• MOST READ

• LATEST NEWS

While most attention was focused on handsets as Nokia reported first quarter results, it also released the figures for its infrastructure joint venture Nokia Siemens (NSN), which provide some indicators for the pressurized equipment sector.

The scale of year-on-year revenue decline at NSN was far less than at Nokia, with first quarter sales down 12% to €3bn (at constant currency, the fall would have been 9%). But its operating loss increased almost fivefold, to €361m, compared to €74m a year ago, and its operating margin was down 2.2% to 12.1%.

The importance of China to this market was highlighted yet again, since this was the only country where NSN saw better sales than in the year-ago quarter (up 5.6% to €284m, though down over 30% on the last quarter of 2008).

China will be important to the wireless network vendors throughout this year, as its major 3G roll-outs cushion the impact of the downturn, while towards the end of 2009, the firms expect to start feeling the positive impact of huge expansion of networks by operators in developed economies, as they rush to keep up with mushrooming demand for mobile data. According to new figures from analysts at iSuppli, spending on wireless infrastructure in China will rise to $6.2bn this year, up 13.2% on 2008, while overall carrier spending worldwide will decline by 3.5% to $39.7bn. India will also see good growth, at 4.5% this year, and higher rates as its own 3G deployments kick in from 2010.

Elsewhere in the world, NSN was under intense pressure from the downturn and from competition from Ericsson and Huawei, which look set to increase their dominance of the sector as their scale and ability to compete on price grows. NSN's worst performance was in Asia-Pacific (excluding China) where sales were down almost 27% to €692m in its second largest territory. Its largest, Europe, saw a 9.5% drop to €1.097bn.

NSN predicts a 5% decline in the global market this year. With Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent set to report their own Q1 figures soon, analysts are expecting the former to bear up well, though perhaps to appear less recession-proof than it did last year, and to be dragged down by Sony Ericsson, which may need to raise more capital this year. According to The Wall Street Journal, Alcatel-Lucent is expected to announce a drop in revenue across the board, including in wireless, when it reports on May 4.

Related Stories

COMMENTS

No comments yet. Be the first to add a comment!

Digital Money: The Convergence of Contactless Card and Mobile Payments

This report examines the emergence of digital money from the perspective of the convergence of card-based proximity payments to the...

Cloudbooks: Market Analysis and Forecasts
This report is based on interviews with device OEMs, retailers and resellers and provides a comprehensive analysis of the new cloudbook...