Nokia is dying

[Asher]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10288154-94.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Nokia sales and profits dip in 2nd quarter

Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, reported Thursday that its second-quarter operating profit fell 71 percent to 427 million euros ($600 million) from 1.47 billion euros during the same quarter a year earlier.

The company also reported that sales fell about 25 percent to 9.9 billion euros in the second quarter. But sales were up 7 percent sequentially from the first quarter of 2008.

Nokia shipped 103.2 million units during the quarter, which was down about 15 percent compared with a year earlier. But shipments were up 11 percent sequentially compared with the first quarter of this year.

And the company reiterated its expectation that the entire mobile market would contract about 10 percent during 2009.

That said, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in a statement that the worst may be over.

"Competition remains intense, but demand in the overall mobile device market appears to be bottoming out," he said. "As before, we are continuing to tightly manage our operating expenses."

Nokia said that it increased its market share sequentially for global sales of mobile phones to an estimated 38 percent. And its smartphone market share grew sequentially to 41 percent.

Toward the end of the second quarter, Nokia brought its N97 smartphone to the U.S. market.

The company changed its forecast for the third quarter, and said it expects its third-quarter market share in mobile phones to remain flat sequentially. The company had expected to increase market share in the second half of the year, but now it expects market share to remain flat.

Hurry up, you arrogant *******s.

[Asher]

Can anyone tell me why this company exists?

Why do people buy their phones? I do not understand.

They're big, ugly, with hideous and limited and painful-to-develop software.

And after the NGage, who could ever take them seriously?



The continued existence of Nokia is one of the life's greatest mysteries.

[rah]

Even with profits down, that's still a lot of profit. They'll be around quite a while longer despite your obvious feelings about them. Man, I've never seen that one before. You are correct on the n-gage.

[Asher]

It was awful from every possible design standpoint. A true travesty.

The original phone's taco-shaped design was considered clumsy: to insert a game, users had to remove the phone's plastic cover and remove the battery compartment as the game slot was next to it. Another clumsy feature was the speaker and microphone being located on the side edge of the phone. This often resulted in many to describe it as if one was talking into a "taco phone"[16] or "Sidetalking", or simply that they had one very large ear, because the user held the edge of the phone against the cheek in order to talk into it. The comfort factor of lengthy calls was also called into question. Despite the criticism, it is thought that the speakers were there for a practical reason: if placed elsewhere, the screen would get in contact with the cheek and become smudged. However, almost all other cell phones have the screen against the cheek when the user is talking. Despite the questionable practicality, gamers were still unwilling to talk in such an awkward manner.

When considered from a video game point of view, the N-Gage was known for its unusual screen orientation, a vertical one as opposed to a horizontal one (which is more popular with other handhelds). The reason for this was that the underlying operating system, Series 60, did not support horizontal orientations at that time (only supported since S60v3 ). Some felt this to be a negative feature, feeling that 'unconventional' does not necessarily mean improvement. Possibly due to this screen feature, as well as the public's luke-warm reception to the device, the game library was far from extensive. Despite this, the N-Gage did manage to garner some well known franchises such as Tomb Raider, Sonic, Rayman, Red Faction, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, The Elder Scrolls, among others.

From a cell phone standpoint, the N-Gage also faced problems. Besides the unusual form factor, in the US it was initially sold primarily through specialty game outlets instead of through cell phone providers, which only called attention to its high pre-subsidy price, lack of games, and curious interface compared to other gaming devices (thanks to the Series 60 interface and unusual face button layout). Once cellphone retail outlets started carrying the phone, which didn't become a widespread practice in the US until well after the release of the N-Gage QD, it still faced problems. The N-Gage and its successor, the N-Gage QD, worked only on GSM networks, meaning that it was incompatible with the then-largest US cell service provider, Verizon Wireless, as well as all of Japan's cell networks. Where N-Gage was compatible with major cell phone networks its popularity varied. It was not well received in Canada and the UK for instance but received a much warmer reception in mainland Europe and in particular Asia where games on mobile phones were seen as much more desirable.

The original N-Gage, though, still had many benefits to developers and end-users. It had a large amount of executable RAM memory compared to Series 60 devices (the 66xx series); it had MP3 decoding in a dedicated hardware chip as Nokia 3300 (other Series 60 devices, including the N-Gage QD, rely on software decoding); it had stereo output from a mini headphone jack plug; and it could be mounted as a USB Mass Storage device on any compatible computer without requiring the Nokia PC Connect software.

Gong show. Holy ****.

[Asher]

Let's talk about their other beautiful products.

[Dinner]

Nokia used to be pretty good around ten years ago but some where they lost there way. With luck they might make their way back though they're still the world's largest phone maker even if it is mostly low end devices sold to kids and 3rd worlders. The same thing happened to Motorola; in the 80's and early 90's they were the **** which everyone wanted but slowly that slipped away.

[Asher]

Nokia's worldwide shipments are down 20% year over year in 2009.

Motorola's are down 47% YoY. Sony-Ericcsson is down 35%.

Apple is up. Samsung is down less than 1%. LG is down 7%.

Industry average is down 15%.

[SlowwHand]

I have a Samsung.

[DaShi]

What I like about Nokias is that their alarms are very loud and they used to have good free games on them. On one phone I bought, it had this great little bounce ball game that had you trying to bounce through rings while avoiding spikes and other traps. There was still one level I couldn't beat. That phone also had a flip pen-pad. I could trace chinese characters on it, and it would translate for me. That was really cool and useful while I was in China. This was all years ago though. My latest phone is a Samsung, and I'll likely not get a Nokia in the future.

[Kuciwalker]

Nokia pays my employer a lot of money.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Your employer is Finland?

[a.kitman]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Nokia_3310.png

is the reason nokia is so big

[Asher]

Your employer is Finland?

Intel IIRC? Or is it TI.

[Kuciwalker]

Your employer is Finland?

Texas Instruments.

[Asher]

TI has lots of clients. Nokia's marketshare is going to be replaced by other cell phone makers, who will undoubtedly use TI.