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Nokia Seeks to Win Over Wall St. (tomorrow)
biz.yahoo.com
By Eric Auchard and Paul de Bendern
NEW YORK/HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia , the world's top maker of mobile phones, will seek U.S. investor backing next week
for the company's push into newer software and programming businesses as a way to sustain its heady growth.
Speaking at the company's much anticipated annual investor briefing in New York, Chief Executive Jorma Ollila,
the leader credited with moving the Finnish company onto the global stage over the past decade, is expected to
deliver an upbeat message that builds on a spate of positive product and strategy news.
Nokia, which has emerged over the last three years as one of the world's top technology brands as well as widely
held stocks, is looking to reassure global markets that its move beyond mobile phone and networks
manufacturing can pay off.
.......
FOCUS ON SOFTWARE, MULTIMEDIA AND 2002 GROWTH OUTLOOK
What will be in focus on during Tuesday's eight-hour marathon session with analysts in New York will be Nokia's plans to
license the underlying programming code for its
mobile phone software to other manufacturers.
As the market's biggest player, and a company that spearheaded common standards in the past for digital networks and
text-messaging, its rivals appear willing to back Nokia as a way of jump-starting industry's next round of growth.
``Nokia will be trying to create faith around its software strategy,'' Paloranta said.
The mobile phone industry is at a crossroads as it seeks to recover from wildly over-optimistic forecasts in new high-speed
mobile networks combining voice, Internet and video that have proved slow to materialize.
Nokia's further expansion into software would come as a blow to U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp.'s bid to extend its
influence from computers into the Mobile Internet. Microsoft's ''Stinger'' software gives Windows-like functions to mobile
phones. Already, Nokia's plan has won backing from major Asian and European mobile phone makers, including South
Korea's Samsung, now the world's fourth largest handset manufacturer.
Nokia is pushing the industry to adopt its software for multimedia-messaging services (MMS), which allow users of current
mobile networks to instantly swap photos and song clips, building on vastly popular text-message services.
Analysts will also want to know what Nokia's forecast for industry-wide sales of mobile phones next year. It previously
lowered its forecast to 390 million units this year but has not commented on next year. Motorola has said it expects a range
of from 420 million to 460 million phones to be sold next year.
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