At 37.9 percent, Nokia’s share of the global handset market is the largest in the industry. Odd then to learn that it is not the most profitable. And odder still to learn that that honor belongs to Apple, which has been in the handset market for just two years.
Given the havoc the econalypse has played with other industries, the smart-phone market is in extraordinarily good shape. Shipments of the devices rose 4.2 percent to 43.3 million globally compared with 41.5 million shipped in third quarter of 2008.
Nokia describes the management overhaul it’s undertaking as a common “job rotation,” but coming as it does after its lousy third-quarter financial performance and a worrisome decline in smartphone market share, it seems perhaps just a little bit more. This morning the Finnish mobile phone giant tapped Rick Simonson, currently its chief financial officer, as head of its handset division. And the company named Timo Ihamuotila, currently global head of sales, CFO.
Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says the demand for mobile devices improved in many markets during the third quarter–but you wouldn’t know it to look at the company’s earnings. This morning, Nokia posted an unexpected 559 million euro ($836 million) loss for the period, its first in a decade. Worse, its smart-phone market share declined to 35 percent from 41 percent in the previous quarter.
The world’s largest mobile phone maker has finally entered the PC market. Not a week after confirming its interest in the netbook market, Nokia leapt into it, uncrating the Booklet 3G–a 2.8-pound “mini-laptop.”
Microsoft is prepping a slimmed down version of the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system to work on so-called netbooks. Asustek is mulling a mini-laptop that runs on Google’s Android OS. Now, Nokia is looking with interest at the netbook market as well.
Now that Palm has finally realized there’s no longevity in forever shipping incremental improvements to the PalmPilot, the company has quite a future ahead of it. Never mind that it faces some particularly long, historic odds. Because according to RBC analyst Mike Abramsky, Palm has the “special sauce”–the means of orchestrating a second act, perhaps even one of Jobsian proportions.
With lousy financials, a weak platform strategy and just 4.7 percent of the global handset market, Sony Ericsson is on a long, slow march into irrelevance. Unless Bert Nordberg can turn it around. This morning the struggling handset maker tapped Nordberg, executive vice president of Ericsson, as its new president and CEO.
Reporting second-quarter earnings today, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said that the worst may be over. He had better hope so, because the world’s largest handset maker is clearly having a tough time of it. Nokia posted a gruesome 66 percent drop in profit in what the company generously described as a “tough” second quarter.
“We would love dearly to win one of the big guys, that really is the smartphone game, it really is a concentrated set of suppliers,” Intel CFO Stacy Smith told Bloomberg earlier this year. “We’re lurking behind every bush and showing them our product line.” Well, the ambushes to which Smith referred appear to have finally paid off: Intel has landed a deal to develop chips with Nokia.
The Ovi Store, Nokia’s much anticipated response to the wildly popular Apple App Store, debuted this morning–ignominiously by most accounts. Early criticisms point out the store’s paltry selection of apps, slow performance and sign-in errors, disappearing apps and a less-than-intuitive UI. Not the sort of grand opening you hope for when your smartphone market share has been tumbling, largely thanks to the growth of the iPhone and BlackBerry and their respective app stores.
Nokia is following up the voluntary redundancies it announced last month with a few involuntary ones. Its hand forced by the continued deterioration of the mobile phone market, the company said this morning that it will sack 1,700 employees.
Sack yourself now or risk being sacked by us later. That’s the choice Nokia presented to its employees today, announcing plans to offer severance packages to the first 1,000 workers who resign their posts. The resignation-for-severance deal is aimed at reducing personnel-related costs and, in the words of Hallstein Moerk, Nokia’s head of human resources, “lessening the need for involuntary redundancies.”
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
