New Nokia sales warning
NOKIA, the world's largest supplier of mobile phones, today sounded its second sales warning in a fortnight after fierce pricing competition from rivals.
Despite a booming market globally for mobiles, Nokia said its second-quarter sales could fall while earnings would underperform both last year's figures and market expectations.
The Finnish bellwether detailed the full extent of its warning earlier this month that first-quarter sales would decline by 2% year-on-year as it turned in sales of e6.62bn (£4.43bn) for the three months to the end of March, down from e6.77bn a year ago. Pre-tax profits slid 16% to e1.21bn.
Nokia blames its poor showing on the group's lack of attractive handsets in the key middle market range as well as its inability to produce GSM flip-cover phones, known as clamshells.
Meanwhile, rivals Motorola of the US and Korea's Samsung Electronics of Korea, which produced record earnings today, have been gaining market share at Nokia's expense.
Nokia's earnings per share, a key measure of a company's underlying worth for analysts, fell to 17 cents for the first quarter, down from 20 cents a year ago.
The company warned that they would drop further to between 13 cents and 15 cents next quarter, while analysts pencilled in a fall to 18 cents from last year's 19 cents.
