It is a conflicting tale of two major companies, one was once the biggest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world whilst one was on the verge of bankruptcy. Fast forward in time and the roles, whilst not completely reversed are almost exactly the polar opposite.
Apple, who more than once have been close to going bust are now so successful they could stop trading for a number of years and still be solvent whilst Nokia are on a slump so deep it makes the UK economy look good.
For Nokia pre November, sales had hit rock bottom and their share price had been downgraded to junk status whilst Apple had just released the iPhone 5 and the new iPads were on the way.
Things could be about to change however.
Yesterday a deal was agreed betwee Nokia and China Mobile, the largest carrier in China for the sale of the Lumia 920T, a variant of the Windows Phone powered flagship handset. Whilst Apple is carried by China Telecom and China Unicom they were hoping to strike a deal with China Mobile too. This deal could now be delayed until after February.
This has caused ripples in the stock market as Apple shares dropped some 6.4% in New York, their biggest drop since 2008 which wiped $34.9bn from the company value – the biggest drop since 1988.
Nokia shares meanwhile rose 9.7% on the Helsinki stock exchange.
Whilst the news is good for Nokia, lets be under no illusions that there is still a massive hill to climb for them on the road to recovery whilst Apple has a very long way to go before they could be considered to be anywhere close to trouble.
source: Bloomberg
This has to be massively good news for Nokia. If China Mobile are the biggest Chinese carrier then they must be hopeful of millions of handset sales. As a bit of an old git the majority of my mobiles have been Nokias so I have a soft spot for them, I certainly don’t want them to go bust.
Nokia have been selling devices on China Mobile, Unicom and Telecom for years. This is but the latest in a long line of nokia devices available there so it wont make that much of a difference. China mobile didnt sell the iphone 4 or 4s either so hard to see where that affects stock price? oh hang on i just realised who the author was so obviously this was always going to be an apple hater post. keep up the good work simon!
I don’t think the article is particularly anti-apple but although the source is Bloomberg, lots of other sources give different explanations for the share drop. The main alternative theory is that many (including Apple executives) are selling their shares in anticipation for the increase in US Capital Gains Tax in January which has resulted in an increase in available shares which diluted the price. Intel amongst others also lost over 2% of it’s value on the same day. What’s staggering to me though is that Apple’s loss was the same as the total value of HP!