Nokia’s stock falls on revised sales forecast

Nokia’s stock price took a hit after the company announced that its profit and sales fell during the first quarter and that its sales growth for the rest of the year would be slower than originally anticipated.

Sales are expected to increase by between 4% and 9% as opposed to the 15% jump the company had previously expected. Still Jorma Ollila, Nokia’s chief executive, has maintained that the next three quarters will better than the first.

The company’s profit fell about 8.5% to $805 million, while its overall sales sunk by almost 12% to $6.2 billion.

Despite the fact Nokia retained a 37% market share of global mobile phone sales, mobile phone sales dropped by about 7% to $4.7 billion and sales of network gear fell 29% to $1.2 billion.

Nokia actually lowered its estimate for total global handset sales in 2002 to be between 400 million and 420 million units, instead of its earlier forecast of more than 420 million.

--Kelly Carroll, Staff Writer