Nokia pares down holiday-quarter performance outlook

Things are bad, the global economy is finding new lows, and consumers are pulling back on their holiday gadget spending. Nokia (NYSE: NOK), in anticipation of economic woes affecting holiday mobile phone sales, has announced that they are lowering their Q4 2008 handset sales would fall short of previous expectations.

Nokia had earlier predicted that global handset shipments would reach 330 million units, but backtracked today with the announcement that the sales goal would likely not met. Nokia didn’t give any solid figures or guidance for 2009, citing slowing demand in the Finnish handset manufacturer’s bread-and-butter emerging markets. The mobile phone market is apparently too volatile to make any projections at this point.

The Espoo-based cellphone giant expects to see negative growth figures in the global mobile phone market for 2009. Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said that some consumer may actually downgrade their handsets rather than trading up for newer and more powerful cellphones.

[Via: Bloomberg]