Investors Not Sold On Summer Smartphone Trend

imageIt’s an exciting time for the industry with a ton of next-generation smartphones hitting store shelves this summer. But it seems Wall Street is reluctant to place bets on which devices will become hits and is wary on just how companies will make money. As a result, many companies from handset makers to carriers, have yet to see their stock change dramatically.

Within a three-month period of time, consumers will have a dizzying array of phones to choose from: On Saturday, Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel started selling the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre; On June 19, AT&T (NYSE: T) will start selling the new iPhone 3G S; Today, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) started selling its flagship N97 in the U.S.; and within the next few weeks, T-Mobile USA will start selling a new Google (NSDQ: GOOG) phone. The frenzy of new phones, has led TechCrunch to appropriately coin it “the Summer of Smartphone Love.”

But investors aren’t feeling the love. It’s possible that these significant phone launches are already factored into the company’s stock price, or if they aren’t, they aren’t necessarily a big enough part of the companies’ businesses to move the stock. Either way, investors are rightfully cautious. A crystal ball could do as good of a job forecasting the winners as anyone else. After the jump, we’ll look on how stock prices have remained relatively stable over this ripe period of innovation….

Apple: While the company announced a ton of news for both its Mac and iPhone business yesterday, investors remained ho hum. The stock closed Monday at $143.85, which was down compared to Friday, but up compared to the same day a week earlier when it closed at $139.35 a share.

AT&T: Today, 10 percent of AT&T’s post-paid subscribers have an iPhone, making any innovations Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) announces critically important. The company reaffirmed its 2009 financial guidance yesterday, based on the fact that acquiring a new iPhone 3G S customer will cost the same as acquiring iPhone 3G customers. While that could be considered good news, the company’s stock closed at $24.40 yesterday, falling 16 cents from a day earlier, and 24 cents from a week earlier.

Palm: Palm is perhaps one of the most riskiest bets out there. On Saturday, the company starting selling the Palm Pre, which is based on its new WebOS operating system. With depleted resources, and few sales of the legacy products to sustain the company, the device has to be a hit. From most reports it was. Most retailers sold out of the device on Saturday and analysts suspect that nearly 50,000 Pres were sold. But the market remains wary. Yesterday, the company’s stock closed at $12.16, which was 84 cents lower than Friday, and $1.17 lower than the Monday before the device went on sale. However, in afternoon trading today, it’s up about 71 cents.

Sprint Nextel: Sprint, which is having problems retaining subscribers, has placed a major bet on the Palm Pre as the driver behind its turnaround. Sprint reported that the Palm led to record sales on Saturday, but its stock price fell yesterday to $4.96 from $5.11 on Friday. It did increase 11 cents compared a week earlier when it closed at $5. It’s 52-week high is nearly twice as much at $9.75 a share.

Photo Credit: Flickr/Facemepls

Nokia: The Nokia N97 went on sale today in the US for $700, without the help of any carriers. While this won’t necessarily represent a big portion of Nokia’s sales since the company doesn’t have a big presence in the U.S., the device nonetheless is important to Nokia as it tries to move upstream into the consumer smartphone market. You wouldn’t expect the launch to affect the company’s stock price much and it didn’t. In afternoon trading today, the stock was up 64 cents to $15.94. A week ago, it closed at $16.17.

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