Nokia, the leading maker of mobile phones, announced improving third-quarter sales on Tuesday, and also a new mobile e-mail product to compete with BlackBerry and others.
Nokia's revenue and earnings faltered a year ago when it mismatched its products to the market, but it said sales for the three months that will end on Sept. 30 should be 8.4 billion euros (US$10.3 billion) to 8.5 billion euros, compared with its previous expectations of 7.9 billion to 8.2 billion euros. Nokia predicted earnings per share would be 0.18 to 0.19 euro, up from an earlier estimate of 0.14 to 0.17 euro.
Shares of Nokia rose 0.50 euro, or 3.8 percent, to 13.55 euros.
While the sales forecasts were not greatly different, analysts and traders reacted more to Nokia's statement that prices for its phones had been "relatively firm" since July.
Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for Gartner who is based in London, said Nokia's average sales price was "not decreasing as much as they thought."
"Overall, their mix is improved. They are shifting more toward that mid and high-tier model," Milanesi said. "They have really started to do what everyone has been telling them to do" since Nokia's surprise loss in market share at the beginning of last year.
For corporate customers, Nokia announced it was getting into the potentially lucrative market for business e-mail messages via cellphone. Bob Brace, Nokia's vice president for mobile enterprise solutions, said the company intended to "bring mobile e-mail to the masses."
Its e-mail product, called Nokia Business Center, is meant for workers without access to company e-mail when they are away from their office computers, a market that comprises most of the 650 million company in-boxes Nokia estimates exist around the world.
The e-mail software would initially be available on a handful of Nokia models, but Brace said cellphones and other mobile devices made by competitors would be compatible in the future "as the market dictates."
Mobile access to e-mail has been the successful stock in trade of the BlackBerry device made by Research in Motion. Nokia, which has been working with the mobile e-mail specialist Good Technology, also faces competition from Microsoft, Visto, Seven Networks and others in the wireless corporate messaging market.
"We firmly believe that one size does not fit all," Brace said, acknowledging the competition. "There's room for many different e-mail solutions."
The product will be made available in the fourth quarter, the company said.
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