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Nokia Nails Quarter

First-quarter numbers beat estimates.
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Nokia (NOK) - Get Free Report beat first-quarter targets Thursday as sales in developing markets continued to rise.

For the quarter ended March 31, the Helsinki-based wireless titan made 1.05 billion euros, or 25 euro cents a share, up from the year-ago 863 million euros, or 19 euro cents a share. Sales jumped to 9.51 billion euros from 7.4 billion euros. Analysts had been looking for a profit of 21 euro cents on sales of 9 billion euros.

Nokia said it sold 75.1 million phones in the quarter, up 40% from a year ago and giving it a market share of 35%.

Motorola

(MOT)

said late Tuesday it sold 46.1 million phones in the first quarter, boosting its own market share by 2 percentage points. The news came just three weeks after Nokia boosted its worldwide handset sales growth target for the year to 15% from 10%.

Back on March 30, Nokia forecast that mobile subscribers would grow to 3 billion in 2008, with 80% coming from new growth markets and Asia-Pacific and China accounting for half of the next billion subscribers.

Nokia also expressed hope that it will resolve a looming patent issue with

Qualcomm

(QCOM) - Get Free Report

,

Reuters

reported.

Nokia shares rose 4.7% in Europe.