Scary.
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Premarket Q activity would suggest you're not alone in your perception....
And you may well be right...
Kyocera, however, did note that it was reducing its industrywide shipment projection to 450mm due to weakness in Europe....
Message 15389488
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Kyocera Lowers Estimate on Industrywide Mobile Phone Shipments
--From AOl.-- Cooters
Tokyo, Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Kyocera Corp., which last year bought the phone-making unit of Qualcomm
Inc., has cut its estimate for industrywide shipments of mobile phones this year, citing slower growth in Europe.
The Kyoto-based company now sees handset sales as low as 450 million units this year, Kyocera President
Yasuo Nishiguchi told reporters late yesterday. That compares with his previous estimate of more than 500 million
handsets.
Kyocera follows Nokia Oyj, the world's largest mobile phone maker, in cutting industry sales forecasts. Nokia
sees sales as low as 500 million from 550 million previously. Kyocera's lower estimate means growth in the global
mobile handset market could be as slow as 9 percent after a 46 percent leap last year.
``I'm not sure if we can expect to add 100 million units more'' to last year's industrywide shipments of more than 400 million handsets, Nishiguchi said. He cited weaker demand for mobile phones using GSM technology, or Global System for Mobile Communications, which is widely used in Europe.
Worldwide shipments of mobile phones last year rose to 412.7 million units from 283.6 million in 1999, according
to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner Group Inc.
Kyocera, which makes phones using another technology called code division multiple access or CDMA, hopes to
sell 15 million handsets worldwide in the year starting April 1, up from 12 million units planned for this business
year, Nishiguchi said.
Shares of Kyocera fell 3.8 percent to 10,900 yen.
Feb/21/2001 19:51 ET
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ben |
