Nokia sells over 5 million N-series multimedia phones

By Lucas van Grinsven Tue Apr 25, 6:37 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - The world's largest handset maker,
Nokia, said it had sold more than 5 million N-series multimedia phones since last year and launched three new models on Tuesday to boost its presence in a growing market.

Anssi Vanjoki, the head of Nokia's multimedia unit, said the Finnish company expects the multimedia phone market to grow to 100 million units in 2006 and exceed 250 million in 2008.

"It is not a small market," he said at the launch of the new phones.

Research firm Canalys says about 50 million multimedia phones were sold in 2005, Vanjoki added.

The new N93 video camera model, with optical zoom, and the new N73 camera phone, which has a 3 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens, are both expected to hit the shelves in July, while the new N72 music phone is expected to be available in June.

The unsubsidized retail prices will range between 320 euros (US$396) for the N72 to 550 euros for the most expensive, the N93, Vanjoki said.

"I think the N72 and N73 will be successful phones that will sell well, but the N93 will be a niche product," said analyst Carolina Milanesi at market research group Gartner.

She said the new N-series devices were bulkier than those of rivals, but through design improvements they had become small and thin enough to be acceptable.

Nokia reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter sales and earnings last week, and singled out the success of its N70 model as its biggest revenue-generating handset in the quarter.

Nokia said the N70 camera phone was the biggest-selling third-generation (3G) mobile in the world in the first three months of the year, making up about 10 percent of the 3G market on its own.

Research firm Strategy Analytics has estimated that 10 percent of the 3G market would be fewer than 2 million phones in the quarter.

"Nokia has proven that there is a sizeable market of consumers in Europe, North America and Japan who are looking to replace their phones with a more powerful device that can do instant messaging, photography, music," Gartner's Milanesi said.

Nokia also said it had agreed on cooperation with Yahoo's popular photo-sharing site Flickr.