Nokia had a fairly mixed year, but the popularity of the Lumia phones and the Asha phones in some markets helped the Finnish company end the year on a high.
After two years of fairly gloomy results, Nokia is expecting a rather strong result for the last quarter of 2012. This comes on the back of strong sales for the Lumia and Asha devices. Nokia has said that they sold 86 million phones in the last quarter of 2012, which included 4.5 million Lumia phones.
The Finnish smartphone maker said it sold 86.3 million devices in the quarter, with a net sales total of €3.9bn. According to the company, this number has “exceeded its own expectations”.
Smartphones accounted for around €1.2bn of those sales, with Nokia shipping 6.6 million smartphone units in the quarter, out of which 4.4 million were Lumia smartphones.
Out of the total sales, €2.5bn was contributed by the more affordable smartphones, including the Asha series. Of the total number of handsets sold, Nokia says 9.3 million were from the Asha series.
The difference was made up by the sales of the ageing Symbian devices, with a smaller share of the total than ever before. According to the figures released, just 2.2 million Symbian phones were sold in the quarter. It is not a surprise that this number is less than both the Lumia and Asha series’, individually.
“We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in Devices & Services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks. We focused on our priorities and as a result we sold a total of 14 million Asha smartphones and Lumia smartphones while managing our costs efficiently, and Nokia Siemens Networks delivered yet another very good quarter”, says Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia.
According to the “preliminary financial results” released, here are the important points about figures for the last quarter of 2012.
Nokia currently estimates that Devices & Services net sales in the fourth quarter 2012 were approximately EUR 3.9 billion, with total device volumes of 86.3 million units.
Mobile Phones net sales of approximately EUR 2.5 billion, with total volumes of 79.6 million units of which 9.3 million units were Asha full touch smartphones.
Smart Devices net sales of approximately EUR 1.2 billion, with total volumes of 6.6 million units of which 4.4 million units were Nokia Lumia smartphones.
Total smartphone volumes of 15.9 million units composed of 9.3 million Asha full touch smartphones, 4.4 million Lumia smartphones and 2.2 million Symbian smartphones.
Devices & Services Other net sales of approximately EUR 0.2 billion, including a positive impact from non-recurring IPR income of approximately EUR 50 million.
On the back of this morale boosting figures, Nokia is looking fairly aggressive going into 2013, which is no doubt a very critical year for the smartphone giant. From the threat of obscurity, the report now portrays an interesting outlook for this year.
Competitive industry dynamics continuing to negatively affect the Smart
Devices and Mobile Phones business units.
The first quarter being a seasonally weak quarter.
Consumer demand, particularly for our Lumia and Asha smartphones.
Continued ramp up for our new Lumia smartphones.
Expected cost reductions under Devices & Services’ restructuring program;
And the macroeconomic environment.
Nokia will be releasing the final result for the quarter on January 24, 2013.