Here at ProofTrader, we just love smartphones.  Where is Nokia in this market?  It dawned on me while sitting in first class on a recent flight for a business trip.  I looked around and saw various Androids, iPhones, a healthy selection of Blackberries and even the withering Palms.   Then there was the one guy with a Nokia phone.  He had some kind of elaborate cybernetic contraption rigged up just so that he could use his fancy headset.  Talk about behind the times!  There is absolutely no smartphone buzz in the USA around Nokia, and you can cite global units stats all you want, but everyone knows that without US smartphone buzz you are nothing.  Unless they make the bold move of announcing a new smartphone line on their earnings call, Nokia will be 6 beers in at the pier bar while the rest of the US market is frolicking with the Dolphins. 

I thought the Nokia N900 was a great innovation and I love the concept of Maemo.  However, I also loved the Turbo Grafx16 and I realize that the coolest product is not always the most successful.  Beyond my little  24-person sampling of business travelers I consider the anecdotal evidence that none of my non-business contacts use Nokia phones anymore either, whereas many years ago we all used to have them.  Non-scientific, I know, but I think the handwriting is on the wall, and the disarray in the executive offices just backs that up.  With Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T in a heated smartphone battle this Summer, it seems like Nokia is not even watching from the sidelines so much as they are struggling just to get fuzzy reception on some tin-foil-adapted bunny ears.

I am taking a short options bet on $NOK today going into earnings.  Who knows, they could surprise, and the pegger pattern is SBPPP, which is one I've never seen before, so anything could happen.  But I'm betting down before August expiration.