The Financial Times has published an interview with the chief executive of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who believes that while Nokia will face some hard times over the next year, it’s competitors with a smaller market share will fair worse.

“According to Gartner, the research firm, Nokia sold 118m mobiles in the third quarter of 2008 – close to the combined sales of its four nearest rivals: Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG.

Such dominance enables Nokia, for example, to have superior purchasing power with suppliers of components for its mobiles.

Mr Kallasvuo says: “When times are tougher, people who have stronger positions fare relatively better than the competition . . . So, overall, I believe many of our competitors will have limitations here in terms of their ability to do things.”

He also highlights the strength of Nokia’s brand and its solid balance sheet – the company had net cash of €2.9bn ($4bn) at September 30.

Such is Nokia’s confidence in its prospects that it has a target of increasing its market share of mobile sales in 2009, including smartphones – handsets that double as mini computers. Nokia has had a weaker range of smartphones for much of this year because it did not have handsets using touchscreen technology but the company is now addressing the shortcoming.

Nokia’s goal of increasing its market share in 2009 may also be assisted by the trend of consumers “trading down” to cheaper mobiles.”