The bean counters at Nomura Holdings have issued a report that says Nokia will ship just 34 million Windows Phones in all of 2013. To put that number into some perspective, during the last three months of 2011 Apple sold more than 37 million iPhones. Now yes, 34 million Windows Phones in a year is a lot better than the 2 million Windows Phones Nokia reported for Q1 2012, but still, there was once a time when Nokia managed to ship 28.3 million smartphones running Symbian in a single quarter. The report goes on to say:
“An abandoned strategy in feature phones combined with an apparent increase in competitive pressures in Windows Phone lead us to cut revenue estimates that the recent restructuring announcement does not fully offset.”
We’d like to remind you that analysts don’t have any magical powers, they’re ordinary people. Could Nomura be wrong? Absolutely, their estimate could be too conservative or it could be far too optimistic – all we know is that Microsoft just made the next few months incredibly difficult for Nokia. Prospective phone buyers are now cognizant of the fact today’s Windows Phones will not be upgradable to the next version of the platform. That will negatively impact sales as people either wait until October/November to buy a phone, or worse yet consumers decide to go with another device running a competing operating system, thus making it that much more difficult for Windows Phone to gain some ground.
When are we going to find out how bad Nokia is doing? On July 19th the Finnish handset maker is due to report their Q2 2012 financial results. People will obviously be paying attention to the number of Lumia handsets sold, but more importantly we’re going to see how fast Nokia is burning through their cash reserves. At the current rate, they’ll go bust in about two years.
Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.