Nokia Predicts Fall in Q1 Sales

Even as the latest Gartner research shows a decline in worldwide sales of
wireless phones 2001, market leader Nokia said it remained on track to meet
or exceed first quarter profit targets this year.

Nokia, which
strengthened its worldwide sales lead over Motorola, Siemens and Samsung
however said first quarter sales will fall more than expected.

“Net sales for the first quarter are expected to be slightly lower than
anticipated, but higher than expected profitability is being driven by
Nokia’s core strengths,” the Finland cell phone maker said in a statement.

The company did not provide outlook for first quarter sales this year.
Sales had been projected to slip by 6 to 10 percent in the quarter.

The Nokia news comes as new research from tech consultants Gartner Dataquest
show a drop in worldwide cell phone sales for the first time ever. Gartner
said the dip in sales come at a time when wireless carriers have reduced
subsidies for new phones and consumers have held off on upgrades.

The study, which also found that sales of GPRS terminals were well below
expectations, said sales of mobile phones worldwide totaled just under 400
million in 2001. This compares to a compound annual growth rate of close to
60 percent between 1996 and 2000, according to Gartner.

Separately, Nokia and Norwegian tech firm Opera Software announced at the
CeBIT computer show that a full-functioning version the Opera Web browser
would be included on the 9210i mobile phone.

Other Nokia announcement from CeBIT include:

The RealOne Player, with support for 3GPP media formats (RealAudio and
RealVideo) would be included as a standard feature on the Nokia Series 60
Platform. It said Nokia Networks would provide integrated media software to
mobile operators as a reseller of RealSystem Mobile, RealNetworks’
standards-based media delivery platform.

Nokie said the new features of the www-browser includes HTML 4.01
compatibility, JavaScript support, and Cascade Style Sheet.