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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

NOKIA: PHONES ASSIGNED TO MICROSOFT

Nokia shareholders are asked to vote on Tuesday November 19 in Helsinki, the sale of the mobile phones division in the American Microsoft, which must give the Finnish group on the path to profitability .

Expected at an extraordinary general meeting which opens 14 hours in the Finnish capital , the vote is little doubt. Shareholders should close this chapter in the history of Nokia, with probably the feeling of shooting a good price for the transaction. The creator of Windows has agreed to pay 5.44 billion euros .

To the shareholders of Nokia, this is a good price because this activity generated losses , and that Nokia had become too small to revive , "said Eric Beaudet, analyst at Natixis bank .

" This is an excellent transaction. Could not imagine a better price for a division experiencing structural losses , which could be valued at -5 billion ," added Pierre Ferragu , an analyst at Sanford Bernstein broker .

The sale must take place in early 2014. Nokia, the world leader in mobile phones before surrendering in 2012 his place in South Korean Samsung, will become a telecom equipment without consumer product . This will be the disappearance of a brand that has seen a dramatic decline since the advent of the Apple iPhone in 2007.

" They would have 10% of the smartphone market to be profitable "

According to Eric Beaudet, " Nokia has good products , but it is not enough. Their problem is a fixed cost structure too high , which it would take 10 % of the global smartphone market to be profitable. Here they are less than half . "

According to Gartner , Nokia is now number 8 on this market. On all mobile phones, it is number two with 13.8% market share in the third quarter , far behind Samsung (25.7%) and far ahead of Apple ( 6.7%).

Tuesday is the last opportunity for discontented discuss successive failures of the Finnish group in phones shareholders. Their origin goes way back now , as explained by the former CEO Jorma Ollila in an autobiography published in October . According to him, Nokia was well on the smartphone market at the time when it was in its infancy in 2004-2005 , but when he took off in 2007-2008 , its products were not up to par.

In 2011, a general manager hired at Microsoft, Stephen Elop , has chosen to partner with the American group . It does not pay. Stephen Elop, who resigned in September, the day the sale of phones Microsoft was announced, is the target of resentment in Finland.

Tuesday in Helsinki, " there will certainly be some noise from those who are dissatisfied with the Elop strategy. They should repeat . It does not reflect the opinion of the majority of shareholders," anticipates Pierre Ferragu .

The majority today that Nokia expects to return to sustainable profit , after losing 1.2 billion euros in 2011, 3.1 billion in 2012 and 590 million in the first nine months of 2013. Microsoft will in turn solve a puzzle : the Lumia brand profitable . Sitting on more than $ 80 billion of reserves, it has the means to invest considerable sums.

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