

Moody's downgrades Nokia to near-junk status - chrisaycock
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/moodys_downgrade_nokia_junk/

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cowkingdeluxe
Why should any credence be given to Moody's when they were the same group of
people who were rating subprime mortgages as AAA. In my mind, they lost their
credibility as a ratings agency.

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ticks
Whenever I look at a story about Moody's, S&P and so on, there's almost always
two types of comments: people who are threatened by their decisions (and
discredit them) and people who feel vindicated (and think the decision is
great). I don't know what to believe, but I would hope that these entities are
less subordinate these days.

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jordanb
For me, I think the ratings agencies are useless because most of their ratings
are stating the obvious after the fact. What use would a weather man be who
tells you that it rained yesterday, but that the weather conditions tomorrow
are still under review at the present time.

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meric
If you were a public servant in charge of investing the local government's
funds, and your instructions were "invest the funds in moderately risky
investments"... What does "moderately risky" mean? It's certainly not Treasury
bonds. You think, say, investing in basket of stocks in the NASDAQ is
moderately risky, but are you really sure that's what your superiors want, are
you really that sure of your opinion to bet your job on it? Or would you
invest in asset X because Moody said it was moderately risky?

Did _everyone_ know Nokia is junk before Moody downgraded it? The after-the-
fact rating at least ensures everyone who matters knows it.

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polynomial
1\. Never fight a land war in Asia.

2\. Never enter into a mobile partnership with Microsoft.

[http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-
prev...](http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-
strategic-mobile-partners/)

~~~
Zhenya
3\. Never invade Russia in the winter?

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jagjit
This downgrade is just based on Nokia's current performance which is going to
continue to be bad for a couple of quarters.

But their balance sheet is solid and looks like the Nokia Lumia 900 phones are
getting very good reviews and selling well: [http://www.amazon.com/Best-
Sellers-Cell-Phones-Accessories-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Cell-
Phones-Accessories-Service-Plans/zgbs/wireless/2407747011/)

I played with my wife's lumia 710 and it beats iphone in ease of use. If these
phones sell well, which they seem to be doing, developers and apps will come
too.

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gjulianm
Totally agree. Way too much people thinks changes happen instantly. Nokia did
not adapt to the iPhone-Android boom, and it's paying it now. Any movement
they do now will be reflected in performance in the next quarters, as that
lack of adaptation is reflecting now in their performance.

I think Nokia will improve significantly in terms of revenue. The new Lumias
are pretty good and are selling really well. Also, don't forget that behind
this stands Microsoft, which still has an enormous dominance in the enterprise
business, and who could push Windows Phone as the perfect complement for all
the enterprise software it is already selling (Office, Outlook, Exchange,
Lync, Windows, Windows Server...)

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radicaldreamer
I think that Microsoft will probably end up buying Nokia outright at some
point if this slide continues, especially if Google gets serious about making
it's own hardware via it's Motorola Mobility acquisition.

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rbanffy
I think this was the plan from the start and I said so from the moment Elop
was hired.

note: the downvotes are so predictable on threads like this...

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cooldeal
>I think this was the plan from the start and I said so from the moment Elop
was hired

Who's plan? Care to elaborate?

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rbanffy
Elop was hired from Microsoft where he was the head of the Office division. At
Nokia he bet the company on the success of WP7, something every specialist in
the market considered insane. Microsoft's money will not last long enough.

To be sincere, I imagined the plan was to make WP7 a success with Nokia's help
(after all, they know how to sell phones to telcos, if not to end users). Plan
B was to acquire Nokia's patent portfolio. I never had much faith in plan A.

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JonoW
Do you really think the Nokia board hired Elop without thinking about a
partnership with MS?

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rbanffy
It's called a "bacon and eggs partnership". Microsoft is the chicken, Nokia is
the pig.

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DanBC
Source article ([http://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Nokia-to-
Ba...](http://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Nokia-to-
Baa3P-3-outlook-negative--PR_243207))

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web_chops
I think the mobile landscape is going to look pretty barren in a few more
years. Just like the desktops, we seem to near the consolidation of mobile OS
market with weaker sides getting eliminated rapidly.

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peterwwillis
So should this stop someone from taking a job at Nokia?

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chrisaycock
A credit rating is a likelihood of default. In other words, Moody's believes
that Nokia has a non-negligible chance of declaring bankruptcy. These ratings
are intended for investors.

Moody's isn't passing judgement on Nokia as an employer, though you may take
into consideration the probability of getting laid-off in the next 12 months.

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stewie2
RIM should be junkier

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loverobots
Moody's is a joke. When they screw up they claim "free speech" so they can
away with it.

How's the phone for those HN-ers that have it? That is the only thing that
matters. Uncle Ballmer is loaded, he can bankroll this thing for quite a
while, make no mistake about it. 1 Million phones X $100 price drop = $100
million, or almost chump change for
<http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT+Key+Statistics> . Microsoft can take a
special charge of $1 billion for a year or two to bail Nokia out or to lower
the price so people are enticed. Will the investors say anything when you are
minting over $20 Billion a year? I doubt it.

Declare Microsoft dead at your own peril. The world is moving to doing a lot
of stuff in their phones and Microsoft is not about to roll over in their turf
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile>

