nokia Drive app is excellent and has replaced my TOM TOM and it plays m4v files so all my DVDs ripped for my iPad work fine were as previously I had to rip separate versions for iPad 2 and iPhone 3GS. The email client works great, especially with Exchange and the Office integration is fab.
My wife has an iPhone 4S but it no longer interests me. I am surprised as I was certain I would run back to the iPhone with my tail between my legs.
I agree that Brian is probably giving an honest account of his experiences. The downvotes are probably due to the suspicion that he is one of the legions of astroturfers in the pay of Microsoft. The problem is so bad on many web forums that any post with even tacit praise of Microsoft and their products will be down-modded.
Quite sad really, but you can only blame Microsoft for such marketing tactics that seem to be backfiring.
Have you ever heard of Waggener Edstrom? There is proof they have been doing it for Microsoft for some years - http://techrights.org/2008/08/03/microsoft-press-shills/.
Now Nokia is doing something similar, to try to present "popular" support for their lumia phones: http://mobile-review.com/articles/2012/birulki-160-en.shtml
So yes, it seems that it is more than just paranoia...
"the legions of astroturfers in the pay of Microsoft"
I have a sneaking suspicion that Barry Shitpeas is in the pay of MS as a double-agent - say completely stupid things often enough, always attacking WP7, and he just might convince people that MS is doing something good. As we've seen with the plan to insert Elop at Nokia, Redmond is that cunning...
And I love your not-too-subtle astroturfing shill antics for WP7.
Admit it, Windows/Microsoft is killing Nokia, and the turd ecosystem will never achieve anything substantial. Most people are making an informed decision and consciously avoiding Windows phones.
I hope the Finns sack Stephen Elop asap. He is a parasite and a cancer to Nokia.
I had to send my HTC Desire HD off for repair at the end of last year due to a hardware fault (speaker blown) and the only backup phones I had were a G1 and a Motorola Milestone. I took the opportunity to buy a second-hand Samsung Omnia 7 for £150 on fleaBay because I had been curious about WinPho7 and almost bought into it instead of Android when I got my G1.
I figured it wasn't a bad price for a fairly new handset with no marks on it and I got it within a week. Unfortunately, coming from Android I was used to being able to set things up my way, how I wanted and customising it to suit me and WinPho7 has very little in that department. The choices you seem to end up as, "pick one of these options", with no third-party customisation. Is that a bad thing? That depends on the user and what they want really. I can see the appeal in terms of simplicity and keeping things consistent through the phone experience but it won't be for everyone.
In the end I decided that it was a pretty good phone, my first experience of of Super AMOLED left a lasting impression, and the OS was ok but that it only had the potential to be more. Right now it feels like a lot of recent games - sell the core product and then add DLC / updates later. The only difference is the OS updates are free (to date). They need more functionality to attract customers, you can't sell minimalism as a feature when people are used to having tons of choice with Android and the shiny-shiny of Apple. Yes there will be people who it will appeal to but not in massive numbers.
Nokia hardware has generally been pretty good, it's the software side that has let them down since the N95 onwards and even that was a mess in terms of options hidden in menus within menus and more menus. Nothing was intuitive. I haven't owned or used an N8 so I can't comment but I hear a lot about how it was a fantastic camera and decent UI experience. It says a lot when I'll be looking to pick up a second-hand Nokia N8 over a Lumia and WinPho.
I'm watching that stock to see if we've hit the bottom. It made a bit of a rally today. Its really cheap and if MS and Nokia keep at it I think we'll see $9 before the end of the year. The lumia 900 is a very nice product (CES award, best seller on amazon and what not) and it's price competitive. Too early to jump in but I'm watching closely.
So are you or aren't you ?
You start your post with "I'm actually long on Nokia stock", but finish it with "Too early to jump in but I'm watching closely". Sounds like either a very quick reaction to a turn in the markets, like someone having gotten cold feet over the writing of a forum post, or maybe just an enormous amount of confusion about Nokia taking its toll.
Anyway, good luck, you'll need it.
I think the ONLY people saying the Lumia is a nice product are also Nokia stockholders...
Anyone with a sane mind wouldn't be claiming ANY Windows Phone equipped handset is "nice".
This nicely sums up the problem thou, was whilst 99% of the population are calling these handsets out as being shit, and running a shit OS, there are a vocal minority of Nokia shareholders posting on forums like this, desperate to raise their stock value by making silly claims.
