The well respected Moody ratings agency degraded Nokia from Baa3 to Ba1. This effectively vests Nokia’s debt grade to ‘JUNK’ status.
The ratings agency states that the scale of layoffs at the Finnish company is an indication of decreased representation in various market segments, reducing research and development and narrowing it’s focus. Moodys also says that Nokia indicates negativity about it’s future prospects as increasing levels of competition in the mobile smartphone market is expected.
Trade in Nokia shares fell to their lowest levels ever, in Helsinki, on Thursday and has since recovered by around 3% to around us$2.40 on Friday.
Nokia is betting the farm on it’s Lumia range of smartphones. This range will ship with the Microsoft Windows 8 operating system for mobile devices.
