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Nokia may have shipped over 1 million Lumia handsets in the fourth quarter, and could boost this number to 3.2 million in the first quarter, according to a survey of analysts.

A Bloomberg survey of 22 forecasters had only one analyst predicting Lumia sales of below 1 million, with 1.3 million being a popular estimate for shipment made by the end of 2011. Expectations among the 22 analysts surveyed ranged from sales of 800,000 Lumia phones to 2 million, though the average expectations were above 1 million. Nokia will report its fourth-quarter earnings Thursday.

“The numbers look promising,” Espen Furnes, an Oslo-based fund manager at Storebrand Asset Management, told Bloomberg. “If Nokia is able to have a strong launch and surpass at least one million and keep that type of momentum, this would help put them in a credible position that is crucial to winning back investors.”

However, Nokia’s overall smartphones sales, which still rely heavily on Symbian, may have plummeted 36 per cent in the quarter, analysts said, and will likely have a damaging effect on Nokia’s overall revenue and profit. Industry watchers are already saying that the company is likely to have made a loss of €91.6 million in the fourth quarter, with sales down 21 per cent at around €10 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Commenting on the decline in Symbian sales, Goldman Sachs analyst Tim Boddy issued a note claiming that Nokia remains in a challenging transition period. “First-half device sales are likely to be soft as Lumia demand ramps up only gradually and Symbian declines steepen,” he wrote.

This worry regarding Lumia sales volumes has been highlighted by Neil Mawston, a director at research firm Strategy Analytics. Speaking to Dow Jones Newswire, Mawston said investors are focusing too much on Nokia’s latest smartphones so soon after their release, and given they’re only available in a handful of countries.

“It’s too soon to judge,” Mawston said. “If you look back to Apple’s iPhone performance in 2007 and Google’s Android in 2008, they had a sluggish start the first quarter after launch and people started to write them off, but new models came a year or so later and sales rocketed.”

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this Dow Jones Newswire article

Related Articles:
Report: Nokia under pressure to slash Lumia 710 pricing in UK
Nokia, Microsoft boosted by bullish Credit Suisse report on Windows Phone
Nokia’s Elop: Boosting Windows Phone volumes is the top priority
Rumour Mill: O2 reverses course, agrees to sell Nokia’s Lumia phones in Germany

FierceWireless

Wind Mobile has plans to expand their coverage area in all their current markets, plus roll out to London by the end of this year, and enter Halifax and Winnipeg in 2012. In addition, Wind is going hard this quarter by releasing a number of new handsets and making their /month all-in talk, text and data plan available.

Orascom Telecom, the company who provided debt-financing to Wind Mobile Canada (Globalive), announced their Q3 2011 results today and as a company they now have 109 million customers, an increase of 12% when compared to last year. Where does Wind Mobile Canada fall into the mix? Well, the report states that “WIND Mobile subscribers increased 156% compared to 3Q 2010, showing a wide acceptance rate of customers across various segments”. At the end of Q3 2011 (September 30th) the total number of subscribers reached 358,000 – up 41,000 from Q2, and up 218,319 from 2009.

Other carrier Q3 results in Canada were as follows:
Rogers increased by 161,000 to total 9,288,000 subscribers
Bell also increased by 85,749 to reach 7,369,596
TELUS increased by 114,000 subs to now total 7.2 million

Source: Orascom
Via: WSJ

Related posts:

1. WIND Mobile ends Q2 2011 with 317,000 active subscribers
2. Wind Mobile has “north of a quarter-million” subscribers
3. CWTA: Mobile broadband subscriptions totalled 5,668,142 as of June 2010 (24.2% of total wireless)

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