Osbourne shot itself in the wallet by accidentally telling customers, "Don't buy our current model, the new one will be so much better." The Nokia variant is, "Don't buy our current model, it's a dead end product. By the way; our new line will be crap for 3 generations." It'll need deep pockets to pull out of that one.
I am an avid Android user - getting a Nexus One 2 years ago from Google at the Linux Collaboration Summit, and I also have a Symbian Nokia N8 (my work phone - I am a senior engineer at Nokia), and a Series 40 C3-00 test phone. New employees in my division are getting Lumia 800 Windows phones. I have to say that I am impressed! I think MS and Nokia have done a lot very right with these phones. Are they going to be the smash hit Elop (and the rest of us) hopes? Only time will tell, but I think that new users or users upgrading from simple cell phones to smart phones will be very happy and productive with these devices.
loads of people on here spouting about it failing not being good - have you actually USED WP7 for any decent amount of time!?
I've had the Samsung Omnia 7 since the day they were released and now on the Lumia 800 - I am sticking with WP7/WP8.
Actually go and try it - you might think differently about iOS or Android!
As WP7 can't do something as basic (which all my previous PalmOS, Win6 and current iOS phones can, as well as many Android) as sync via a reliable and secure USB cable with Outlook, why should I downgrade to it?
(Plus the UI looks like it's been designed for my gradmother by Fischer-Price!)
I've been using it for some months - and it is crap. A garish interface that wastes a quarter of the screen just to show an arrow, a complete lack of flexibility and customization, lots of missing features that any other OS has, it is a complete failure.
Even if the perceived speed is nice, as soon as you realize that you have to be completely married to msft to use it, it is over. No USB mass storage, no uSD slot, no way to use properly a cloud storage other than skydrive (you can't sync photos automatically, for instance, you need to choose them by hand), a search button tied to bing, all that to force you to use only msft products.
Sorry, but my lumia has been relegated to second phone status - it is there only in case I get a call on my second number (which is from the country I lived in previously). As a "fancy" feature phone, it works. But the OS isn't really complete enough or flexible enough to be considered a smartphone OS.
Once Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8 come out Microsoft and Nokia will be laughing all the way to the bank. The ability to sync and share information seamlessly between Desktop / Laptop and the smartphone will propel them ahead of Android and provide a viable alternative to all the people on here who foam at mouth with rage every time there is another iPhone article.
Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 is going to be the key. People won't be able to buy a new computer without Windows 8 and the familiarity of the computer with the smartphones in the shops will mean people start switching back to Nokia from the likes of Apple and HTC, Samsung
As I say people don't seem to get it.
The beauty is you won't need to connect your phone. You add a bookmark on IE on Windows 8 and it appears on your Windows Phone 8 automatically. You install a Metro game on Windows 8 and it is automatically there for you on your phone for you to play. Your Documents are stored in Skydrive on the PC and suddenly they are on the phone ready for you to access. Changes on any device are seamlessly modified on the other.
It's got great potential it really has. As good as Android is Google are first and foremost an advertising company. I really don't get it you have people on here complaining about Fandbois and how Google is evil yet the same people then turn around and diss a genuine alternative to both of those companies?
"You add a bookmark on IE on Windows 8 and it appears on your Windows Phone 8 automatically."
I add a bookmark in Opera, and it appears on my Galaxy S2 immediately.
"You install a Metro game on Windows 8 and it is automatically there for you on your phone for you to play."
I install an app with Google Play and it appears on my phone after a few moments.
"Your Documents are stored in Skydrive on the PC and suddenly they are on the phone ready for you to access. Changes on any device are seamlessly modified on the other."
Dropbox.
"The ability to sync and share information seamlessly between Desktop / Laptop and the smartphone will propel them ahead of Android"
If it worked then it might help them to catch up. The words 'Microsoft' and 'Sync' don't inspire confidence though.
Anyway, Android (and I assume iPhone) already instantly syncs everything you would reasonably want to appear on your phone. My calendar's synced across a laptop, two phones and a tablet and unlike any experience with Windows syncing has never given me a minute's trouble.
They are the Microsoft ones, Apple, Android, Linux et al. They are the ones who see a rating downgrade from Moodys or S&P and go pulling their capital out of X category stock.
They are they people that believe that the definition of a good OS is the IOS. Because some flange reviewer on El Reg said so.
You don't get it.
Once Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8 come out I'll be laughing at YOU.
