Nokia Corporation (ADR)(NYSE:NOK) shares surged on
Monday after an analyst predicted that the phone company would benefit from a
jury verdict against Samsung Electronics in a patents dispute with Apple.
On Aug. 24, a federal court in San Jose had ruled that
Samsung infringed on Apple's patents and copied the designs of its iPhones and
iPads. It rejected Samsung’s counterclaims of having its wireless technologies
patents being infringed on by Apple and awarded the latter more than a billion
dollars in damages by the Korean handset electronics giant.
The verdict will have significant effect for Samsung,
which now has to go back to the drawing board for a re-look at the designs of
its Galaxy range of devices, which were at the core of the dispute.
This could give Nokia some breathing space in which to
gain some headway with its Windows-based smartphones it plans to launch in the
first week of September.
Nokia's position as the world's number one seller of
mobile phones was taken over by Samsung in the first quarter of 2012, when
Samsung overtook it with its smartphone range.
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The Finnish handset maker has been fighting
competition not only from Samsung but also from Apple, which with its superior
quality designs and innovative features has set new benchmarks in the market.
After junking its in-house Symbian operating software,
Nokia has decided to partner with Microsoft. However sales of the Windows-based
phones have been slower off the mark than anticipated.
The new range of Lumia, expected to be unveiled on
September 5, will be running on the new Windows 8 operating software and the
companies - Nokia and Microsoft - have big expectations from this launch.
In a research note published on Monday, Wunderlich
Securities' analyst Matthew Robison said that the $1 billion verdict and
possible punitive damages could slow or postpone Android innovation. Any damage
to Android favors Nokia's smartphone business, he wrote.
Robison also assumes that smartphone features that
were central in Apple's successful patent claims against Samsung will not be
contested by Apple on Windows Phone products, noting that Apple and Microsoft
have reached agreements on some patents.
"We believe this implies a significant positive
shift in application developer sentiment toward Windows Phone," Robison
wrote.
Shares of NOK ended higher by 5.52% to $3.25 on
Monday.
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