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Nokia’s financial results were announced this morning and make for pretty tough reading if you’re a long time lover of the Finnish phone maker. Its Lumia handsets sold only 2.9m units, down significantly from the 4m it sold the previous quarter. By comparison, Apple sold over 5m iPhone 5s in its first weekend alone.
The company also made a loss of $755m, which might seem like a massive amount but is a smaller loss than in the previous quarters. Even so, CEO Stephen Elop described it as “a difficult quarter” and explained that the transition from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8, which launches later this month, has made things “tough”.
Given that Microsoft effectively stuck two fingers up to current Lumia owners by not offering updates from the Windows Phone 7 operating system to version 8, it’s unsurprising that sales have taken such a steep dive.
Speaking of dead software, a representative from Nokia developer support has said that Symbian is now in “maintenance mode” meaning there will be no more feature updates.
But with Windows Phone 8 about to launch on Nokia’s new Lumia 920 and 820 handsets, there will soon be a new reason to be excited about Nokia’s products. Whether the mobiles — and, indeed, Windows Phone itself — offer enough to challenge the goliaths of Apple and Android remains to be seen.
What do you think to Nokia’s results? Are you surprised at the sales of the Lumia and are you excited for Nokia’s future with Windows Phone 8? Let me know in the comments below or over on our Facebook page.
