Nokia Lumia 800 sales forecast gets chopped

FINNISH PHONE FIRM Nokia's flagship Lumia 800 smartphone sales forecast has been cut in half.

Nokia has finally launched its flagship Lumia 800 Windows Phone 7.5 smartphone recently, but things aren't looking all that great. Initial forecasts for sales of the handset have been slashed from two million to less than one million, according to The Guardian.

James Faucette, analyst at Pacific Coast said, "We believe that shipments of Nokia's new Windows Phone 7 have been lower than we had previously anticipated."

"We had expected that the company could ship as many as 2 [million] units into the six targeted markets for the holidays; however, we now believe that those shipments are likely to be less than 1 [million] for the quarter."

Nokia declined to comment on the basis that the issue addresses sales figures and forecasts. However, in Nokia's eyes the phone has been a "huge hit", it said in a blog post on the launch day of the phone. The Lumia 800 apparently saw the most pre-orders of any of Nokia's handsets but the company did not mention any numbers.

In the UK the firm certainly tried to hype up the launch day as much as it could with gimmicks such as free flowers, coffee and rickshaws.

What might not have helped Nokia was its decision to limit the stock of the handset to only certain mobile operators and retailers. Nevertheless, the company told us that it was still confident that the smartphone would sell well.

In comparison the latest generation of Apple's Iphone, the Iphone 4S, sold four million units over its first weekend on sale. The Nokia Lumia 800 is yet to be available in large markets such as the US and China. We think the handset is a reasonable first effort so check out our full review for more details.

Update
Nokia has decided to comment on the issue after all and told us, "While it is not our policy to disclose individual product sales figures outside our quarterly financial results, we feel there has been premature sales analysis on the performance of the Lumia 800. According to the earliest data we have, in less than a full week of sales in a lead market like the UK, we can surmise the following:"

"The UK is our first market to be enjoying the Lumia launch with a full range of marketing and retail training."

"Lumia 800 sales in the UK are off to an excellent start. Based on earliest data the sales start of the Lumia 800 is the best ever first week of Nokia smartphone sales in the UK in recent history."

"By our measures, we have gained significant smartphone sell-out share in the channels in which we are operating in the UK."

"The level of pre-orders, as well as reaction in shops, leads us to be very positive about the launch of the Nokia Lumia 800."

And so we can't help but note that Nokia still didn't mention even any ballpark numbers. µ