James Delahunty
21 Apr 2005 19:31
Mobile phone makers Nokia and Motorola have both seen big rises in profits and sales for the first quarter of 2005. In the three months Nokia profits were up 18% at 836m euro, from 729m in the same quarter in 2004. Sales were 17% higher at nearly 7.4bn euro, up from 6.4bn euro. Nokia shares also rose up about 5.5%. Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive of Nokia said the success was due to 20% industry growth in the first quarter compared to the same term last year.
"This marked a strong start for the year and prompted an upward revision of our 2005 annual market volume estimate to about 740 million units (from 712.9 million)," Ollila said. He added that he was extremely satisfied with the first quarter results. Sales of handsets in Asia grew strongly for Nokia which China now being its biggest market but sales in the United States and Latin America were disappointing. "There was also some weakness in 3G devices at the industry level," Ollila said.
Motorola benefited from the Industry growth aswell, also seeing double-digit growth in quarterly profits. Its shares also grew by more than 5% after it announced its results for the first quarter. Motorola's profits rose 14% to $692m, up from $609m a year earlier. The company benefited from a strong line-up of devices including the Razr phone. Although its not sold in large volumes it has positioned Motorola as a "cooler" mobile brand. In the first quarter, Motorola said it increased its market share to 17.1%, a rise of 1.4 percentage points. It is second only to Nokia in terms of the numbers of mobile handsets it sells.
Source:
BBC News