OXFORD, United Kingdom—Nokia claims it will see solid sales growth of 15 percent next year as new mobile devices trigger an upsurge in the mobile market. The company predicts things are set to improve even more dramatically, by the end of 2002 at the latest, with sales growing 25 percent to 35 percent.
However, these bullish statements are in contrast to the views of analysts at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, who cut their estimates of U.S. cell-phone users in 2001 to 131 million from 135 million to reflect recent third-quarter results and expectations of a continuing soft economy. The company now expects cell-phone penetration rates to only reach 46 percent by the end of 2001, 53 percent in 2002 and 58 percent in 2003. However, on a brighter note, the firm said the subscriber base at the end of 2001 should still rise 19 percent and revenues should grow at 24 percent compared with a year ago.
Meanwhile, Nokia issued a confident forecast that, by the second half of 2002 it would launch third-generation (3G) cell phones, which would account for around 10 percent of all handset sales in 2003. This is in harsh contrast to the many predictions of limited growth for the mobile network infrastructure market during 2002.
