Nokia CEO ‘Stephen Elop’ didn’t think twice about admitting the
Finnish company’s “difficult Q2″ struggles, the months of April through
June proved to be an effective insight on how much the phone juggernaut
[previously] has massively declined in sales despite the successful
Lumia shipments.
The company has posted a massive net
loss of about 1.41 billion euros or 1.74 billion US dollars — more than
twice the amount that they have predicted earlier, Nokia needs to hire
new financial analysts (pun intended).
What’s even more troublesome is the fact that Nokia’s dreadful Q2 net
loss this year has been amplified by four times when compared to the
368 million euros back in 2011 of the same period — more than twice the
amount previously anticipated by their analysts. Nokia’s smartphone net
sales has also decreased by 5% (quarter by quarter) since the sales of
Symbian phones has dropped too but this does not seem to pose any signs
of concern for the company largely due to the fact that it is partially
offset by the higher Lumia net sales.
It’s not all bad news for Nokia though, Elop is still positive that
the partnership between Microsoft and his company will result into
something great despite the continuous rise of Android and iPhone sales
internationally.
Nokia has shipped about 4 million Lumia devices in Q2 alone [a 100%
growth compared to the previous period] and there are no signs of
stopping as of yet. In hopes of improving sales figures, the mobile
phone giant is poised to launch an aggressive marketing campaign for its
upcoming Windows 8 devices and by building up its reputation for
after-sales support by promising that they will still provide firmware
updates for current-gen Lumia devices — even well after the launch of
Windows 8 devices.
This is great news for current Lumia owners, Android users can only
hope for such statements unfortunately. (yes, that’s a blatant shot to
Samsung and many other OEMs out there).
It’s worth noting that Microsoft is bound to release a newer version
of its mobile OS (Windows 8) and is doing its best to increase its
mobile app portfolio. Nokia — on the other hand — is now distributing
updates (new features) for current WP7 devices and is well underway to
revamp its Lumia lineup which is said to showcase the highly-acclaimed
PureView imaging technology. We can tell that both companies can
increase their leverage in the smartphone segment even more just by
working hand-in-hand.
Let us serve you a short refresher: Android is currently the most
popular mobile platform in the world thanks to its growing application
and media marketplace. Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS still owns the most
popular phone brand with the iPhone. Analysts citing their channel
checks say the iPhone 4S
is still the most popular smartphone in many carriers worldwide — which
of course, includes both the largest players in our country (Globe and
Smart).
There is no doubt that it will be hard for Nokia and Microsoft to
increase their user base since Samsung and Apple are very strong
contenders in this segment, one of the ‘easy-er’ solutions would be
taking advantage of RIM’s declining market share (sorry RIM) by catching
Blackberry users, another is by slowly paving through Android and
Apple’s continuously rising number of users.
They [Microsoft and Nokia] need to get those developers into work
fast and release those better-spec’d Lumia phones as soon as possible if
they want a better interim report to show us early next year. Keep
those fingers crossed Nokia.
