Strong Q3 results for Nokia beat expectations

Nokia has announced strong third quarter results, beating analyst expectations and increasing sales by 50 per cent on the same quarter last year.

The company's pre-tax profit was up by 39 per cent to E1.3bn (£767m) in a quarter that saw arch-rival Motorola issuing a profits warning. Earlier this month, Motorola warned that global handset sales would fall 25 million short of original estimates. In contrast, Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila said in a prepared statement: "We believe we have gained market share both in new infrastructure technologies and, especially, in handsets. Our view of the market development fundamentals remains unchanged, with more than 400 million mobile phones estimated to be sold in 2000, leading to an estimated 1 billion users in total during 2002. For 2001, we expect the mobile phone market to be in the region of 550 million units."