European markets opened lower and fell further in the afternoon after the poor US consumer confidence figures. The main drag on sentiment in the morning came from Nokia, the mobile phone company. Its shares fell more than 6 per cent after it revised its guidance for this year and the next.

Nokia now expects sales of 380 million mobile handsets this year globally, rather than its previous estimate of 390 million. Nokia currently takes about a third of global sales and is still targeting 40 per cent in the long term.

Nokia is expecting overall company sales growth of 15 per cent next year and global sales of mobile phones of 420 million-440 million, compared with the 440 million-450 million range analysts had been forecasting.

However, the company stuck to its fourth-quarter earnings target. The shares have almost doubled since their low point in early September and yesterday fell €1.18 to €27.05. Nokia was the worst performing of the technology blue chip stocks.

Ericsson fell 2.5 per cent to 59.50 Swedish krona, Alcatel fell 2.1 per cent to €20.85, Infineon fell 2 per cent to €23.36 and Philips fell 3.2 per cent to €31.55.

The telecommunications sector, which has risen more than 25 per cent in the last couple of months, saw some profit taking resume yesterday. Shares fell an average of 2 per cent.

Deutsche Telekom was off 2.5 per cent, France Telecom 3.4 per cent and KPN 6.8 per cent.