April 12, 2006

Nokia Corp. announced that the average selling price for its mobile handsets in the first quarter was around $125, up from $120 in the previous quarter.

The Finnish wireless behemoth had previously estimated that its ASPs in the first quarter would be flat or slightly down from fourth-quarter 2005.

The uptick in ASP at Nokia is welcome news to financial analysts, who’d seen Nokia’s ASP decline in the last three quarters of 2005.

Nokia recently also upwardly revised its projection of industrywide, global handset sales in 2006 to about 915 million units, an increase of about 120 million units from last year.

The Finnish handset maker sells about one in three mobile phones sold in the world.

Meanwhile, with the company’s cash coffers reaching $15 billion, industry watchers are weighing whether Nokia’s network infrastructure division will make some modest acquisitions, perhaps including pieces of Siemens’ infrastructure business.

Swedish infrastructure vendor L.M. Ericsson leads Nokia in market share in the network equipment business and rival Alcatel SA recently announced plans to acquire Lucent Technologies Inc.

Source: RCR