Bad Times: Nokia Has Its Credit Rating Downgraded
For the first time ever in the history of Nokia a researcher has downgraded Nokia’s credit rating from ‘strong’ to ‘satisfactory’, stating that Symbian’s shares could fall from 15% to 0.2% over the next four years. This comes as news as Nokia is readying a whole new re-brand.
The researcher in question is Standard & Poor’s, a sub division of McGraw-Hill that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds. They have cited that “The downgrade reflects the revision of our business risk profile assessment on Nokia to ‘satisfactory’ from ‘strong,’ primarily because we expect that Nokia’s smartphone portfolio will make further significant market share losses during 2011 and 2012,”.
In the last quarter Google’s Android has overtaken the long dominating Symbian OS in terms of market share, and Nokia’s stake in the smartphone market has lowered by some 20% since Apple introduced its iPhone in 2007.*
Microsoft to the rescue?
Standard & Poor’s words have no doubt hit Nokia headquarters hard, and their words “losses during 2011 and 2012″ are something Nokia is going to have to work on. During the rest of this year Nokia have already stated that they are to hold off launching Windows Phone 7 handsets due to them offering updates on Symbian, however in 2012 they are going to have to see where their deal with Microsoft will get them.
*Via: IT Portal
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