On Friday, the world’s biggest handset vendor confirmed what many have come to fear over the past months, the sharp pullback in consumer spending worldwide has hit the mobile devices market hard.

Updating its outlook for the fourth quarter, Nokia said that it expects industry mobile device volumes will be lower than previously expected – in the region of approximately 330 million units.

The end of year holiday season is typically the main event in device manufacturers’ calendars, but this year the third quarter rise will only be up from 310 million in the second quarter.

For the full year, this would result in a global estimate of industry mobile volumes of 1.24 billion, instead of the earlier estimated 1.26 billion units, up from 1.14 billion units Nokia estimated for 2007.

The Finnish vendor also said that its preliminary estimate for industry mobile device volumes is down for 2009 compared to 2008, impacted by the economic slowdown. Infrastructure arm Nokia Siemens Networks had a similar stance on the network market.