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Nokia Faces Class-Action Suit Over Windows Phone Deal
nk497 writes "Nokia has been hit with a class-action suit, with the claimant accusing the company of making 'false and misleading' statements about the ability of its deal with Microsoft to revive the struggling mobile maker. 'The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, defendants told investors that Nokia's conversion to a Windows platform would halt its deteriorating position in the smartphone market,' read a statement (PDF) from the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman and Dowd. 'It did not.'"
Whose platform is burning now, E-flop?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm going to sue for every stock I have that has lost value.
And when I'm done, I'm going to sue all the companies who didn't go up as much as I would've liked!
I'll be rich!
Historically speaking, entering any kind of business deal with Microsoft usually ends badly.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
...claims another victim.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Filed in New York by a single complainant, the class-action suit....
Surely if there is a single complainant then this should not be a class action suit?
It just proves that in America, you can sue anybody for anything.
Uh...yeah? That's the way the system works. Anyone can bring an action against anyone else and the court must hear it.
I could file paperwork with my local court saying you are a douche and that somehow harmed me. They would read through the documents and (probably pretty easily) come to the conclusion that I haven't made a case that you broke the law and/or harmed me and throw it out.
Some cases aren't as clear-cut as my example and require a judge and jury to decide.
Could you imagine if we used your model? You can't sue anybody for anything--only stuff I think is legit. That would put you in a fairly powerful position....something like 'dictator' or whatever.
The single claimant believes that there are other people that have the identical claim and it would be in Nokia and the courts interest if there was one lawsuit instead of many lawsuits.
The problem for Nokia share holders is that it appears that their CEO is getting more compensation from Microsoft than Nokia, furthering this appearance of impropriety is his decisions that appear to favor Microsoft over Nokia.
Work bio at MMWD
Eh, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.
If you look at various SEC mandated, or voluntary, disclosures from publicly traded companies, you'll almost always see something like this example from Time Warner.
Legally, distinguishing between statements of fact and 'forward looking statements' makes a difference. It's like the securities equivalent of the “These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” tag you always see on 'dietary supplements'.
So, if some optimist was given information that constituted a forward looking statement, with the usual boilerplate, about what Nokia hoped their strategy would do, they can go shove it. If Nokia outright claimed that this move would have a specific, definite effect, on their market position or stock price, Nokia may well have shoved their foot in their mouth, good and hard...
Wait, what? Nokia just released their first Windows Phones in November 2011, neither were released in the United States. At some point they released the Lumia 710 in the United States, and it sold pretty well, but it was on the smallest of the big carriers: T-Mobile. Now, Nokia has added the Lumia 900 to AT&T and it is supposedly selling pretty well (I live near a Microsoft Store, and I can honestly say that the store itself has been recently more popular than the Apple Store in the mall, but that mostly has to do with location within the mall; I have also seen a lot of people walking out with new Lumia 900 phones).
Anyway, all of this is to say that you have no idea what you are talking about when you are talking about financial reporting. Two phones are not going to save a company, and at least two bad quarters were expected. Nokia is just now getting back into the swing of things, and people looking for instant success are both naive and represent what is wrong with investors in general these days.
Otherwise, Motorola Mobility going with that "Android" platform is really proving to be a sinking ship, right? Because they've had two bad quarters too.
Learn a thing or two about corporate financial reporting.
Except that Nokia intentionally and dramatically increased this risk by killing MeeGo, which is a production quality OS which kicks the shit out of Android and Windows Phone 7.
I believe it's highly likely that Elop is acting in bad faith. However, unless a high ranking Nokia exec leaks information, I don't think there will be any tangible evidence against him.
Microsoft had a great reason to fear, and to conquer, Nokia: the Nokia N900. The N900 was arguably the best device ever: a full computer in a mobile form factor. It just needed some polishing of the user interface. Had the polishing been done, Nokia could have been on top of the smartphone market.
With the planned successors to the N900, people would no longer need separate phones and computers. They would just have their Nokia N900-successor, carrying that with them all the time. At home, or in the office, they would attach a keyboard wirelessly and plug in a screen--and there is their computer. This would have led to a revolution in the way both computers and phones are considered.
The N900 ran Linux. So the N900 was a vector for getting rid of Windows. Microsoft saw the threat, presumably, and moved to destroy it.
This is the cancer that is killing slashdot....
Not that I like borrowing phraseology from /b/, but it seems to be true. Half of slashdot these days is people yelling 'shill' at each other, and that's because people like those you mention are on here, being paid shills.
Marketers, brand managers, social networking managers, image managers, whatever you want to call them, can and will insert themselves into every aspect of human communication, exploit it for their own short term gain, and ruin it.
Bill Hicks came right out and told them to kill themselves. I would ask that first they look inside and ask themselves if being a professional liar is what they wanted to be when they grew up, you know, a complete scumbag that undermines faith in humanity. Because that's what they are, make no mistake, a drain on society and a waste of human flesh.
And if that doesn't wake them from their behaviour then, well, go watch some Bill Hicks.