New Nokia phone fails to turn tide

Nokia’s long-awaited Windows phones may be too little, too late in the smartphone war dominated by Apple and Google, despite positive reviews by handset critics.

Its first Windows model, the Lumia 800, has won little interest from consumers, with only 2 percent of Europeans in the market for a smartphone saying they would pick it, according to a survey by Exane BNP Paribas.

Analysts said there was nothing particularly wrong with the sleek-looking handsets, other than a software glitch on some models affecting battery life, but consumers were just not biting.

Smartphones using Microsoft software have just a 2 percent market share, compared with Google Android at around 50 percent and Apple at 15-20 percent. “There isn’t much room left for a third ecosystem. The smartphone market is consolidating fast,” said Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu who rates Nokia a “sell.”

Nokia’s shares have fallen over 20 percent since the Oct. 26 launch of the new phone, with investors fearing Nokia would be unable to claw back the market share it has lost in the past several years to rivals like Apple.

Phones using Nokia’s old Symbian software, which it decided to dump in favor of Microsoft, are still in circulation and outsell Windows phones 10 to 1.

But as Nokia keeps shifting to Windows, sales of Symbian have a lot of room to disappoint over coming quarters and some analysts are warning of lower dividends and weaker-than-expected earnings ahead.

Now even Microsoft has started to hedge its bets, making its software increasingly available for rivals to Windows Phone.

Smartphones are built on mobile computing platforms, and the most modern combine web browsers, navigation systems, cameras and portable music systems. A so-called “feature” phone ― a market Nokia still dominates ― has far fewer of these applications. 

(Bloomberg)