Struggling
Nokia Corp turned a fourth-quarter net profit $270 million compared with a loss of $1 billion a year earlier, but revenue fell 20 per cent as it failed to make gains in the fiercely competitive smartphone market.
The Finnish company said on Thursday that revenue dropped to 8 billion euros from 10 billion euros as smartphone sales plunged 55 per cent, and it gave a grim outlook, saying it would not pay a dividend for 2012 to save money.
Although the company swung into profit after a spell of six consecutive quarterly losses, markets were not convinced. Its share price plunged, closing down more than 5 percent at 3.30 on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
Nokia said it sold 15.9 million smartphones in the period, down from 19.6 million a year earlier, including 4.4 million flagship Lumia phones. In comparison, rival Apple Inc. sold almost 48 million iPhones.
The former No. 1 cellphone maker said it expects operating margins in the first quarter to be "approximately negative 2 per cent, plus or minus four percentage points," citing increased competition and lower-than-expected demand for its Lumia handsets and cheaper Asha models, which have been popular in emerging markets.
The news of the dividend and sales figures came almost two weeks after Nokia had pre-released some results and announced that its handset business had returned an underlying profit.
Neil Mawston, a technology expert from Strategy Analytics in Boston, said Nokia's global smartphone market share had fallen to a record low of about 3 percent.
"Nokia is on a recovery curve at the moment," Mawston said. "In terms of volumes, they really need to improve. They regained profit, the next step is to regain market share."
The company saw a backslide in the world's largest devices market, China, where it sold only 4.6 million handsets in the quarter - a drop of some 70 per cent from a year earlier with sales revenue there plunging almost 80 per cent.
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