Nokia has warned investors that it is not selling enough handsets in the second quarter and is likely to miss financial targets.

The warning came as Nokia revealed disappointing first quarter figures - net sales fell 2 per cent to €6.6bn, compared with the first quarter on 2003. Nokia made a profit of €1.1bn in the three months ended 31 March.

Jorma Ollila, chairman and CEO of Nokia, said: "Nokia's own first-quarter mobile device volume growth of 19 per cent, slower than the market, reflected that Nokia was not able to fully exploit the usual seasonal market pick up in March. As a result, our sales for the quarter did not meet our expectations and our mobile device market share declined to 35 per cent." The company's long-term goal is still to take 40 per cent of the mobile device market.

He said the company has already started to make organisational changes to sort the problem out and improve sales.

Looking forward, Nokia expects the market as a whole will growin the high teens but forecasts its own sales will be the same, or even less, than the second quarter of 2003. It hopes margins will improve towards the end of the year with the introduction of new products - it has 40 products due for launch in 2004. All the figures are here.

Nokia shares fell two per cent on the news. ®

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