Nokia Shares Tanking Like It’s 1998

The uptick in value Nokia’s stock enjoyed yesterday sure was short-lived.

Though the company’s shares surged 3.3 percent to $6.31 Tuesday on news of a lucrative patent licensing deal with Apple, they ceded those gains Wednesday as investors concluded that an upfront payment and ongoing royalties from Apple aren’t a cureall for the company’s considerable challenges.

Nokia’s shares, which are down well over 40 percent this year, tumbled 4.8 percent to $5.96 Wednesday, falling below $6 for the first time in more than a decade — 13 years, to be exact.

This despite the consensus among analysts that Nokia stands to collect half a billion dollars from Apple up front and quarterly payments of upwards of $38 million after that.

Even that good news isn’t enough to brighten Nokia’s increasingly gloomy long-term picture.

As I wrote back in May, Nokia’s “burning platform” is now a full-blown conflagration. The company can’t even provide annual targets for 2011 anymore. It’s losing ground too quickly. And with its first Windows Phone 7 devices not expected at market until the fourth quarter — at the earliest — it’s likely to continue losing it for the remainder of the year.