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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast. They went from 45% market share to 18% in China, one of their strongest and biggest markets, last year alone. This year they will probably fall way below 10%. Nokia will most likely be acquired by the end of this year or in the first half of next year (or go bankrupt otherwise).

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Microsoft won't let them go under, they need quality WP phones that aren't an afterthought to their manufacturers. Worst case scenario, if/when Nokia is on the brink of bankruptcy, MS will take it over.

There was a story recently that Microsoft already had considered taking over Nokia but walked away from the deal after looking at their books, which may mean that MS is just waiting for an opportune moment to take over Nokia on the cheap.

Nokia won't last until 2014. They are declining too fast

If the failboat called RIM has managed to stay afloat for so long, I cannot see Nokia failing any faster.

At least Nokia has (finally) released something which belongs in this time and age, while RIM still insists it will release BB OS 10 "real soonish now", like it has for the past year. Or is it years? Plural? I don't know. I just know that their current premium product is something which was hard to sell 3 years ago. They're so dead.

Where I live, the Blackberry-stores have started stocking iPhones and Samsung Android-phones just to sell something. The Nokia-stores are at least still selling Nokia-phones only.

I have no doubt that Nokia tanking is a very real possibility. But RIM is going down first. Unlike Nokia, they have absolutely nothing.

RIM still has secure enterprise messaging for large companies, something that Nokia lacks. Where I work, we still have a busy bunch of BES servers, despite making the iPhone an option for corporate phones; though the iPhone is clearly the choice for anyone getting a new phone.

Nokia has nothing like this in terms of stickiness for customers.

Just got a little worse for RIM:

"Toronto-based original device manufacturer Celestica on Monday announced that it will stop producing hardware for struggling mobile device vendor Research In Motion. Celestica stated that it will wind down manufacturing services related to BlackBerry devices over the next three to six months, and it expects restructuring charges to be less than $35 million"

http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/18/celestica-dumps-blackberry-rim...

I wonder if at the same time markets still grow at an enourmous rate, so that even a declining market share could still be a net increase? Apparently it doesn't seem to be the case for Nokia atm, just saying that market share alone is maybe insufficient.

Who are they losing marketshare to in China?

It seems to domestic Android players like Huawei and ZTE: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-07/22/content_129...

Cheaper Chinese-made brands?

Various chinese nonames? Some of those with Android already.

Samsung is king, then ZTE, then Huawei, then Apple. But, China is filled with domestic brands that pepper the market with Android phones (Honor, Huawei, Lenovo, Coolpad) that bite at mostly Nokia's well-chewed heels.

And bought by Samsung.. That would rock. Make ALL the Android phones!

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