Nokia Corporation ( NOK , quote ) has been losing the fight for market share against industry heavyweights Samsung ( SSNLF , quote ) and Apple ( AAPL , quote ), but it is counter-punching with three new models of its Asha portfolio of S40-based mobile phones.
The Finnish phone manufacturer will use these models to defend and expand its emerging market share.
Until recently dethroned by Samsung, Nokia sold more mobile phones than any other entity in the world. Samsung is surging in popularity, however, and Apple has called China its major growth area for the future.
Analysts put the value of Nokia's emerging market operations at about 40% of the company's worth. The new S40-based phones are intended by Nokia to increase that valuation with features such as a re-designed full-touch interface.
The new line is needed because the Lumia series has done little to help Nokia's market share or stock price. Since the Lumia 900 was introduced in early April, the stock price for Nokia has fallen about 40%, and analysts have downgraded the stock three times. The most recent analyst downgrade was a Sell rating issued by MKM Partners on May 30, 2012.
(Not all of the stock woes can be laid at Nokia's door. May market action also punished the shareholders of Samsung and Apple.)
Nokia is starting to rally however. Over the last two weeks of market action, the stock price is up. Part of the rise is attributed to reports from Reuters of a possible takeover bid from Samsung . This rumor has been dismissed by industry insiders though. The FNN video clip below describes the reaction to the rumor.
Nokia is now trading around $3 a share, with a mean analyst target price over the next year of $4.32
Samsung, Hitachi plan to set up manufacturing units in Andhra Pradesh - Times of India
According to state IT minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah, top guns of these companies, who were among the 26 CEOs that deliberated with AP chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy and the state's IT ministry at the CEO conclave held as part of the Advantage AP 2012 IT summit, evinced interest setting up shop in the state. "They were trying to enquire and find out the demand and possibility of setting up operations in the state," Lakshmaiah told newspersons here on Friday at the end of the two day IT summit .
"Electronics and hardware is a $400 billion potential by 2020 and the state government is geared up to methat challenge with the newly unveiled Electronics Hardware Policy 2012-17 . This when even the Centre is only still drafting the national Electronics Hardware Policy. We are ahead of the game and AP is an ideal destination for this sector," he explained. He also pointed out that apart from existing players like Infosys , IBM, Google, Thomson Reuters, Bosch and Hitachi Consulting showing interest in expanding their presence in the state, new players like Bell Labs, Global Logic, Allscripts , EMC, Pace and Emulex were also exploring the possibility of setting up software units in the state.
The IT minister also said that the state government had made a provision of Rs 140 crore to set up a 25-acre animation and gaming city at Raidurg as well as incubation centres in colleges across the state as well as tier-II cities like Tirupati and Vijayawada , among others.
"The state government is ready to invest Rs 50 lakh in each college that comes forth with a proposal for setting up incubation centres in their premises," Lakshmaiah said.
State government officials also said that the total turnover of the IT industry in the state had hit Rs 53,000 crore as against Rs 32,000 crore just four years ago.
Nearly 3,000 delegates and 5,000 students participated in the second edition of the two-day Advantage AP 2012 summit, according to the AP government.
Samsung, LG bet on new display to lift TV sales - Gulf News
Seoul
South Korean TV manufacturers are making billion-dollar bets on a new display technology that promises an even thinner screen and imagery of eye-popping clarity. It might prove to be a costly last gasp of innovation from an industry finding it harder to excite consumers wowed by smartphones and tablets.
Undeterred by a flop in 3-D TV and a failure of Internet-connected TVs to boost sales, Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics Inc are hoping “OLED” technology will keep them ahead. The intensely competitive business has already caused Sony’s TV business to lose money for the past eight years.
The arrival of flat-screen televisions 15 years ago was an advance in TV technology that tantalised consumers nearly as much as colour televisions in the late 1960s. The first generation of flat screens now look obese next to the most recent ultra-thin TVs. Picture quality has also made giant strides.
Article continues below
But for most consumers, such incremental changes matter less and less. Why pay for great picture clarity when good quality will do? And why pay more for a TV when smartphones and tablet computers can offer a similar function and much more?
Tight budget
When South Korean Lee Sang-hyun decided to get his first television, his priority was to find a reasonably priced TV with a screen big enough to play games. The 30-year-old office worker had a tight budget after splurging on pricey gadgets: an iPhone, an iPad and a laptop computer.
To slim down, he picked a 42-inch plasma TV without fancy features. He paid 640,000 won (Dh2,032) — less than half of the highest-end television of the same size.
Consumers such as Lee epitomise the tough challenges facing makers of high-end displays. As TVs no longer enjoy a monopoly over broadcasting moving images, consumers’ viewing habits are changing. People are spending less time watching live TV shows in the living room. Smartphones and tablet computers can stream live shows and videos on demand.
But Samsung and LG are giddy about a technological leap that they are comparing to the invention of the first colour TV in the early 1950s. Wafer-thin OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, television sets boast vivid, saturated colours and deeper contrast than the TV displays now available.
They hope the technology will let them charge more for TVs in the face of quickly eroding profit margins and heightened competition from Chinese makers.
There is at least one catch in the near term, though. As Samsung and LG are not yet prepared for mass production, people will have to spend thousands of dollars more for this new technology.
Set to hit shelves in selected European, Asian and North American markets in time for the Christmas shopping season, the 55-inch OLED TVs by Samsung and LG will cost at least $9,000. That’s more than twice as expensive as the top 55-inch model currently available.
