Just a month ago, cell phone giant Nokia (NYSE:NOK) was bringing music to consumers' ears. Today, the company played another tune investors love to hear -- increased earnings guidance.

For the third quarter, the company's early high-end guidance was 8.2 billion euro. Now the range is 8.4 to 8.5 billion euro. Earnings took a similar leap from an expected high of 0.17 euro per share to a new range of 0.18 to 0.19 euro -- although the earnings numbers include at least a 0.01 euro gain (at the low end) due to one-time divestments.

The company reported higher-than-expected cell phone delivery volumes and lower-than-anticipated declines to average selling prices. This bodes well, as the company reported a push into emerging markets in its last quarterly release. Prices were pushed down as customers bought cheaper, lower-margin phones -- a move that might temporarily act to depress margins and profitability but might also afford the company some long-term advantage in the form of brand development and customer mindshare.

Competition is still tough. Motorola (NYSE:MOT) has recently announced a deal to bring Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes to its phones. Motorola has exhibited historically strong innovation, and its success is seen in the market share numbers released by research organization Gartner (NYSE:IT). In the second quarter, Motorola's worldwide market share increased 2.2% to 17.9%. The news was good at Nokia, too, where market share increased 2.3% to 31.9%.

The Sony (NYSE:SNE) - Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERICY) partnership lost 0.4% market share, falling to 6.2%. Siemens (NYSE:SI) took the biggest hit, with a 2.2% decrease to 4.7%.

Cash-rich Nokia trades at 17.7 times estimated earnings for this year. If you ask me, that's a fairly rich premium for a company that's expected to compound earnings by 10% a year for the next five years (slightly less than the 10.6% expected for the S&P 500). But Nokia is the premium name in a fast-growing marketplace that it very profitably dominates, and that whole emerging-market strategy might play much better than people expect.

Fool contributor W.D. Crotty does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned. Click here to see The Motley Fool's disclosure policy.