Here, I'll copy and paste your comment, just in case you delete it:
-----------------------------------
Posted in Moody's downgrades Nokia to near-junk status
Posted Tuesday 17th April 2012 07:19 GMT
Anonymous Coward
People don't seem to get it
Once Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8 come out Microsoft and Nokia will be laughing all the way to the bank. The ability to sync and share information seamlessly between Desktop / Laptop and the smartphone will propel them ahead of Android and provide a viable alternative to all the people on here who foam at mouth with rage every time there is another iPhone article.
Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 is going to be the key. People won't be able to buy a new computer without Windows 8 and the familiarity of the computer with the smartphones in the shops will mean people start switching back to Nokia from the likes of Apple and HTC, Samsung
-------------------------------
will miss Symbian / Nokia if they go under...
I've been a staunch nokia supporter for, oh, 15 years now and have no desire to swap (i do have an Android but reverted back to symbian as it doesn't snoop!).
The latest nokias have been cracking phones but this is an example of what happens when corporate morons with no idea get a foothold in the board room. They cant see past the bank balance.
I really want the partnership to succeed because Nokia have a history of making decent phones and it would be a real shame to see the smartphone market dominated by two Valley neighbours.
There really needs to be a third way between the arrogance of Apple's "do it Steve's way, or not at all' walled garden of smug skeuomorphs and Android's fragmented hell of interoperability that makes developers run a mile.
The problem with Android is that CE vendors use it to do 80% of the hard work, but then add very little value. Samsung just slap on a thin layer of iOS design cues and in so doing, show absolutely zero imagination.
Winpho 7 promises to be the middle ground; a reasonably tight spec with a reasonable development environment (until they inevitably change it). Trouble is, until there's a signature app, I don't think people will flock to the phone, which means developers won't either. Vicious circle.
Its downfall though is that handset makers want to own the customer, but how can they do that if Microsoft control the UI? They can only do it by adding in their own apps which are rarely what users want. Punters want Instagram, not 'Samsung Readers Hub'.
I think the Windows name is a bad move too; it has too many associations with the desktop everyone loves to hate. Maybe they should call it, I dunno, Zune.
The drop in Nokia share price might make Nokia an attractive acquisition for Microsoft.
This would make the Windows Phone and XBOX mobile platform vertically integrated, where, like Apple with their platforms, Microsoft own the complete solution. To complete this, I would suggest Microsoft might then end the licensing with other handset makers as these dilute their income.
Also, if, after being consumed by Microsoft, Nokia could sell off their legacy basic phones to Casio that would be nice. These older designs are still appreciated for their simplicity, low cost and long battery life.
> Acquiring a company with $10bn in cash is no easy job.
It's easier than you might think.
Nokia's market cap is currently a bit over $15B, so you need less than $8B to buy a controlling share.
Once you've got that share, you can decide what to do with that $10B.
IOW, if you've got strong enough credit, Nokia could buy itself for you...
Vic.
When/if Microsoft acquires Nokia, it'll be at a fire sale price.
At the rate things are going, this day will arrive quite soon.
And then it's "Mission Accomplished." for the trojan horse Elop. Ballmer must be pleased.
I, on the other hand, hope the Nokia board sacks Stephen Elop and turn things around. I hope the good Nokia brand does not end up as another OEM bitch, a notch on Microsoft's belt.
Here in Dubai, Nokia is still peddling its pre-Windows phones. Still no sight of a Lumia release. So much for that great Nokia distribution network. One sales guy suggested it was lack of Arabic availability, but Acer have a Windows phone out here, so it isn't Microsoft's fault. Could be Nokia's own apps?
Either way, pretty poor showing. Apple gets new iphones out here pretty sharpish, and prices are comparable to elsewhere, and they have the apple store online. Well over a year since Nokia announced Windows Phone switch and still they're fluffing around with bits that aren't ready yet.
Nice to hear someone pointing out Moody's, S&P et al and their role in stoking the fires of the international finance collapse, and framing their decisions about shares in that light.
While downgrading Nokia doesn't have quite the same potential to being down world capital centres, I'd say that any company which was getting paid to rubber stamp garbage as AAA probably can't be entirely trusted to make balanced judgements about anything in the other direction either.
Top marks El Reg.
Time, I think, to put Moody's (and the other rating agencies) on the junk list.
They failed spectacularly when it really mattered. Now they're just throwing their weight around, to show just how big a noise they can make.
It is ludicrous to dismiss Nokia as near-worthless. Sure, they've stumbled over the last few years, but, in a year's time, they might well be the biggest seller of Win8 phones. That might not mean as much as it once did, but it ain't peanuts.
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