Nokia ships 122m phones as prices fall

Nokia today announced largely positive results for its spring quarterly results. The Finnish company says its net sales climbed by four percent to a total of $20.9 billion based largely on the back of its staple cellphone business. About 122 million phones were shipped during the three-month period, which represents a spike of about 21 percent versus the same quarter in 2007. The rush of extra devices is estimated to give Nokia about 40 percent marketshare based on a predicted 303 million cellphones shipped worldwide during the season.

The company also raised its guidance for what it expects to earn during the summer, explaining that it's "optimistic" about the sales through the summer based on its increasing emphasis on tying devices to services. World phone shipments are predicted to climb by about 10 percent for the whole year to about 1.25 billion devices.

However, the company warns that the average selling price for one of its phones dropped from the equivalent of $125 to $117. Approximately 40 percent of the drop is credited to exchange rates, though the rest is believed to stem from a shift in phone buying towards less expensive models. The trend raises concerns for Nokia's smartphone business, which normally makes up a disproportionately large amount of the handset maker's income.

The firm is nonetheless surviving in spite of difficulties affecting a number of its more immediate rivals. Sony Ericsson expects only a break-even quarter as it loses sales of mid-range and high-end phones, while Motorola may drop to fifth place without a signficantly improved high-end phone lineup. Many of these losses are commonly attributed both to Korean rivals like LG and Samsung as well as relative newcomers to the wider smartphone market, such as Apple and Research in Motion.

Filed under: iPhone, industry
Other story tags: Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson