Nokia set to strike back at Android

Nokia reminds me of Nortel as it was imploding in the early 2000s. Nortel also had tens of thousands of employees and huge market share, albeit in a shrinking market. They were both technology standard-bearers in countries not normally known for tech, and a source of national pride.

Nortel's size and market share were always held up to justify why they remained relevant, and to argue that a recovery was perpetually just around the corner. It was hard to believe that a company which was enormously profitable just a few years back could be driven to bankruptcy so quickly through poor products and abysmal management.

Gamble,

you are so wrong. I was working for Carly at Lucent in '99. Both Lucent and Nortel was showing gigantic growth with huge sales and profits figures but it was all a ponzi scheme.

They were selling to all these CLECs and vendor financing the CLECs. That means while Nortel is selling a lot of stuff, no money is coming in because Nortel is financing all the sales itself.When the dotcom boom crashed, the CLECs run out ot capital and couldn't pay back Nortel and Lucent. Both companies have to take huge write-offs and face huge cash crunches.

Compare that to Nokia. Nokia's in its last quarter generated EUR 1 billion of free cashflow. Just for comparison, Google generated $2.35 billion in free cashflow.

Paywall... anyone got the article without it?