The company’s results have been a huge news event in Finland, but that may begin to change once the devices and services division is owned by the US software giant Microsoft. Nokia’s strategy is shifting to location services and infrastructure, and according to analysts that change is already paying dividends.
”It means that NSN profitability is getting better, that was the main surprise of the results,” said Hannu Rauhala, an analyst at Pohjola Markets. ”So the Q3 NSN result was quite good, but the guidance for Q4 was that better profitability was waiting. So the profitability was good.”
Nokia once controlled more than half the global market in mobile phones. Those days are long gone, and the company’s sales figures are now more significant for Microsoft shareholders than those holding Nokia stock.
"What the heck were they thinking?"
”The numbers of these mobile phones sales were in line with the consensus so they are just growing in line with what they guided. But for Nokia and Nokia shareholders the mobile phone sales are not so important anymore,” says Rauhala.
Meanwhile Tero Kuittinen, an analyst writing for Forbes, wondered why Nokia had sold its mobile phone business given the impressive sales figures it recorded in both feature phones and smartphones..
"Why would Nokia’s board sell the handset division at this moment?" asked Kuittinen. "What the heck were they thinking? Did they really get so scared of some potential future downturn in the handset division that they simply wanted to wash their hands of the entire industry? Many companies that have battled back from the actual brink of bankruptcy must be looking on this charade with real incredulity. A major handset vendor has decided to simply bail out of the consumer device industry with rising handset volumes, declining ASP erosion and no cash burn."
