Forget Lower Handset Sales, Nokia Drastically Lowers Revenue Forecast For Music, Maps, Media, Etc.

imageIn addition to Gartner saying today that mobile device sales fell in the third quarter, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) lowered its own expectations for the fourth quarter, saying volumes will fall below previous forecasts because of a slowdown in consumer spending. It also provided revenue projections for the overall Internet services market, which includes music, maps, media, messaging and gaming — comparing it to estimates it released in December 2007. At that time, it expected that business to total about $128 billion (EUR 100 billion) by 2010. Now, it is pushing the forecast out by a year to 2011, while also lowering expectations by 60 percent to $51 billion (EUR 40 billion).

Still, Nokia’s President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo remained positive: “2009 will be challenging for our industry, however we have a strong, enviable base to build on and I believe we will continue to strengthen our position on many fronts. Building on our operational flexibility, Nokia is acting to reduce costs appropriately in the current slowing environment. At the same time, we remain fully committed to making the investments to build the future of our exciting industry and Nokia’s continued competitiveness.” Release.

Other Q4 market and Nokia updates after the jump

— Nokia now estimates that Q4 mobile device volumes for the industry will be lower than the previous estimate of about 330 million units, which would result in full year 2008 industry mobile device volumes below the earlier estimate of 1.24 billion units.
–Because of insufficient visibility in the marketplace, Nokia can’t confirm its prior Q4 estimate for the mobile device market share, which was expected to be at the same level or slightly up from an estimated 38% in the third quarter 2008.

Other 2009 market and Nokia updates:

— 2009 mobile device sales may drop by 5 percent or more compared to 2008.
— The four billion mobile subscriptions mark is expected to be reached in the first quarter 2009.
— Despite increased competition from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), Nokia expects to increase in its market share in mobile devices in 2009 compared to 2008, including increased share in smartphones.
— Nokia expects services and software net sales of $2.6 billion (EUR 2 billion or more) in 2011.
— Nokia targets its services and software business to have 300 million unique users by 2012.

Photo Credit: Rob Gale

Comments have been disabled for this post