Poor sales of Lumia handsets in the UK have contributed to Nokia’s woes, with the company posting a €1.3 billion loss for the first three months of the year.
The company had last week suggested sales would be lower than expected, but today revealed the full scale of losses, with revenue dropping 29% to €7.35bn.
Nokia said the ongoing internal transition was making competing with the likes of Apple more difficult than expected.
“We are navigating through a significant company transition in an industry environment that continues to evolve and shift quickly,” said Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO.
The actual sales results have been mixed – establishing momentum in certain markets including the UK has been more challenging
“Over the last year we have made progress on our new strategy, but we have faced greater than expected competitive challenges.”
Windows Phone
Handsets using Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS were also providing challenges, the company said, especially in the competitive UK market.
“We have launched four Lumia devices ahead of schedule to encouraging awards and popular acclaim,” Elop said.
“The actual sales results have been mixed. We exceeded expectations in markets including the United States, but establishing momentum in certain markets including the UK has been more challenging.”
Although the focus is on smartphones, analysts said the company also needed to improve its line of “feature phones” in the lower priced sectors of the market.
“Nokia urgently needs to get full-touch feature phones into its S40 platform, because it is losing sales there,” said Ben Wood, chief of research at analyst company CCS Insight, adding that sales in that area were down nearly 20%.
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