Nokia (NYSE: NOK) may consider itself more an internet company than a handset maker nowadays, but its investment in online services will have to continue for a couple of years. The company has been rolling out its Ovi services portfolio and its Comes With Music program. But CFO Rick Simonson (via Reuters): “We’re going to continue to invest at that rate or more as we are in investment mode in 2008 and 2009. We look for 2010 to start to see where you go from investment mode … to getting more out than you’re putting in. We’ve got to get somewhere into the billions (from only 84 million euros services revenue) … to make this relevant.”
Meanwhile, the company is expecting to return to double-digit US handset share in Q209. And, has thrown a doozy of a question on whether Nokia would buy Yahoo: “We’ve not been involved obviously in Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). We’re focused on closing the acquisition with Navteq on our basic first move on scale … We’re not out in the desert trying to invent a search algorithm that’s better than Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or Yahoo’s for instance. They’ve got some scale there we don’t have.”