Nokia sales fall by 24 percent, miss expectations
HELSINKI Struggling Nokia Corp. on Thursday said its sales continued to drop in the second quarter, while it managed to reduce its net loss amid continued cost-cuts.
The Finnish cellphone maker said second-quarter sales fell to 5.7 billion euros ($7.49 billion) from 7.5 billion euros in the same period last year. Net loss for the April-June period was 227 million euros, compared to a net loss of 1.41 billion euros a year earlier.
The sales figures fell short of analysts' expectations -- a poll of 30 analysts by SIX News had forecast sales of 6.4 billion euros. The company's share price fell 4.5 percent to 2.96 euros during lunchtime trading on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
Sales of the company's flagship Lumia phones increased by 32 percent compared with the first quarter to 7.4 million handsets -- but this was still at the lower end of analysts' expectations. Overall, the company sold 61.1 million phones in the quarter, down 27 percent compared with the second quarter in 2012.
The company said its devices and services sales in the world's largest devices market, China, fell by 57 percent to 232 million euros while sales in North America - the frontline of the smartphone market - dropped by 4 percent to 123 million euros.
Still, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said the mobile phones business unit started to demonstrate "some signs of recovery in the latter part of the second quarter following a difficult start to the year."
He said the Lumia 520 has "enjoyed a strong start in markets like China, France, India, Thailand, the UK, the US and Vietnam."
Sales by the company's network division, Nokia Siemens Networks, fell by 17 percent to 2.8 billion euros.
Nokia earlier this month announced its intention to purchase Siemens' half of the 2007 joint venture, in a move to help bolster its struggling smartphone division. On Thursday it said it expects to cut the annual operating costs in Nokia Siemens by 1.5 billion euros at the end of 2013, compared with the end of 2011. It had previously forecast to cut costs by 1 billion euros.