Nokia Lumia Sales Fall To Just 2.9m In Q3 Ahead Of Windows Phone 8

Nokia has posted an operating loss of €576m (£467m) as the struggling Finnish manufacturer struggles to reverse its fortunes.

CEO Stephen Elop blamed the slump on the announcement of the Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 and said that the company had managed through a “tough transitional quarter.” However the losses were not as bad as previous quarters.

Sales of Lumia handsets plummeted to just 2.9 million, down from 4 million in the previous quarter as consumers delayed purchases ahead of the launch of smartphones running the Windows Phone 8 operating system.

Exacerbating the problem was the fact that smartphones running Windows Phone 7, such as the Lumia 900, can’t upgrade to the latest version when it is released.

Nokia Lumia Sales Fall

“In Q3, we continued to manage through a tough transitional quarter for our smart devices business as we shared the exciting innovation ahead with our new line of Lumia products,” said Elop, under whose leadership, smartphone sales have shrunk from 26.5 million to just 6.3 million in this latest set of results.

As losses mounted, Nokia’s cash reserves fell by €633 million (£514m) to €3.65 billion (£2.961bn) during the quarter, but Elop remains confident of turning things around.

“While we continue to focus on transitioning Nokia, we are determined to carefully manage our financial resources, improve our competitiveness, return our Devices & Services business to positive operating cash flow as quickly as possible, and ultimately provide more value to our shareholders,” he said.

However the fourth quarter, traditionally a strong period for smartphone sales ahead of Christmas, might not necessarily be as lucrative as could be expected for Nokia. It said it expects it to be “a challenging quarter” with “a lower-than-normal benefit from seasonality in volumes.”

Nokia announced its first Windows Phone 8 smartphones more than a month ago, but they are not expected to hit shelves until November. This leaves Nokia little time to convince users of the benefits of the platform over rival operating systems like iOS and Android.

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