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Nokia delays flagship E7 phone to early 2011
A customer talks with a sales representative at the Nokia flagship store in Helsinki September 29, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Bob Strong
HELSINKI |
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia has delayed the rollout of its next top-of-the-range model to next year, another blow to the cellphone maker's plans to regain ground lost to Apple and Google in the smartphone market.
Nokia said it would postpone shipping the E7 model from this month to early next year. The E7 is similar to its N8 flagship model but has a full slideout keyboard.
"To ensure the best possible user experience on the E7 we have decided to begin shipping in early 2011," a spokesman for Nokia said on Tuesday.
The N8 was also delayed this year and, after launch, Nokia admitted some of the phones had power problems.
The N8 and E7 are flagship models for the new version of Nokia's Symbian software.
"This rounds out a miserable year for Nokia with regards to getting the new generation of Symbian phones out the door," said Ben Wood, research director at British consultancy CCS Insight.
Hannu Rauhala, analyst at Pohjola Bank in Helsinki, said expectations for the E7 have likely not been very high and the news further dampens expectations. "Uncertainty over the future of high-end models is growing," said Rauhala.
A weak offering of smartphones and software problems were seen as the main reasons for Nokia replacing chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with Stephen Elop from Microsoft in September.
Nokia's last hit model at the top end of the market, the N95, was launched in 2006.
Nokia shares were 1.7 percent lower at 7.35 euros by 1215 GMT.
(Editing by Dan Lalor and David Hulmes)
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This was not the first time from this reporter. Previously he has written that the IPCom company will win Nokia 100% surely in court (before the decision) and Nokia will be banned in Germany. (IPCom lost, but he wrote the article about the decision like it won.) Before that he revealed that N8 will be delayed, again from the anonymous spokesperson. It came during the Q3 as was promised by Nokia.
Nokia was in uptrend and after this article it plunged. Is he working through the Reuters for some hedge fund which is heavily short selling NOK shares?
That is something Reuters should check out NOW. He is obviously no reporter, just a man spreading biased information to harm Nokia as much as he can.
Today’s leading Finnish business daily Kauppalehti ( meaning Business News)writes in two separate stories its own report on the same news about Nokia’s E7 delay and the cutting of 800 jobs at Nokia.
Kauppalehti writes: (quote) ” Work motivation and morale of the upper white collar staff at Nokia’s four locations in Oulu, Salo, Tampere and Espoo has been really at very low levels ever since Nokia announced its job cuts in October…. A spokesman for the workers federation said that workers were astonished by this massive jobs cut since the financial situation at Nokia was really good. He further added that there were plans to stage some demonstrations but no decisions had yet been made.”( Unquote)
Massive job cuts have been a regular feature at Nokia for some years now. The 800 job cuts now announced by Nokia today will affect white collar workers( engineers and other skilled staff) working at the Nokia Symbian platform( used in N8 and E7 phones) offices in four of Nokia’s Finnish plants including Salo. Salo has been the birth place and the cradle of Nokia mobile phones in the early 1980s. Oulu has been the centre for Nokia Networks ever since Nokia entered the mobile phones business. Espoo, a suburb of Helsinki, is the city where Nokia has its headquarters. And Tampere, another university town in south Finland, has Nokia R&D facilities.
The dismay and reaction of Finnish engineers and other technicians at Nokia’s actions can be very well understood against this historical and factual background. The delays in rolling out of the N8 and now again of the other Nokia flagship E7 is most probably more as a result of loss of motivation and loss of morale than any reported “component shortage”, which undoubtedly is adding to Nokia’s woes.
Is Nokia’s new CEO Stephen Elop really aware of Nokia’s past and its deep roots in Finnish industrial history? Is Elop on the road to Nokia’s recovery or on a downward trajectory that will lead to Nokia’s eventual downfall?
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