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

To: slacker711 who wrote (4643)	3/2/2007 9:58:31 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9255

This combination doesnt make much sense to me, but Palm is moving up 6% on these rumors.... pcadvisor.co.uk Nokia-Palm 'buyout' baffles experts iPhone's entry changes mobile landscape Stephen Lawson Recent reports that Nokia is in talks to buy Palm surprised some analysts, who nonetheless said some type of buyout might make sense and could even be a good thing for customers. According to news reports, Palm has been talking with possible suitors and Nokia has emerged as the frontrunner for an acquisition, though investors might simply take the company private. Earlier reports said Motorola wanted to buy Palm. Palm is profitable and sales are increasing, but it faces tough competition and has stumbled recently. It has sold fewer devices than analysts expected in recent quarters, in part because of delays in getting products out, said Casey Ryan of Nollenberger Capital Partners. New products from Blackberry supplier Research In Motion and other rivals have also eaten into Palm's market share, Ryan said. The whole high-end phone category is drawing many new entrants with flashy devices, including Apple with its iPhone. Palm was instrumental in creating the market for PDAs (personal digital assistants) in the 1990s but has moved with the rest of the handheld business to devices that can also be used as phones. Its Treo smartphones, which come with either the Palm OS or the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform, are now Palm's bread and butter. A Palm purchase by Nokia would mark a sharp turn for the Finnish mobile-phone giant, analysts said. Nokia is focused on the OS developed by Symbian, of which it is a major owner, and its own operating systems, Needham's Ryan said. Although it has had trouble selling its high-end phones in some areas outside Europe, such as the US, Nokia has always insisted its operating systems were better than the competition's. Bringing the Palm and Microsoft platforms into its lineup would be like Apple's chief Steve Jobs unveiling a Windows PC, he said. "To me, it would seem to be a very challenging press conference," Ryan said. Even if Nokia swallowed hard and admitted it needed Palm OS and Windows Mobile, the company would be faced with steep hurdles in corporate integration, he added.

To: slacker711 who wrote (4643)	3/4/2007 7:55:40 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9255

For those that are interested, a review of the Nokia N95.... todayon3g.co.uk The chief drawback of the handset seems to be the battery draw and the time required to acquire a GPS signal. Otherwise, this handset looks like the combines a large number of functions while still doing most of them very well. Slacker

To: slacker711 who wrote (4643)	3/6/2007 7:04:02 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9255

