Just general comparsions of the two companies.  The odd thing is that they both mirror each others situtions very closely but by some of the posters you would think one is on its way to recovery and the other has no possible shot to turn itself around.  Lets dive in shall we.

Nokia:

Once a bethemoth in the cell phone industry, in 2000 the company was sporting a marketcap north of 200 billion euros and was the largest company in Europe

Over the next decade plus, there was increasing competetion from Asian and American manufacturers in the space (especially from Samsung and Apple), nokia was late to adjust their product line to smartphones

Had a number of questionable acquistions with its biggest being Navteq for 8.1 billion dollars

As the companies fortunes turned, the Nokia was mired in losses and was burning through cash quickly

former management was thrown out, and a new CEO (american) was hired

Nokia is currently in the mist of a turnaround

Microsft investing 250 million per quarter into the company

Nokia early turnaround efforts were mared by negative feedback loops on their recent product, the lumia 900.

despite its turnaround efforts, Nokia's bonds was downgraded to junk status by all three credit rating agencies earlier this year (yet people still invest in it).

Nokia stock hit new low of $1.63

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Sony:

Once a bethemoth in the consumer electronics space.  The company sported a 150 billion dollar marketcap in 2000

Over the next decade plus, there was increasing competetion from Asian and American manufacturers in the space (especially Samsung and Apple), Sony was late to adjust their product line (TVs and cell phones)

Sales further hampered by the strong yen through the 2000's

Had a number of questionable acquistions with its biggest being its buyout of Sony Ericsson for 1.47 billion dollars

As the companies fourturns turned, the company was mired in losses and had to constantly raise money

former management was thrown out, and a new CEO was promoted

Sony is currently in the mist of a turnaround

Sony early turnaround efforts were mared by negative feedback loops on their recent product, the Playstation Vita

despite its turnaround efforts, Sony was downgraded to junk status by fitch and its ratings lower by S&P and Moody's earlier this year

Sony stock hit new low of $9.77

Now many analyst are starting to jump back into Nokia with the announcement (via facebook which is highly questionable) of sellout of its nokia lumia 920, so one product seemingly is turning the fortunes of a very large company around.  The efforts have lead to nokia shareprice doubling in the past 3 months.  The same is happening with Research in Motion.  Whats to say the same wont work for Sony?

Nokia's products are mostly based on the success of their mobile phones. Thus is their phones are selling out, that means a turnaround for the division that was losing money.

Sony has cut costs, and laid people off -- but the division that was losing money, hasn't shown any type of "success" yet.

If Sony were to say that their TV's were selling out, and their other enterprises such as digital cameras, tablets were selling out as well. It would be fair to say they were turning around.

Nokia is taking its last breaths, it's guaranteed. No one in the West evidently wants its Windows smartphones and the only market that is still allowing them to stay afloat is the third world market who still buy old-school phones en masse (you know phones that actually have physical buttons), a market where Nokia still commands a 30-40% marketshare compared to 5% in the West.

But within a couple of years the third world market will largely have transitioned to cheap smartphones (which Nokia can't provide because specs and licenses of Windows Phone doesn't allow it) which means we will witness a further decline for Nokia and imminent death.

Haven't read anything in here and all this looks like to me is fanboys extending consoles to mobile phones. So let me just go ahead and state this.

Sony financially are very unstable so when they make poor investments it is a huge deal, however I believe there phones do decent.

Microsoft are financially great so when they make a poor investment they get criticized but it's not as big of a deal. However windows phones have been gaining market and it looks like they will gain even more this year. It is a long term investment.

Now for Nokia. Nokia was once dominate, not so much anymore, however once again it looks like they are doing well for themselves with the newest Windows Phones. It is a long term investment not a 1-2 year investment. People need not shout doom ever two seconds. It gets old.

Wow.

Give windows smartphone a chance.

People said the same thing about android, oh it will never catchup to iOS.

What really killed Nokia in the smartphone race was their inability to make modern software that appealed to people, hence why they are trying to use Windows to see how that goes.

The success of windows phones and tablets will depend mainly on how or if corporation choose to integrate them into their office overer iOS.

Edited thread title. The first one was only going to cause problems.

Yes?

I guess thats the thing, Nokia was able (not yet know) to change its fortunes in a matter of 6 months with what is essentially the same product, there is nothing revolutionary about the lumia 920, its just a full feature phone with windows phone 8 decent specs and awesome camera, but its being well received in the marketplace.  Im sure given time, Sony can do the same, again it doesnt have to be revolutionary, just something that different from the accept norm and will, like nokia, come from Sony's mobile unit.

It really was given last year when Nokia made decision to go WP that their sales would pretty much die for that while until they get proper WP phones out. Why would anyone buy their Symbian phones when they know that it has no future? Why would anyone buy their WP7.5 phones that they had to rush to the market when everyone knew that a much better WP8 would come year later and that would allow better specs. Lumia 920 and 820 are the first proper phones from Nokia in long time. I think it was pretty much given that they would sell a lot better than Lumias last year. I would have bought stock last summer if I had had money.

As for Sony I really don't think that their situation is neither that bad as some make it seem. Certainly the glory days are distant memory but they are not going down. Unlike Panasonic and Sharp they actually decided to start downzising the company in 2008 by slimming their Japanese operations by 30k and international operations by same figure. TV division still loses money but a lot less than before. Film division is having a recod year and gaming division should post sizable profit during christmas quarter. Not to mention that they have highly profitable finance and insurance division that has practically kept them alive during these bad years. Unlike Panasonic and Sharp that are losing billions it seems they could end their fiscal year with profits. Doesn't seem that doomed to me.