Nokia today updated its guidance for the fall and for 2009 to predict a significant downturn across much of the mobile space. The Finnish company continues to expect its cellphone shipments to go up along with the rest of the industry but that both its own growth and world-level business will be slower than expected. Nokia itself now expects its volume in the fall to go up a relatively modest 20 million to a total of 330 million despite the traditional end-of-year spike. The world as a whole is thus likely to move a slightly lower 1.24 billion phones versus the 1.26 billion Nokia says it has estimated earlier.

This can immediately be credited to the rapid drop in spending due to the economy as well as the "overall competitiveness" of Nokia's lineup, according to the outlook.

Guidance for 2009 will also be more severe. The company now expects the cellphone industry to ship fewer phones overall in 2009 versus 2008 as the world economic crisis continues to curb spending on phones. Such a change would reverse the historical trend of continual growth for the cellphone industry.

Nokia's new forecast follows an already difficult quarter for itself, as it lost overall marketshare and took a particularly severe blow in smartphones, where it lost share to iPhones and shipped fewer phones overall. The company has since had the opportunity to respond with its 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen phone and other new models but isn't slated to ship the 5800 to more than a few low-key markets until 2009.