Nokia, at their annual Capital Markets Day event, lowered their predictions for mobile phone industry volumes for the 4th quarter of 08. During this event Nokia executives outlined Nokia’s strategy, competitive product portfolio, and robust financial structure will be expected to ensure Nokia remains strong during the challenging economic future.
Since Nokia issued an update on November 14th 08, the mobile device market slowdown has continued at a more rapid pace that expected. Nokia believes the slowdown covers in varying degrees all markets, especially emerging markets.
Because of this view, Nokia has revised their Q4 08 outlook to mobile device volumes lower that first estimates at approximately 330 million devices which would result in a full year 08 mobile device volumes below previous estimates of 1.24 billion. Also Nokia believes there isn’t enough visibility in the mobile marketplace to confirm their previous estimate for Q4 08 which was expected to be up an estimated 38 percent in Q3 08.
Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks expect the mobile infrastructure, fixed infrastructure and related services market to be flat in monetary terms during 08 as compared with 07, but will continue the cost synergy target for Nokia Siemens Networks to gain the entire 2 billion Euro target of annual cost synergies by the end of 08.
Nokia targets and predictions for 09 and forward is that Nokia expects the mobile market will continue to be negatively effected by the slowdown in customer spending and expects operators and retail distributors will destock for a period which will result in lower sales for the industry in the 1st half of 09 by approximately 5 percent.
Furthermore, Nokia expect to reach the 4 billion mark of mobile subscriptions by Q1 of 09, and targets an increase in its marketshare in 09 which will include increased share in smartphones.
Nokia targets are set at, internet services EUR 40 billion by 2011, services and software net sales of EUR 2 billion or more in 2011, and services and software business to have 300 million unique services users by 2012.
Given the unprecedented environment, Nokia won’t give operating margin targets for after 2009, however Nokia key priorities for 2009 are to ensure the cost base is appropriately sized for a more challenging environment, capture growth opportunities in NAVTEQ and device enhancements, to capture value from adjacent markets, build on the momentum in services and software, mobilize consumer email and consumer instant messaging for millions of Nokia device users and to integrate and simplify Nokia’s web services user interface and device user interface.