We do not need company forecast to know that once-formidable Nokia is currently down in the dumps, however, it is kind of sad
when such gloomy doubts get confirmed. The Finnish company has officially issued a warning about its declining fortunes.
Nokia is looking towards a dismal performance for the quarter ending in June. The company says that it may not be able to post profits for the quarter. It also is not expected to meet its revenue target and its actual performance is likely to be "substantially below" its budgeted performance. The company was looking to generate 6.1 billion to 6.6 billion euro in revenue. The double whammy is that with declining sales, the company's operating margins are also likely to take a tumble. The margins were expected to be in the range of 6 percent to 9 percent.
The performance for the quarter is likely to be so dreary that the company has decided to fully scrap its annual budget citing that it is not "appropriate to provide annual targets for 2011″. Upon the announcement, the stock market gave one more jolt to the company and its stock fell 15 percent.
Nokia is getting slammed at both the fronts. While it has yet to make any splash in the smartphone segment, it is also losing its grip on low end market of the mobile handset spectrum. Nokia is clearly trying to get out of the rut. It recently announced that it would be rebranding its 'Ovi' brand and would be bringing it under Nokia umbrella. After that, it also announced that it would be putting its in-house operating system Symbian on life-support machine, favoring to work on Windows Phone 7.
Now, it increasingly looks like that Nokia is putting all its bets on WP7. The company boss Stephen Elop clearly stated, "Our teams are aligned, and we have increased confidence that we will ship our first Nokia product with Windows Phone in the fourth quarter 2011.” So, now WP7 has become crucial for the survival of two companies. Not only Nokia's fate is tied to the success of this platform, Microsoft's future also more or less depends on the performance of WP7.