It said total sales across the whole industry were expected to reach 600 million worldwide with the number of total mobile subscriptions to reach 2 billion by 2007. It said one-third of the 600 million would be camera phones and that globally around 800,000 people a day were subscribing to mobile phone services.. Sir Stuart Lipton, the chairman of property developer Stanhope, is fighting to salvage his job as head of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), the powerful quango which reviews planning applications for large commercial developments. Morgan Stanley drew attention to figures from Carphone Warehouse, the leading retailer, which showed that prices on some Nokia products had been slashed by up to 26 per cent.Nokia fell into line with analysts on how many mobile phones are likely to be sold this year.

Last month Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley published downgrades on Nokia. It has also been too focused on selling basic, entry-level phones rather than the more sophisticated devices with cameras and colour displays, which have proved increasingly popular.Jorma Ollila, the chairman and chief executive of Nokia, yesterday said: “We have now sharpened our product portfolio in key areas, bringing to the market new phones in the mid-range, and adding more clam shells to our offering.”At its showcase Nokia Connection 2004 event in Helsinki yesterday, Mr Ollila also said that price cuts it had made for some of its models resulted in increased sales. However, analysts have expressed concern that Nokia is buying increased sales at the cost of profit margins. Gartner’s highest market share figure for Nokia was 36.9 per cent – recorded in the final quarter of 2001 – while Nokia’s own highest market share figure was 38.9 per cent.Even though that has now fallen to 32 per cent, according to its own estimates, Nokia was adamant yesterday that it could recover lost ground, and repeated its aim of reaching a 40 per cent market share.The company has lost out to faster-growing rivals because of a poor product portfolio, including being too slow to catch on to the fashion for flip-top phones, also known as clam shell phones. Nokia confirmed its declining share of the mobile phone market yesterday, saying first-quarter sales were 44.7 million handsets, giving it a market share of 32 per cent.
The Finnish company has seen its share of the booming mobile phone market gradually shrink as competition has increased from the likes of Motorola and Samsung.Two firms of independent analysts – Strategy Analytics and Gartner – have put Nokia’s market share figure at 28.9 per cent. Luc Vandevelde, the former chairman, Roger Holmes, the former chief executive, and Vittorio Radice, the former clothing and homes boss, have all left in the past two weeks.Shares in M&S fell 6.25p to 359.75p as investors bet that Mr Green, whose cash-and-shares proposal was rejected, would not return with a higher offer..

However she would have had to report to Mr Sharp, which she was not keen to do. “She is leaving by mutual agreement because she felt it was in the interest of both parties,” an M&S spokeswoman said.Although the company would not comment on Ms Avis’s exact compensation package because she was not on the board of directors, the spokeswoman said she would be entitled to the equivalent of one year’s salary – thought to be about £250,000.The management cull, sparked by Philip Green’s interest in bidding for M&S, has racked up a bill of more than £10m for the company, once share awards and other bonuses are taken into account. Marks & Spencer notched up its fourth senior management casualty in the past fortnight after Alice Avis, its marketing director, resigned abruptly yesterday.
Ms Avis, 42, who joined the retailer last year, will leave on Friday. She quit in protest at being sidelined during the management reshuffle that saw Stuart Rose, the new chief executive, appoint his long-time ally, Steven Sharp, as head of marketing, store development and design. Ms Avis’s decision will raise question marks over the future of Vince McGinlay, the former supply chain director, whose role has been taken by Charles Wilson, another of Mr Rose’s acolytes.M&S insiders said Mr Rose “invited” Ms Avis to stay. Last month it said it had raised cash by borrowing money secured against its credit receivables in Singapore which would be used to expand its Thai business and launch into China.

It is also expecting to float the group’s Caribbean business on a local stock exchange.. In April it said like-for-like sales in the UK had improved in the intervening 12 months by 21 per cent, thanks to changes in the supply chain and a revamp of its stores.However, it said that because of one-off charges related to its restructuring at home and abroad it would make a pre-tax loss for the year to the end of March of about £24m.The company, which has a market value of £149m, has announced plans to reorganise its operations in Singapore and the Caribbean. The UK operations made a loss of £4.8m in the year to 5 June 2003.In England and Wales it has 103 stores, including two in the Channel Islands and a central warehouse in Corby. They have seen Courts descend into a state of flux since the start of a year that has seen it announce a strategic review of its operations and a number of refinancing initiatives.Courts is partly owned by various members of the Cohen family of which Steven is a member.In its last full-year results, the UK operation had sales of £236m out of a group total of £634m. However, shareholders are keen to have more details of the offer.