Nokia has seen a drop nearly of €1.2b in its operating sales on yearly basis, which indicates that even leader of the cell phone market, is badly suffering from global economic slowdown.

The company is also expecting more troubles in the current year, as there are predictions of 10% drop in their handset sales during this year and it will be the first half of the year when the Finns have to suffer a lot.

The company’s market share also saw considerable drop and shrank from previous watertight 46% to only 36% mainly due to the likes of LG and Samsung that seemed to make up some nice ground.

If one looks Nokia’s results for 08 as a whole, one may notice that nothings are not yet so gloomy for the company, particularly as the company has enjoyed some cheerful months in the recent past. The company scrubbed only 1% off in net sales overall, and 8% in operating profits.

It is also worth mentioning that the cash-hungry account with Qualcomm has also been settled during this year as well, which caused €1.7b payout from the company.

Yomiuri Shimbun (a newspaper) says that Nokia is about to start a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service and will use an infrastructure leased from NTT DoCoMo in February next year.

But the report says that the MVNO is not going to compete with existing operators in Japan directly and it will leverage Nokia’s Vertu brand to target the extreme high end of the market.

This new venture will most probably be irrelevant to ordinary Japanese phone users, as the Vertu handsets will be available with the price tag of ¥5 million (£35,000) each.

However, Nokia is quite hopeful that the new move will increase Nokia’s brand awareness in Japan where the Finns is not a significant phone manufacturer. In the rest of the world, it sold 437 million phones during the last year.

Shipping of the “Nokia-2600 Classic” mobile phone has already been started. It will cost $95 to the consumer. This model will be available in the markets within this first quarter of the year only. This model would facilitate the consumers with all the key features that are normally present in modern mobile phones but “at an affordable price”, says Nokia.

‘Nokia- 2600 classic’ has some interesting features to attract the customers. It comes with a colorful and changeable Xpress-on cover, MP3 ring tones, an FM radio, and a built-in digital camera with a Video Graphics Array display.

Nokia’s other mobile phone model, the “Nokia-1209” has been launched at an introduction price tag of  $50 and this model will become available globally sometime during the second quarter of this year. This model has been designed specifically to meet the growing demand internationally and to augment the emerging markets with “features such as a cost-tracking application called pre-paid tracker and a phone book for multiple users that allows up to five people to store their personal contacts in the phone”. This phone will be capable of holding up to 200 numbers in its memory.

Nokia recently conducted a user and market survey for the emerging markets in countries like India, China, Brazil, Pakistan, Vietnam, Russia, and Egypt. The top mobile phone manufacturer found that there’s a trend emerging in which consumers in emerging markets tend to share phones. More than 50% of consumers surveyed in India and Pakistan, and almost 30% in Vietnam revealed that they share or would share their mobile phone with others.

Phone sharing is a logical trend and this concept is based on economical aspects of a family. Increasing numbers of the families generally prefer purchasing a mobile phone for the entire family to use, not just the head of the household. In addition to the simple mobile phones, the digital cameras are also gaining popularity among the consumers in these emerging markets. Sharing of these digital cameras is equally common. Nokia’s new models would be satisfying these requirements of the users with enhanced features.

Nokia intends to offer its 1209 model to the first time mobile users and purchasers. It will have some additional helpful features like dust resistance, a durable exterior, and support for up to 80 languages that the users would feel happy with.