Nokia’s battle to rejoin the race with Apple and Google’s Android has seen the world’s largest phone maker burn through over €1bn (£830m) in a year, with unit sales of smartphones down 31% in the last quarter.

The fall in sales of handsets running Nokia’s Symbian operating system, which the company is phasing out in favour of Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, has come harder and faster than the company originally anticipated.

To read this report in The Guardian in full, see:
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/26/nokia-sales-smartphone-windows

One-Billion-Euro Loss and a Silver Lining for Nokia
Nokia, the world’s largest seller of mobile phones by volume, said Thursday that it suffered a huge loss in the fourth quarter but reported better-than-expected sales of its new Windows smartphones, sending its shares soaring.

Nokia said it lost almost €1.1 billion ($1.4 billion) in the fourth quarter, compared with a profit of €745 million a year earlier. Sales at Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, fell 21 percent to 10 billion euros from €12.65 billion a year earlier. Operating profit shrank by more than half during the period to €478 million, from €1.1 billion a year earlier.
www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/technology/1-billion-euro-loss-and-a-silver-lining-for-nokia.html

Nokia Discerns Hope in New Phone
In the first test of Nokia Corp.’s turnaround plan, the handset maker said sales of its first Windows smartphones were off to a good start even as its overall shipments continued to slide.

Chief Executive Stephen Elop said Nokia sold well over one million of its new Windows-based Lumia handsets in the quarter. He pledged to bring the Lumia series to additional markets including China and Latin America in the first half of 2012 to further boost sales.
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577184493721205630.html