Just one week ago, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) said that it would be delaying shipment of its long-awaited N8 smartphone due to some unspecified fixes that still needed to be completed. The N8 is still months late, and even though the phone is shipping now, early customers won’t actually receive the phones until early October.
The N8 is Nokia’s entry in the high-end battle currently being waged by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). Nokia’s new phone uses a new version of its venerable Symbian operating system, Symbian 3. The upgrade to Symbian 3 is believed to be partly responsible for the delay in shipments of the N8.
Nokia has said that it has signed up 100 wireless operators to sell the N8, and the new smartphone has gotten more pre-orders than any other consumer product in Nokia history.
Of course those pre-orders could just be back-up resulting from the long delay in shipping the new phone. And it is difficult to imagine that Nokia has attracted many apps developers to the Symbian operating system, which has a reputation as being hard to work with.
It’s not hard to imagine that Nokia’s N8 will face the same ho-hum reception given to the Blackberry Torch, recently released by Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM). The N8 has too little differentiation from the market leading phones and is way too late to market. It’s a deadly combination for a company playing catch-up.
Since the beginning of the year, Nokia has received 15 ratings actions according to Yahoo Finance. Of those, seven are positive, five are neutral, and just three are negative. These ratings are likely the result of analysts counting on Nokia to hold onto its market-leading share position, getting only a minor bump one way or the other from the N8. The company’s mean price target is $11.39/share, well below Nokia’s 52-week high of $15.89, and a price the shares left behind in early May.
Nokia does have a couple of tricks left though. First is its E7, a touch screen smartphone with a full keyboard that could run the company’s new Meego operating system developed jointly with Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC). The company was also working on another upgrade to Symbian, called Symbian 4, which the company once planned to release in 2011.
The company’s new CEO has some tough decisions ahead, which are made harder by the fact that whatever he does he will inevitably step on someone’s toes. In Nokia’s insulated corporate culture, people who get their toes stepped on usually don’t yell, choosing instead to sulk. The next few months could tell the story.
5 Small Caps with 10-Bagger Potential. Small, innovative companies are watching their earnings explode — and they are the next ten-baggers. Investing pro Louis Navellier reveals his secrets to identifying these small cap innovators, plus five of his favorite small cap stocks — download your FREE profit guide here.
