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Nokia: The Force will bring 3G infrastructure sales

Nokia, having announced several new products at CeBIT today, plus a Star Wars promotional tie-in, nonetheless admitted that sales of its GSM infrastructure equipment were below expectations - and hinted that the shortfall might be made up on 3G equipment later this year.

The phone company has announced a joint promotion with Lucasfilm for the new Star Wars movie, "Attack of the Clones" - and several new phones, including GPRS and polyphonic ring tones - but its back-room equipment sales, which were expected to be down, are actually down a bit further than anticipated.

Disappointed analysts asked the Nokia board what had happened to their predictions, last October, that mobile service providers were running short of capacity, and would be forced to buy back-room hardware to catch up.

The response was cryptic: "We don't recognise turnover from 3G infrastructure yet," said one Nokia representative. "We can't recognise turnover from that until middle 2002 sales."

Pressed for explanation, Nokia said only that "sales are in line with earlier predictions, and profits and sales were slightly less bad than originally feared.