Nokia Pushes Smartphone Share Back Up to 40 Percent
Painful as it was, Nokia’s savage cost-cutting is clearly paying off. This morning, the company posted a stronger-than-expected 65 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit on rising handset sales–smartphone sales in particular.
Remarkably, Nokia (NOK), which saw its share of the smartphone market decline to 35 percent from 41 percent last quarter, managed to push it back up to 40 percent in Q4. Quite a surprise considering that many expected the company’s smartphone share to fall even lower this quarter.
Anyway, on to the numbers:
Fourth-quarter net income was 948 million euros ($1.33 billion), or 26 eurocents a share. That’s up from 576 million euros, or 15 eurocents a share earned in the year-earlier period, and above consensus estimates, which called for earnings of 19 eurocents a share. