Nokia Forecasts Profits for Next Quarter

Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) on Thursday, announced its third quarter financial results which showed a lesser than anticipated loss and projected the handset business to be more profitable this quarter, with help from the debut of handsets based on Microsoft’s operating system.

A net loss of 68 million Euros ($93 million) was reported in the third fiscal quarter, overcoming the anticipated loss by analysts at an average 229 million euro. Nokia in a statement on Thursday said that sales declined 13% to 9.98 billion Euros as handset shipments fell by 3% to 106.6 million units. 93.6 million handset sales were predicted by analysts.

Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia is positioned to launch a smart phone line at the Nokia World event featuring Microsoft’s Windows handset software. Finland based phone maker has accelerated the ten year old Symbian operating system based devices, as the company is moving on to new platforms. Symbian has been losing market share to Google Inc. and Apple Inc. since 2007.

Mr. Elop in a statement said, sales execution and channel inventory situation improvement is indicated by the results. Nokia Corp boosted as much as 8% in Helsinki trading following the announcement and traded at 6.3 percent higher, or 4.77 Euros, as of 1:05 a.m. local time.

Transition to Windows Phone 7 Mango as a primary handset platform will start this year followed with large productions next year, said Nokia in February. Prior to outsourcing support of the Symbian device to Accenture Plc, Nokia rolled out two more devices based on Symbian software and seven Symbian handsets last month. The company also launched a MeeGo based handset, the operating system which was developed in participation with Intel Corp.

The largest handset maker globally since 1988 with market shares reaching heights of about 40 percent, Nokia in the second quarter had a 22.8 percent share as per researcher Gartner Inc. Strategy Analytics said, Nokia dropped to the third position in smart phone sales market to rivals like Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc. passed it in the third fiscal quarter for the first time.  Elop after taking the reigns of the ailing Finnish handset maker, announced the split of the smartphone division and the non-smartphone mobile phone division, in the hopes of being better able to handle the two separate units.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.