Nokia just blew its first quarter earnings, in part because sales of its new iPhone-killer, the Lumia, have been "mixed."  That's bad. But here's what's worse.

The company is burning cash at a mind-boggling rate, and it's about to run into a cash crunch.

Nokia still has €4.9 billion of "net cash" on its balance sheet (cash less debt) and €9.8 billion of total cash. That's a lot. But in the past year, Nokia has gone from comfortably making money to losing a lot of it.

In the past year, Nokia has burned €1.5 billion. In the past quarter, it burned a staggering €700 million. At the first quarter's burn rate, Nokia would blow through its net cash in 7 quarters (less than two years) and its total cash in four years.

The cash situation has gotten dire enough that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is already talking about the need to conserve it. When a company that knows it needs to be super-aggressive to have any chance of saving itself starts talking about the need to conserve cash, you know there's a problem.

沪江英语快讯:昔日的手机行业龙头诺基亚(Nokia)近日发布了2012年第一季度财报。财报显示,第一财季,诺基亚净亏损9.29亿欧元(约合人民币77亿元)。在苹果、安卓和三星的夹击下,诺基亚正在失去其手机业老大的宝座。更糟糕的是,有分析人士指出,诺基亚正在以令人难以置信的速度烧钱,过去一年中诺基亚总共烧钱15亿欧元(约合20亿美元),单是上个季度就烧钱7亿欧元(约合9亿美元)。因此,如果诺基亚按照这个速度烧钱的话,不到两年时间,其98亿欧元的现金总额将被耗尽!但是,诺基亚也不是省油的灯,在移动领域竞争白热化的时候,它选择了与软件业巨头微软合作,希望强强联手可以创造奇迹!你认为诺基亚还有未来吗?参与讨论,请点此前往>>