From Eric Savitz at Tech Trader Daily (Part of Barron’s Online)
Can Nokia (NOK) effectively compete against the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and the onslaught of phones based on Google (GOOG) Android?
Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar this morning wonders in a brief research note if the company is at risk of an “interminable slide.” He notes that checks find the company is is paring back orders for the September quarter due to “continued share loss.”
Kumar says that volume shipments of the company’s new flagship N8 smart phone will not start until the September quarter, which he says is “even further out that the current reset expectations.” He thinks that the latest version of the company’s Symbian operating system software could be facing opposition from independent software vendors, “as applications cannot port over from the legacy environment and have to be recompiled.”
Kumar notes that component suppliers with large exposure to Nokia’s handset business include National Semiconductor (NSM) and Texas Instruments (TXN).
Kumar concludes that developers are coalescing around Apple and Android. “If Nokia sticks with its losing strategy for much longer,” he writes, “it could risk fading into irrelevance.”
NOK today is actually up 30 cents, or 3.2%, to $9.63.
