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Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (2105)	9/9/1999 3:28:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Dell sells on the Web. Compaq does not. Dell sold good quality cheap. Compaq does not. Dell went for huge volume and low margins. Compaq did not. Check out Nokia. It is the Compaq of the handset world. Compaq was amazing for a decade and their early promise was "We'll never cease to amaze you". Well, they did! Nokia needs to develop a competitive advantage to carry on. Being a big hephalump isn't enough. Sure, it's great for a while. Big is often a very successful evolutionary feature. But while you are quite right about their ability to buy cheap batteries, do cheap soldering effectively and get good coloured plastic covers made, that might not be enough in the new millennium. There is serious competition happening. Check out this little company neopoint.com How big do you think it might get? Isn't that just the cutest looking phone? I am always amazed when people ask why Nokia or Motorola should buy Q! ASICs when Q is competing with them in handsets. I really, seriously do wonder how they can ask such a question. Anyone who wonders stuff like that ought to sell their shares and hold Alan Green$pan's long bonds. The answer doesn't need a long analysis or statistical guesses or technological dreams of evolutionary pathways to future discounted cash flows. It is simply because they work and work best and are cheapest for that functionality. It would be nice to use your own ASICs in your own handsets, but if the phone sounds as though it's full of click beetles, the subscribers won't want it. Sure it's worthwhile Nokia trying to develop their own ASICs, but this is not a self-contained Albanian type communist country which needs nothing but their own proletarian power. This is a modern, competitive, fast-moving technological world and the best and cheapest must be used. If you don't have it, buy it. The dog in the manger attitude to buying from competitors is the road to doom. No way was Ericy going to buy that CDMA stuff! They'd go with their own GSM. Well, look at their disaster zone now due to Lars Ramqvist's decisions on that. Yet he is now the hero and the allegedly useless new guy they put in for a year [after the muck had started to hit the fan] is turfed out. Good luck depending on Ramqvist to rescue much at all. Mqurice PS: David, I don't want to fill this thread with the deficiencies of the USA defence of freedom, but come over to the Say What You Like Thread and I'll explain. Your comment is generally true, but needs a closer look.

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (2105)	9/9/1999 7:29:00 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Yes, very sorry not to mention the Q-word. I forgot to read the thread rules! Agree that Wall Street maintains a pathetic PC-era bias, quite hilarious in the age of $299 PCs, and what's this, Sun's now going to sell you a dumb terminal for 500 bucks (good luck!)--I think by dumb client, they are talking about the buyer! I don't know why the Asian contagion has yet to attack the handset makers, but they didn't kill the PC box makers so go figure. If NOK can really maintain 20%+ margins, and if they can pull off Wall St.-style financial engineering (how difficult can that be), why can't this be a $150BB company? (Although today, rummaging through the message boards and seeing AMPD up three-fold on specious news and LUMM another 3-bagger in the past week on absolutely no news, 50 percent ain't what it used to be--how easy it is to become jaded in the age of wire and string) Certainly, Wired magazine seems to think a lot of NOK. Maybe it will take a year. PS. Maurice, if we're to make PC analogies, isn't Ericy or MOT the Compaq? NOK seems more like Sony.