Finland's Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, on Tuesday set new sales targets for its most advanced phones, which it hopes will ignite growth in the stagnant wireless industry.
Nokia Chief Executive Jorma Ollila said his company would ship between 50 and 100 million mobile phones with color screens in 2003.
He did not give a comparable number for 2002, but market estimates are for Nokia to sell just several million units.
Ollila also told the company's annual mobile Internet conference here in Munich that more than half of the firm's phones sold next year would use multimedia messaging (MMS), which lets users send and receive pictures and sound clips to and from mobile phones.
"Revenue growth will primarily be driven by MMS and other advanced services," Ollila said.
Nokia, which currently makes almost four out of every 10 mobile phones sold to end-users, announced six new color screen phones on Monday, some of which featured in-built cameras.
The mobile phone industry hopes that picture messaging and other data applications will offset declining voice communications revenues.
Europe's largest operator Vodafone from Britain said it had set a target to generate at least 20 percent of revenues from data services within two years, almost double the current level which comes almost completely from text messages.
Nokia shares were flat at 17.77 euros, outperforming the Dow Jones European tech index, which fell 1.3 percent. The shares had risen in anticipation of the product announcements.
(China Daily November 6, 2002)
