Nokia Aims To Sell More Than 500 Million Mobile Phones In 2010

Nokia's mobile phone unit head honcho, Rick Simonson, told The Economic Times of India that the Finnish giant is hoping to sell well over 500 million mobile phones in 2010, which would represent two in every five handsets sold globally.

The numbers represent a significant increase over what analysts were expecting - roughly around 460 million units. Ther phones will be spread across three platforms; Symbian, S40 and Maemo.

Given Nokia has already confirmed that there will be only one Maemo-based device this year, it leaves the two aforementioned platforms to shoulder the bulk of the sales for 2010.

The rest of the competition is not standing still though with the likes of Samsung and LG likely to post equally impressive rises. This means that the global mobile phone market is likely to grow as fast, if not faster, than Nokia's.

Simonson also added that there is not enough room for more than four or five mobile operating systems; there are currently around ten of them available for mobile phone manufacturers to use.

Nokia will be facing strong competition in the mid range and at the very top of the mobile phone market where the iPhone, RIM and Google will be vying for a growing marketshare.

Understandably perhaps, Nokia confirmed last month that its smartphone sales for this year are likely to be around half what they were in 2009. This would mean that most of the growth would come from devices carrying lower ASP (average selling prices).