Standard & Poor’s, the financial institution that’s been around since the 1860s and is responsible for telling the market how awesome or how worthless a company’s stock is, has announced that they’re going to keep an eye on Nokia and that they’re thinking of downgrading their rating. They blame the issues that you, me, and anyone else who even remotely follows the mobile industry know about, and that is the increasing unattractiveness of their smartphone portfolio, particularly at the high end. Nokia’s market share in the smartphone space used to hover around 40%, but as of Q4 2010 the Finnish firm themselves have estimated that it’s around 31%. We’re all expecting what Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has to say about the company’s strategy going forward on February 11th at an event in the UK. There’s some pretty wild speculation floating around that Nokia might start using Google’s Android operating system or even worse Windows Phone 7, but we don’t buy that. Nokia’s strategy is rock solid, it’s the execution that is absolutely abysmal.
Earlier today we got word of the specifications that the first MeeGo device to hit the market might pack under the hood. It’s a beast, with every bell ad whistle you can imagine, but what’s important is that inside there’s an Intel processor inside. No one has dared to switch from ARM’s line of processors that have dominated the industry since the very inception of mobile space. Taking a risk on Intel may prove worthwhile if the MeeGo operating system proves itself to be unique and interesting, and cuts all ties to the user interface models that Nokia has been using since adopting Symbian, but if this switch to Intel proves successful then expect the rest of the industry to quickly follow with their own x86 based device.
The world’s largest handset vendor needs to start stepping up their game versus telling us that they’re going to rock our world, year after year, and then letting us down, over and over again.