Nokia Posts Third Quarter Loss, Writes Down Joint Venture

By Geoff Duncan October 16, 2009

Nokia N900

The world’s largest mobile phone maker Nokia has posted its financial results for the third quarter of 2009. On one hand, the news isn’t all that bad: the company had net sales of €9.8 billion for the quarter, which is no small amount of money. But on the other hand, the company saw a 20 percent nosedive in sales of its smartphone products and has been forced to write down its Nokia-Seimens joint venture by €908 million. And that €9.8 billion net? That’s 20 percent lower than the same quarter last year.

All told, Nokia posted a quarterly loss of €0.15 per share, the company’s first quarterly loss in a decade.

Nokia’s sales decline in the smartphone segment does not bode well for the company, since smartphones are the area of the mobile landscape with the strongest growth and highest profit margins—where Apple, RIM, Palm, and others are making waves with new smartphone designs, consumers are clearly not as enthralled with Nokia’s smartphone offerings. However, Nokia has managed to hold onto its top position in the global mobile phone market, accounting for 38 percent of all handsets sold in the world. However, there Nokia accounted for 41 percent of the global smartphone market in the second quarter of 2009, it accounted for only 35 percent of it during the third quarter—a number that’s basically level with its market share a year ago.

During the third quarter of 2009, Nokia managed to sell almost 109 million handsets: that’s down 8 percent from the same quarter a year ago, but up 5 percent from the second quarter of 2009.

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Mobile

Nokia posts a profit at the end of 2012, helped by sales of more than four million Lumia phones

Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820

Apple isn’t the only one chatting about its financial performance for the final three months of 2012, as Nokia has also announced its official figures. No records have been broken, but the news is very positive for a company which has seen more than its fair share of negative numbers over the past year.
Nokia has reported net sales of 8.04 billion euros ($10.7 billion) with an operating profit of 439 million euros ($584 million), a considerable improvement over the previous quarter results, when the firm saw a shocking 576 million euro ($754 million) profit loss from net sales of 7.2 billion euros ($9.5 billion).
Over the same period, Nokia shifted 4.4 million Lumia smartphones, 9.3 million Asha phones - Nokia points out this figure is for the full touch handsets such as the Asha 311, 308 and 309 - plus 2.2 million Symbian phones too. Looking at the chart related to Nokia’s geographic sales performance, we can see North America has taken a big step forward over the third quarter of 2012, with sales increasing by 133-percent to 700,000 units. This time last year, Nokia sold 500,000 handsets in North America.
In Europe, 19.4 million phones were sent out the door, a 15-percent increase over the third quarter of 2012, but down 23-percent on last year. While these are good results, Nokia has suffered in China, where it’s down 21-percent over the previous quarter and a more worrying 69-percent down on this time in 2011. In a statement, Nokia indicates lower volumes of Symbian and basic feature phones were to blame.
A return to profit at the end of 2012 is good news for Nokia, and if it comes up with some exciting new products during MWC next month - a Windows RT tablet, or even new Windows Phone handsets perhaps - it could be on its way to an equally positive start to 2013.

Mobile

Nielsen: Windows Phone slipped in third quarter

nokia-lumia-800_group

Market research firm Nielsen has released new figures on smartphone ownership and U.S. marketshare during the third quarter of 2011. The leading numbers aren't too surprising, with Android accounting for 42.8 percent of the market, Apple's iOS coming in second with a 28.3 percent share, and RIM's BlackBerry platform managing a 17.8 percent share. However, in what might be a challenge for Microsoft, the Redmond software giant saw its combined share for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone slide from 9 percent in the first quarter to just 6.1 percent in the third quarter.
But did it? Nielsen also has another slice of the market separated off as "Windows Phone" with a 1.2 percent share. If those two numbers can be combined, that would mean Microsoft smartphone OS's accounted for 7.3 percent of the market in the third quarter: still a slump, but not as dramatic.

Nielsen's third-quarter figures account for sales right up to the time Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango"—which didn't complete its rollout until the end of last month. As a result, Nielsen's figures likely don't account for any additional momentum the Windows Phone platform picked up from the Mango release; between Mango, high-profile phones like the Nokia Lumia 800 and 710, and the end-of-year holiday buying season, Microsoft's third-quarter smartphone slump may turn out to be a footnote rather than a trend.
Perhaps more interesting, Nielsen finds that 44 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers now have a smartphone. Of those, some 71 percent are using either Android or iOS, which doesn't leave a lot of space in the market for other players. Nielsen also found smartphone adoption varies by age, but surprisingly it's not exactly the youngsters leading the way. Nielsen found the smartphone adoption is greatest amongst 25-34 year olds, with 62 percent owning a smartphone—that's far ahead of the 54 percent of 18-24 year-olds who have smartphones. Surprisingly, even older folks weren't far behind: 53 percent of mobile users aged 35 to 44 are now using smartphones.
The age group with the lowest smartphone penetration? Unsurprisingly, mobile users 65 years of age and older, with only an 18 percent adoption rate.

Mobile

Nokia Siemens to lay off 23 pct of workers

Nokia Siemens HQ

Nokia Siemens Networks has announced the company plans to cut some 17,000 jobs—about 23 percent of its global workforce—by the end of 2103 in a move to cut the company's expenses by more than €1 billion (about US$1.35 billion). Although the company hasn't released many details of its plan, it says in addition to job cuts, it will beging to outsource services and undergo a "significant reduction" of suppliers in order to reduce costs, while reducing its focus to emphasize mobile broadband technologies
"We believe that the future of our industry is in mobile broadband and services—and we aim to be an undisputed leader in these areas," said Nokia-Siemens CEO Rajeev Suri, in a statement. "At the same time, we need to take the necessary steps to maintain long term competitiveness and improve profitability in a challenging telecommunications market."
Nokia-Siemens currently has about 74,000 employees in 150 countries.
The 50-50 joint venture between Finland's Nokia and Germany's Siemens was formed in 2006, and is the world's second-largest maker of mobile infrastructure gear: they don't make phones, but they make the gear that goes into cell towers and signal processing, in addition to network backhauls, emergency services gear, and serious networking infrastructure. The company also provides a wide selection of consulting and managed services. However, instead of turning into a cash-generating juggernaut, Nokia-Siemens has struggled to generate profits, particular in the wake of the global economic downturn. Nokia-Siemens is also seeing fierce competition from Asian rivals like ZTE and Huawei, which have flooded the market with less expensive gear.
Nokia-Siemens tried to gain market momentum last year by acquiring the majority of Motorola's wireless operations for $1.2 billion—a move designed in part to make Nokia-Siemens a major player in wireless broadband technologies being rolled out by U.S. mobile operators like AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless. Huawei challenged that deal, arguing Motorola's technologies contained substantial amounts of Huawei intellectual property. Motorola and Huawei were able to work out a deal earlier this year.