Does Nokia Corporation (NOK) Have A Good Future?

Opportunities

One of the opportunities for Nokia is to expand into the tablet market. The overall sales of tablets have increased significantly in recent years dominated, again, by Apple and Android. Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO, recently revealed that he is looking to get into the tablets market with Microsoft’s OS being the first preference.

However, Elop also stated that the company will consider alternatives as well even, although, a Windows 8 tablet would go perfectly with a Lumia smartphone. Apple has already been successful with its 5 different iPad models and Nokia can succeed as well. However, it could still fail if it follows BlackBerry’s mistakes which led to the failure of the BB Playbook.

Another opportunity for Nokia could be to release a new line of smartphones with a totally new OS. It is highly unlikely that Nokia releases its own Operating System for a premium line of smartphones but who knows if it can create a new partnership with Google for premium Nokia-Android smartphones as Elop didn’t rule out a possibility of a Nokia-Android tablet.

Threats

In an apples to apples comparison, Nokia currently faces competition from Samsung’s Ativ smartphone series along with HTC’s WP8 devices. In the smartphones industry, as a whole, Nokia faces competition from Apple, BlackBerry 10 and all the Android manufacturers including Samsung and Sony.

Even though Nokia targets different types of consumers with different budgets, a serious threat could be Apple’s rumored upcoming “Budget iPhone.” If Apple releases a cheap iPhone in the near future, Nokia’s low-end smartphone share could fall down.

The BlackBerry 10 devices could also cause problems for Nokia’s market share as both companies are struggling to get back into the smartphones industry with significant market share. The Lumia 920 competes with Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S3, however, Samsung Galaxy S4 is rumored to be right around the corner and Nokia needs to release another device in order to stay competitive.

Bottom Line

Nokia was left far behind by Apple and Android and the question, back then, was whether or not Nokia would be able to catch up with the latest smartphones. With the latest Lumia 920, Nokia certainly played catch up with the industry giants, however, now the question is whether Nokia will be able to compete with Apple and Android after catching up to them. Nokia’s Lumia sales have been booming but we’ll have to wait and see if Nokia can release more competitive devices in order to compete with Apple, BlackBerry and Android’s latest offerings.

The article Does Nokia Have A Good Future? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Yasir Idrees.

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