14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Nokia officially announced its financial results for the first quarter of the year, and unveiled Lumia sales of 5.6 million units in the timeframe, up 27 percent when compared to the previous three-month period.
However, the Finnish handset vendor also announced that the overall mobile phone sales went down 30 percent when compared to the fourth quarter of the last year, reaching 55.8 million units.
The company also registered a decrease of 25 percent in net sales of the Devices and Services unit when compared to the previous quarter, reaching €2.9 billion ($3.78 billion) in Q1.
For the first three months of the year, Nokia announced €5.8 billion ($7.6 billion) in sales, though revenue for the timeframe was a loss of €150 million (roughly $196 million). More details can be found in the company's official earnings report.
With these numbers, the company missed previous analyst projections, which suggested that it might hit $8.65 billion (€6.63 billion) in revenues and $0.05 EPS, as TNW notes.
Three months ago, Nokia did say that it expected the overall performance in the first quarter of the year to be affected by increased competition on the market and slower seasonal sales, but its Lumia smartphones performed better than in Q4 2012 when they reached only 4 million in sales.
However, sales of Lumia smartphones are still far behind competition, as they reached only 19.9 million sold units since the first of them landed on shelves in November 2011.
Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO, appears happy with the company’s current performance, and appears confident that the company will manage to turn the table in its favor.
“At the highest level, we are pleased that Nokia Group achieved underlying operating profitability for the third quarter in a row. While operating in a highly competitive environment, Nokia is executing our strategy with urgency and managing our costs very well,” Elop said.
“We have areas where we are making progress, and areas where we are further increasing the focus. For example, people are responding positively to the Lumia portfolio, and our volumes are increasing quarter over quarter.”
“On the other hand, our Mobile Phones business faces a difficult competitive environment, and we are taking tactical actions and bringing new innovation to market to address our challenges. All of these efforts are aimed at improving our financial performance and delivering more value to our shareholders.”