Nokia is past the 1m sales mark for its first Lumia Windows Phones, the company announced today as part of its latest quarterly financial results.
Those results make for worrying reading on the surface, with net sales down 21% year-on-year to €10bn ($13.14bn) as the company sold 113.5m handsets – down 8%. Nokia sold 19.6m smartphones in Q4 2011, down 31% from the 28.6m it sold in Q4 2010. Ouch.
“The year-on-year decline in our Smart Devices volumes in the fourth quarter 2011 continued to be driven by the strong momentum of competing smartphone platforms relative to our Symbian devices in all regions, particularly in Europe,” notes the company in its financials announcement.
Even so, CEO Stephen Elop says the quarter marked “a significant step in Nokia’s transformation” as it launched its first Windows Phones, the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710. “In the war of ecosystems, clearly there are some strong contenders already on the field. And with Lumia, we have demonstrated that we belong on the field,” says Elop in a statement.
“Our specific intent has been to establish a beachhead in this war of ecosystems, and country by country that is what we are now accomplishing. To date we have sold well over 1 million Lumia devices. From this beachhead of more than 1 million Lumia devices, you will see us push forward with the sales, marketing and successive product introductions necessary to be successful.”
A reminder of the key opponent in this “war of ecosystems”: Apple, which sold 37m iPhones in Q4. That company’s net profit of $13.06bn for the quarter was only a shade under Nokia’s entire revenues for that period.
