Nokia is considered to be very "prudent" in giving
(early and accurate) guidance.
One milestone was the problem in 95 when Nokia
did not know that handsets were sitting as inventories
in the chain if delivery and suddenly faced dropping
orders, everything went haywire, also the share.
(dropped $70 to $30 in or something like that)
Additionally, if I remember right, in the middle of a
generation change of models and components..(bad..really
bad, old inventories which cannot be used nor sold)
This, as the myth goes, made everyone at Nokia extremely
aware of this thing "logistics", from allocating fab,etc
resources for components, deliveries, new model ramp-up,
debugging to how many handsets actually are taken out of
the doors of the stores, worldwide.
(additionally these things with "scale of economics",
"commonality of components","time-the-market",etc,etc)
That is, Nokia has worked hard to build the confidence that
they "know their logistics" and also that they give honest,
early guidance.
IMO that is not something Nokia would risk to lose at this
moment in time!!
(maybe worth a try if they were about to go belly up??)
My impression of their guidance was something like this:
- usually slow Q1-01 OK, but Q1-00 was exceptionally good,
so Q1-01 should not be compared only with Q1-00 (flat).
- visibility into Q3-Q4 limited due to the same reasons everyone has limited visibility.
plus
- temporary slow downs offset by higher demand after the
slow down (upgrades,campaigns,etc)
The important point being the 500-530 number for 01.
That is, I do not expect any additional "guidance" until
there actually is new information available (the question
of operator campaigns in bundled markets, ref Kallasvuo
comment)
---
The new communicator should be in stores in a couple of
weeks, I'm #1 on the list of the local store.
(Nokia need to be tough on timing this globally)
My second test will be to go some medium dark local pub,
turn the back light on max, and turn on some color
animation...
The first will be to open it an peek inside at the
compenents and strategy for manufacturing,etc.
Ilmarinen.
Well, actually the first test is the "hand test", if
somebody who really doesn't know the market importance
feels like grabbing it and holding it in their hand,
combined with the "apple" test, does the eye rest
easily on it.
Then comes the "destructive table test", how fast do other
phones disappear from the table after this one appears on
that table.. (one parameter is the euclidian distance
between handsets, side-by-side is the ultimate one) |
