For anyone who thinks that Nokia has already hit bottom, be warned: things may get worse before they get better. Reuters and BusinessWeek on Friday morning both ran some choice quotes from financial analysts and venture capitalists warning that Nokia’s turmoil is only just beginning. Among the highlights are UBS, which said Nokia would have “to significantly discount its new Microsoft Lumia products in order… to gain any traction with retailers, operators and consumers;” Canaccord Genuity, which projected “a continued sharp decline in Symbian smartphone sales…combined with a slow ramp in Windows smartphone volume;” Janardan Menon, an analyst at Liberum Capital who said that Nokia had “too much baggage in terms of cost structure and legacy operating systems” to be attractive to most buyers; and Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company who said that “if Nokia doesn’t come out of its funk within a year, Nokia is going to be finished” and that Microsoft was the only serious potential buyer. Nokia recently trimmed guidance for the current quarter when it announced that it would lay off 10,000 additional workers by the end of 2013.
Read [Reuters] Read [Business Week]
