Nokia losses down on record Lumia sales

Nokia is still losing money, but managed to sell a record number of Lumia smartphones in the first three months of this year.

The Finnish firm upped Lumia sales to 5.6 million, up from 4.4 million over the Christmas period and two million this time last year.

Although still in the red, better sales helped the firm trim its net loss to €272 million, better than the €928 million it lost this time last year.

But Nokia couldn’t offset unexpected losses elsewhere in its business, particularly in feature phones. It sold 55.8 million basic handsets, including its low-end Asha devices, down a considerable 25% from last year. That dragged overall sales down to €5.8 billion, from €7.4 billion last year.

“Nokia is now officially struggling on features phones too,” said IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo. “55.8 million units is much lower than expected.”

Nokia will hope that it can make up for that drop with better Lumia sales through the year – though profits could still elude the company since production costs will also go up. It did forecast 7.1 million Lumia sales this quarter as it launches more devices.

Nokia continues to face tough competition in both ends of the market, with the firm blaming an overall decline in handset sales on cheaper device from rivals and the consumer preference for basic smartphones over feature phones.

According to Canalys, Nokia is the third biggest smartphone maker globally, behind Apple and Samsung.