Samsung and Apple Slide Nokia. Microsoft's Windows Phone as the OS for the future?

Samsung and Apple slide The Finnish phone-maker Nokia crashed to a loss for the second quarter as its smartphone and mobile business collapsed, leaving it in third place in the sector behind Samsung and Apple, and with no clear sign of any improvement in the short term. How to Nokia recovery this situation to make it better for user Nokia?

Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft executive who took over as chief executive last September, said in a statement: "The challenges we are facing during our strategic transformation manifested in a greater than expected way in Quartal 2 2011. However, even within the quarter, I believe our actions to mitigate the impact of these challenges have started to have a positive impact on the underlying health of our business. Most importantly, we are making better-than-expected progress toward our strategic goals."

But Francisco Jeronimo, research manager for European mobile devices at the analysts IDC, warned that Nokia risks missing out on a window of opportunity as more and more people switch over to smartphones from older "featurephones": "I think it will take at least two or three quarters after the launch of Nokia Windows Phone devices before they get positive results. That takes you to March of next year. But consumers are moving to smartphones, and it will be very hard for Nokia to get them if they have just signed up to two-year contracts using an Android, iPhone or other smartphone.

Nokia needs to take quick action to develop new products or it will continue to lose ground to its rivals. The results contrast spectacularly with Apple's that Apple's mobile phone business generated almost twice the revenue of Nokia's in the same period.

Nokia's smartphones will use Microsoft's Windows Phone as the OS for its future smartphones, signalling that the Symbian OS used in its current devices will become a technological dead end.

(via Charles Arthur  and Peter Sayer )