Nokia puts brave face on 31% decline in sales

Nokia burnt through over £830m in a year to catch up with Apple and Google's Android. However the unit sales of smart-phones remained around 31% in the last quarter.

The fall in sales of handsets running Nokia's Symbian operating system, which the company is phasing out in favour of Microsoft's Windows Phone software, has come harder and faster than the company originally anticipated.

But investors took heart from chief executive Stephen Elop's forecast that the company would reverse a €954m loss in the fourth quarter of 2011 to reach break-even during the first quarter of 2012, and shares rose in morning trading.

Sales of Nokia's Windows handsets, launched under the Lumia brand last October, have reached "well over 1 million", the company confirmed. But revenues were down 9% for the full year, to €39m, and 21% year on year for the final three months of 2011. Fourth quarter performance has slumped from an €884m profit in 2010 to a loss of €954m in the same period of 2011.

Elop said that Nokia had progressed in the right direction, but added "we are in the heart of our transition".