Nokia And Motorola Turn In Solid Quarterly Financials
With the US stock market seemingly wobbly this week, the mobile sector seems to be going strong. In fact, mobile seems to have underwritten a 1.5% rise in the NASDAQ. First quarter numbers released from both Motorola and Nokia beat investor expectations, and drove a 5% and 6% share price hike respectively. Nokia net sales are up 17% over 1Q2004, and net profits are up 18% to about US$1.1 Billion. Nokia declined in the Americas, but had offsetting gains in China. For its part, Motorola boosted revenues 10% over 1Q2004 and had earnings of US$692M. In the latest quarter, Motorola sold 28.7M handsets, and we’ve been watching the battle for second place between Moto and rival Samsung, who fell behind with only 24.5M units. Last December, Samsung edged out Motorola for #2 for the first time, and we said “It should be fun to watch the competition as these two battle it out for the #2 spot…” It IS fun! Update: Qualcomm also had an up quarter.