CDMA Handset Sales in 2006 Mobile Wireless CDMA Handset Sell-In in 2007 (Strategy Analytics) CDMA CDMA Total CDMA % of Units Share Units Total Handsets 1. LG 38.4m 22.3% 64.4m 59.6% 2. Motorola 31.1m 18.1% 217.4m 14.3% 3. Samsung 25.6m 14.9% 118.0m 21.7% 4. Nokia 17.9m 10.4% 347.5m 5.2% Others 59.0m 34.3% ? ? ------ ------ Total 172.0m 100.0% · Source: Strategy Analytics via Korea Herald and LGE (see below) Note: Strategy Analytics data excludes fixed CDMA Handsets Strategy Analytics (SA) estimated global sell-in of 1.019 billion handsets in 2066 and according to their estimates mobile wireless CDMA handsets constituted 16.9% of total sell-in while they evidently saw GSM/3GSM handset sell-in of 821 million units or 80.7% of total sell-in with the small remainder iDEN and PDC with perhaps a few AMPS/NMT, or TDMA handsets. Factoid: Operating margins were inversely proportional to CDMA market share. Coincidence? The operating margins for handset divisions of the top 6 major manufacturers summarized below are for the full 2006 year. Nokia SEricsson Samsung Motorola LG BenQ ===== ========= ======= ======== ====== ======== 15.3% 11.8% 10.0% 9.5% 1.3% Negative The Nokia View Nokia's global view was more constricted than SA (or even Gartner). They saw the following technology mix on total handset shipments of 978 million in 2006 ... Q4'06 Q3'06 Q2'06 Q1'06 ¦ CY2006 % ======= ======= ======= ======= ¦ ======== ===== GSM 203.0m 173.0m 164.0m 156.0m ¦ 696m 71.1% WCDMA 37.0m 27.0m 22.0m 19.0m ¦ 105m 10.7% CDMA 45.0m 40.0m 40.0m 36.0m ¦ 161m 16.4% iDEN 4.2m 3.0m 3.5m 2.8m ¦ 14m 1.4% PDC 0.5m 0.7m 0.9m 0.9m ¦ 3m 0.4% ------ ------ ------ ------ ¦ ------ ------ 289.7m 243.7m 230.4m 214.7m ¦ 979m 100.0% ------------------ Total GSM 3GSM (WCDMA) = 801m 81.2% Total 'cdma'(CDMA+WCDMA) = 266m 27.2% The QUALCOMM View QUALCOMM had another view and (for at least the 1st 3 quarters of the calendar year) they have the benefit of the royalty book, but it should be noted that they include CDMM WiLL handsets while the major research agencies count only mobile wireless handsets. QUALCOMM saw 198 million CDMA handsets or modem cards (mobile and WiLL) sold into channels in 2006 and they saw 98 million WCDMA handsets or modem cards sold in totaling 296 million 'cdma' units. >> LGE Leads Global CDMA Phone Market Kim Yoon-mi The Korea Herald 2007.03.06 koreaherald.co.kr LG Electronics Inc. said yesterday it topped the global CDMA handset market for two consecutive years, producing the largest number of mobile phones that are based on code division multiple access, or CDMA technology. The nation's second-largest electronics company said it secured 22.3 percent of the world's CDMA handset market in 2006, followed by Motorola with 18.1 percent, Samsung Electronics with 14.9 percent and Nokia with 10.4 percent. The data was released by the international handset market research agency Strategy Analytics. LG Electronics attributed its performance to rising demand in the U.S. market where its high-priced products such as Chocolate and EnV attract many customers. The two models are priced at over $300 in the North American region, company officials said. "Our company will continue to lead the CDMA handset market by putting more focus on music phones, which are expected to grow in the advanced markets, and mobile TV phones that have been recently introduced in the North American region," said Scott Ahn, president and CEO of LG's mobile communications business. The CDMA market makes up about 17 percent of the worldwide mobile phone market and the production of CDMA handsets amounted to 172 million units out of the total 1 billion units sold last year, according to Strategy Analytics data. Meanwhile, the GSM-based handset market accounts for 80 percent of the total market and it produced 821 million units last year, according to the data. "Although the CDMA market is much smaller than GSM market, LG will raise the production of CDMA phones because the entire handset market keeps growing," Choi Jun-hyuk, an official at LG Electronics said. LG Electronics said it will raise the target of local and global mobile phone production to 78 million units this year, up from 64 million in 2006. LG Electronics' major Korean rival, Samsung Electronics Co., which ranked third in the total global mobile phone market share after Nokia and Motorola in 2006, said it will also boost handset production this year - be it GSM-based or CDMA-based - to keep up with the rising demand in the global mobile phone market. Samsung Electronics said it will increase handset production to 130 million units from 115 million last year, focusing on premium products in order to pocket larger margins. "Out strategy in the global market is to strengthen marketing and secure larger profits by selling premium models," said Song Pyung-kwan, an official at Samsung Electronics. ### >> South Korean Handset Makers Lose Ground In Global Market Last Year english.hani.co.kr Yonhap News (Seoul) March 5, 2007 [note my corrections -- EL] South Korea's two major handset makers including Samsung Electronics Co. saw their shares in the global mobile phone market drop last year in the face of stiff competition from rival companies, a report showed Monday. According to the report by market researcher Strategy Analytics, Samsung Electronics, the world's third-largest handset maker, sold 118 million mobile phones last year, making up 11.6 percent of the global market, down from 12.6 percent a year earlier. LG Electronics Inc., the fifth largest, sold 64.4 million units during the same period with its market share slipping to 6.3 percent from the previous year's 6.7 percent, the report showed. The two South Korean firms lost ground to other competitors such as Nokia and Motorola, the No. 1 and No. 2 players. Nokia's market share inched up to 32.4 [actually 34.1%] from 32.2 percent [actually 32.4%] a year earlier, while Motorola saw its share rise to 7.4 percent [actually 21.3%] from 5.6 percent [actually 17.9%]. The market share decreases of the South Korean companies came amid concerns they are failing to unveil diverse handsets appealing to customers' needs, even in low-end brackets. The report also said Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics did not fare well in terms of the operating profit ratios last year for their handset businesses. Samsung's operating profit ratio stood at 9.7 percent last year compared to the previous year's 12.1 percent, while the corresponding figure for LG fell to 1.3 percent from 4.5 percent over the same period. Nokia saw its operating margin ratio improve to 15.6 percent from 15.1 percent. The figure for Motorola, however, edged down to 9.5 percent from 10.3 percent a year ago, the report showed. ### Comment: It was anticipated that Moto would knock Nokia out of the #4 slot in CDMA handset sales this year, but it was something of a surprise that they also knocked Samsung out of the #2 slot. - Eric -