Nokia upgraded from a sell to a hold

Nokia’s share price has taken a tremendous beating this year, but analysts are finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.

Nomura Securities has upgraded Nokia from “reduce” to “neutral” after the company has shown increasing confidence in executing its product plan this year.

“We are upgrading Nokia to Neutral after raising our estimates to reflect a likely stronger-than expected Q3 [third quarter] and solid Q4. In addition, we expect new Windows Phone launches to feature at October 26th‘s Nokia World event and that Microsoft supported advertising will build shortly after,” Nomuraa analyst Stuart Jeffrey said.

He has however obviously not come around fully yet, showing little confidence in Windows Phone as an attractive alternative to Symbian.

“We still see a high risk that growth in Windows Phone will not offset declines in Symbian. We believe that Windows Phone might struggle to establish itself at the high end and that a sub-$200 version might take another year or more to develop,” Jeffrey suggested.

Windows Phone differentiates itself from other popular mobile operating systems by not being icon driven, and this has both been a strength and a weakness. While Windows Phone can not ride on the coat tails of the iPhone, like Android did, it did allow Microsoft to bring its differentiated UI paradigm to most of its platforms, including the Xbox 360 and Windows, with Windows Phone expecting to see a boost with the release of Windows 8 next year.

Via Sharecast.com