Display of dreams
OLED “is the closest to the display of dreams,” said Lee Kyungshik, vice president of Samsung’s TV business.
Samsung’s visual display division, which makes TVs and home entertainment systems, accounted for about 17 per cent of the company’s 45.3 trillion won ($39 billion) of revenue in the first quarter. LG’s home electronics division contributed more than 40 per cent of its 12.2 trillion won of quarterly revenue.
Samsung and LG have reason to be proud of their latest achievement in display technology. Even though Sony showed off the first OLED TV in 2007 with an 11-inch screen, a bigger display never followed.
“Until the end of next year, only two companies in the world will have a capacity to make (large screen) OLED TVs: Samsung and LG,” said Jang Moon-ik, director of LG’s TV business.
The last year was tough for the entire TV industry as the European debt crisis and a slow turnaround in the US economy sapped demand for consumer electronics. The notable exceptions were smartphones and tablet computers.
Sales growth in LCD, or liquid-crystal display, televisions slowed, while sales of plasma TVs dropped. In 2011, worldwide annual TV shipments fell for the first time since 2004, according to NPD DisplaySearch.
The feeble global demand hit Sony Corp. especially hard. It lost a record $5.7 billion in 2011. It was the eighth straight year that once-trend-setting Japanese firm lost money in its mainstay TV business.
Profitability
Samsung and LG weathered the downturn in the TV industry well enough to keep cash to invest in production lines for the new display technology. They believe its profitability will not fall as quickly as LCD TVs because the technological gap is wide enough to fend off late-coming rivals.
Others disagree.
“The problem with the current business model is that it has a lot of imitators,” said Paul Gray, a director TV Electronics & Europe TV Research at DisplaySearch, in an email.
“The fact that Sony and Panasonic and AU Optronics Corp are already trying to break into OLED for large screens suggests that future margins will be severely damaged by companies trying to enter the market,” he said.
News reports last month said Sony and Panasonic are in talks to form an alliance for the OLED TV business.
For Samsung and LG, a bigger challenge may not be coming from Japanese, Chinese or Taiwanese rivals but from a shift in viewing habits.
“I just needed a TV to play games and to me the screen quality didn’t make a big difference,” said Lee, the office worker. “I would have cared more about its thinness if I were buying a computer monitor.”
He said he might consider upgrading to a new television for a better screen after a year or two. By then, OLED TVs will be more affordable but less profitable for the manufacturers.
DisplaySearch forecasts the price of a 55-inch OLED TV to decline to about $4,000 by the end of 2013 and about $1,500 by the end of 2015.
That price forecast is good news for consumers. For Samsung and LG, however, it means they will still be grappling with keeping their TV businesses sustainable.
“There are no single quick fixes,” said DisplaySearch’s Gray. "Success in the TV industry will also depend on understanding what the TV is used for in all the new interactive possibilities.”
Why Judge Posner pulled the plug on Apple v. Motorola - Fortune Tech
In a ruling sure to be widely cited, an influential jurist put his finger on the problem with Steve Jobs' threat to go "thermonuclear" on Google's Android
Apple's "rip-off" claims are right. Judge Posner's decision doesn't prove that there was no "rip-off". He just cannot see that the patents that were shown to him, and the related infringement allegations and damages theories, substantiated a "rip-off" of the illegal kind. At the most he felt that Apple might have been entitled to a limited amount of money, if it had done a better job of proving economic harm.
This is a useful paragraph because it separates the legal issues at stake from the palpable sense of injustice Steve Jobs felt when he threatened to "go thermonuclear" and told his biographer: "Our lawsuit is saying, 'Google you f***ing ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off."
There is, as Mueller put it, a "protection gap" between what Jobs clearly felt -- and many people might feel -- ought to be protected by the laws governing intellectual property rights, and what our patent and copyright systems actually protect.
What Judge Posner ruling does, more clearly than any that came before it, is delineate the limitations of those laws as they apply to this case. Among his key findings:
- Apple claimed that Motorola's Android phones "as a whole" ripped off the iPhone. But that's not against the law. As Posner wrote: "Motorola's desire to sell products that compete with the iPhone is a separate harm--and a perfectly legal one--from any harm caused by patent infringement."
- The four patents that Apple claimed Motorola infringed were, for the most part, quite narrow and could be circumvented. The judge himself suggested workarounds for three of them. (The one that remains could be a problem for the makers of Google (GOOG) Android phones in future lawsuits.)
- Even if Apple could prove infringement, its lawyers didn't do their economic homework. Perhaps they were too focused -- like Jobs -- on the fact of the rip off. Perhaps Apple is just too damned profitable. For whatever reason, the company never got around to telling the judge how much Motorola's alleged infringement of its patents cost it in past or future iPhone sales.
- Finally, the judge put a stake in the heart of Motorola's claim that it has the right to block Apple from using a patent whose chief value derives from the fact that it is part of an industry standard. As Posner puts it, in words sure to be cited in future cases: "How could it be permitted to enjoin Apple from using an invention that it contends Apple must use if it wants to make a cell phone with UMTS telecommunications capability — without which it would not be a cell phone."
In other writings, Judge Posner has made it clear that he would like to see less litigation from a patent system he describes as "dysfunctional." But as FOSS Patents' Mueller points out, Posner's ruling is "100% certain" to be appealed. Moreover, without a monetary settlement to establish the cost of patent infringement -- and thus the best reason not to infringe in the first place -- there is likely to be more litigation in the future, not less.
You can read Posner's decision in full here.
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