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Tuesday 29 January 2013

OF Windows phone OS and burgeoning Lumia sales! Is Nokia Set For A Come Back?

There was a time when Nokia was king of the mobile phone industry. A time not too long ago when one in every five mobile phones sold was a Nokia phone. That time is gone now. You see Nokia got too complacent and rested on its oars. They failed to do the most important thing required to continue to be relevant in the mobile phone industry; they failed to innovate.

They let the ball drop and they are paying dearly for it. Now the fastest selling phones belong to Apple and Google, with the former moving 48.7 million units (6 per second) in the last quarter alone, compared to Nokia which managed to sell only 6.6 million units within the same time frame.

Still we fondly remember a time when Nokia was king. A time when if you didn't have a Nokia 3310 you hadn't arrived. Remember the Nokia 1100 and N95? Those phones were rock solid! Boasting impressive battery life and durability. O jabo, ko le fo lai lai. We fondly remember a time when Snake and Bounce were the most exciting games to play on a mobile phone.

Fast forward to 2013, Nokia is struggling and Apple is the reigning king. Nokia's stock is down to $4 from $40 in the space of two years. It made a loss of $1.5 billion in 2011 and only managed to post a profit of $585 million in Q4 of 2012.

However, Nokia is taking steps for a huge come back. It recently adopted Microsoft's Windows Phones OS as its primary OS and just announced that is abandoning its in-house OS, Symbian. They confirmed that their Pureview 808 will be the last release sporting the increasingly outdated Symbian OS.
Most of you will remember the Symbian OS as the most popular mobile phone OS between 2002 and 2006 before there was iOS or Android. The decision to abandon Symbian is certainly a good one. Symbian is outdated and simply cannot compete against the likes of iOS and Android.

The switch to Windows Phone OS is already paying off. Its recent line of Lumia devices sporting the OS have been enjoying pretty good sales, accounting for two-thirds of Nokia's total sales. Hopefully as they continue to release more phones with Windows OS they'll be able to reclaim a large share of the mobile phone market they once dominated.

Nokia also recently announced that it is scraping dividend payment for the first time in 20 years. This is good news because it will aid their net cash position allowing them invest more cash into business.

With Nokia now solely reliant on Windows phone OS and burgeoning Lumia sales, we hope to see a gradual turn around for the Finnish telecom company. Fingers crossed.

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