Nokia (NYSE:
NOK
) is up more than four percent today after announcing that it has
sold its headquarters in Espoo, Finland for 170 million euros.
Nokia will lease back its head office building -- where it has
operated since 1997 -- after the sale is completed at the end of
the year. "We had a comprehensive sales process with both Finnish
and foreign investors and we are very pleased with this outcome,"
Timo Ihamuotila, CFO of Nokia, said in a
company release
. "As we have said before, owning real estate is not part of
Nokia's core business and when good opportunities arise we are
willing to exit these types of non-core assets. We are naturally
continuing to operate in our head office building on a long-term
basis."
Despite the ongoing challenges of competing against Apple
(NASDAQ:
AAPL
), Samsung, Research In Motion (NASDAQ:
RIMM
), HTC and other smartphone manufacturers, Nokia remains one of
the world's largest producers of cellular devices.
Year-to-date Nokia is down more than 33 percent. The company
lost more than 64 percent of its value over the last two years
and has declined more than 91 percent since December 2007. While
it may never return to the glory days of April 2000 (at which
time Nokia achieved its all-time high of $56.06), Nokia has shown
signs of a recovery. The company has risen more than 44 percent
in the last three months.
In addition to the sale of one of its most important assets,
Nokia has announced that it will release a third Windows Phone 8
device -- the Lumia 620. The lower-priced device will retail for
$249 and will come in a variety of colors, including lime green,
orange, magenta, yellow, cyan, white and black. Nokia has yet to
announce if any of the colors will be limited to a specific
region.
The Lumia 620 will use a new dual-shot color technique that
allows Nokia to add a second layer of colored, transparent or
translucent polycarbonate on top of a base layer "to produce
secondary color blends and depth effects." The smartphone will
also feature seven different exchangeable shells.
As a cheaper device, the Lumia 620 is limited to a 1 Ghz
dual-core processor from Qualcomm (NASDAQ:
QCOM
), a 3.8-inch TFT WVGA display (with 800x480 resolution), a 5MP
rear-facing camera and 8GB of storage space. Users can pop in a
Micro SD card to add an additional 64GB.
The Lumia 620 is expected to ship in Asia next month, followed
by a rollout in Europe and the Middle East before arriving in
other territories.
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