Lumia and Asha phones help Nokia end 2012 on an unexpected high

Lumia and Asha helps nokia in 2012

Nokia had a fairly mixed year, but the popularity of the Lumia phones and the Asha phones in some markets helped the Finnish company end the year on a high.

After two years of fairly gloomy results, Nokia is expecting a rather strong result for the last quarter of 2012. This comes on the back of strong sales for the Lumia and Asha devices. Nokia has said that they sold 86 million phones in the last quarter of 2012, which included 4.5 million Lumia phones.

The Finnish smartphone maker said it sold 86.3 million devices in the quarter, with a net sales total of €3.9bn. According to the company, this number has “exceeded its own expectations”.

Smartphones accounted for around €1.2bn of those sales, with Nokia shipping 6.6 million smartphone units in the quarter, out of which 4.4 million were Lumia smartphones.

Out of the total sales, €2.5bn was contributed by the more affordable smartphones, including the Asha series. Of the total number of handsets sold, Nokia says 9.3 million were from the Asha series.

The difference was made up by the sales of the ageing Symbian devices, with a smaller share of the total than ever before. According to the figures released, just 2.2 million Symbian phones were sold in the quarter. It is not a surprise that this number is lesser than both the Lumia and Asha series’, individually.

"We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in Devices & Services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks. We focused on our priorities and as a result we sold a total of 14 million Asha smartphones and Lumia smartphones while managing our costs efficiently, and Nokia Siemens Networks delivered yet another very good quarter", says Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia.