Nokia Q4 volumes seen up, but margins squeezed

Yahoo! News picks up a Reuters article that writes Nokia is expected to "report higher fourth quarter sales, but its pretax profit will likely dip from a year ago and margins remain under pressure."

Regarding the recent holidays sales season, Mandatum analyst Erkki Vesola said, "It is still possible for Motorola to have gained some (market share) and we expect Sony Ericsson to do well -- it seems they have come up with a handful of very strong-selling models."

Sales in developing markets show a lot of promise for Nokia. Petri Arjama at Handelsbanken said "We believe Nokia (Networks) will have to invest in expansion into new market areas to retain market share and scale and to reach the target EBIT margin of 13 percent by 2007."

Analysts expect Nokia to experience strong demaind in Q! 2006. Opstock analyst Hannu Rauhala said, "Looking at the strong forecasts from the component manufacturers, it looks like volumes should be quite good for the first quarter."