After a quarter in which it sold its billionth cell-phone, Nokia raises its full-year forecast for global handset shipments to 780 million units. Following a positive quarter for its cell phone business, Nokia is yet again raising its forecast for total global unit shipments of handsets in 2005. The Finland-based handset market leader has raised its prediction from 760 million to 780 million. This latest forecast is in line with the most recent prediction by analyst company Gartner (see related story), and spells good news for makers of both LEDs and GaAs-based RFICs. Meanwhile, Strategy Analytics expects total unit sales to ratchet up even higher: "A record 209 million mobile phones were shipped worldwide during the third quarter," said Neil Mawston from the analyst company. "Following 566 million units during the first 9 months of the year, we expect the full-year total to surpass the 800 million level," added Mawston. In early 2005, Nokia had predicted a much more modest increase over the 2004 unit shipment figure of 643 million. At that point, Nokia said that it expected 705 million cell-phones to sell in 2005 – a rise of just under 10%. If the latest forecast proves correct, the actual growth figure will be more than 20%, a similar level to the strong increases seen over the last few years. In the most recent quarter, Nokia sold 66.6 million mobile devices, equivalent to a 29.5% year-on-year increase in volumes. Much of that growth was driven by uptake in China, where Nokia shipped 12.6 million phones – up 87% on last year’s figure for the same quarter. The company believes that it has also taken market share in this region, where home-grown Chinese brands have traditionally dominated. Growth in the Asia-Pacific region was also strong, especially in India. During the latest quarter Nokia also registered the sale of its billionth cell-phone; said to be a Nokia 1100 that was sold in Nigeria. On the infrastructure side, where Nokia is also a key player, the company has also been busy, signing five new deals to deploy wideband-CDMA networks. Nokia says that there are now 88 W-CDMA networks in operation globally, serving 34.5 million subscribers with 3G services. | 
