Nokia Lumia 800 is the flagship Windows Mobile Phone for Nokia and the company has been trying hard to convince the world that everyone wants to have it. Nokia recently said that the Lumia 800 broke pre-order records in the UK and demand remains high even after the phone hit shelves.
However Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette disagrees. In a research note, he said that shipments of Nokia’s Windows Phone 7 units in the December quarter could prove disappointing.
“We believe that shipmentsof Nokia’s new Windows Phone 7 products have been lower than we had previously anticipated,” he writes. “We had expected that the company could ship as many as 2 million units into the six targeted markets for the holidays; however, we now believe that those shipments are likely to be less than 1 million for the quarter.” He adds that sell-through checks find “disappointing sales” for the Lumia so far, and that December quarter sales could be under 500,000 units.
Another analyst from Bernstein Research, Pierre Ferragu pointed out a research note that checks on Google Trends finds that the buzz level for the Lumia 800 is about on a part with the Nokia N8, the company’s top-of-the-line but poor selling smartphone a year ago. He thinks this one could be a dud, too.
“With no breakthrough innovation, we believe Nokia’s new phones are unlikely to get traction in a highly concentrated high-end,” he writes in a research note. “Second, we don’t believe Lumia phones are competitively priced. Third, we believe in economics of increasing returns for mobile ecosystems and judge rather unlikely that Windows can gain critical mass against Android and iOS. Fourth, we have seen evidences of lack of traction for the Windows operating system over the last 12 months and challenge the idea that the Nokia brand can make a meaningful difference today.”
Nokia plans to make available the Lumia 800 in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore before the end of the year with other markets such as Malaysia likely in 2012.
[Source 1]– Forbes
[Source 2]– Information Week
