Bullish on emerging markets
Nokia ceo Jorma Ollila used his comany’s AGM to announce that his company reckons subsriber growth will be higher in 2006 than previously forecast.
Speaking at the AGM, company Chairman and ceo Jorma Ollila repeated the company’s earlier statements that Nokia expects approximately 80% of the next billion subscribers to come from the emerging markets, and that Nokia expects the global mobile subscriber base to reach three billion during 2008.
Ollila also gave a revised estimate for mobile device market volume growth in 2006. “Due to strong subscriber growth, we have now updated our global mobile device market volume estimate for this year,” said Ollila. “Nokia estimates that in the year 2006, the mobile device market volume will increase globally 15% or more from our estimate of 795 million units in 2005. Previously, we estimated that the global mobile device market volume would grow 10% or more this year from last year’s estimate.”
Nokia also said it would pay a dividend to shareholders of EUR0.37 per share for 2005.
Many analysts responded to Nokia’s forecast by raising their own forecasts for Nokia. But with 80% of the next billion subs due to come from emerging markets, Nokia and all handset makers will undoubtedly be under increasing price pressures. As such, Nokia’s simultaneous launch of three entry level phones for China shows where they may be heading. The knock-on for the industry will be to produce good phones with good functionality as cheaply as possible. Plus ca change.