Morgan Stanley’s Patrick Standaert published a note today to investors saying that the research firm surveyed 150 handset retailers in 5 European countries and found that for every Nokia N8 sold Apple sold 6 times the number of iPhones. Despite that terrible ratio, Patrick recommends people pick up Nokia’s stock because it’s incredibly undervalued. He feels that something, he doesn’t say what, will happen during the first half of 2011 and that Nokia will all of a sudden bring several “catalysts” onto the market that will reshape the dire situation of the Finnish firm. The street, slang for the opinion of those who buy and sell stocks for a living, predicts that Nokia will sell 2.5 million N8 units this quarter and 9 million total in 2011. Patrick says those numbers are far too conservative, and that users are scoring the N8 high in customer satisfaction surveys, implying that Nokia’s first Symbian^3 device may be a smash hit after all.
We’ll find out soon enough if Patrick is right on the money or completely off. Nokia is due to report their Q4 2010 financial results a little over a month after Christmas. Depending on the figures they publish, plus what the company plans to announce at Mobile World Congress in February, we’ll really only then be able to predict how they’ll do in 2011. Competition from Google and Apple isn’t slowing down and 2011 is going to be a major stepping stone in terms of both hardware advances (dual core processors and NFC) and software (Android 3.0 and iOS 5). With a new CEO at the helm, ex Microsoft Executive Stephen Elop, many are wondering what the software guru is going to do to Nokia’s fragmented operating system offerings and their thus far miserable attempt at launching compelling internet services. He’s only been in charge for a little over 2 months, so it’s going to quite some time until we’ll feel some real change.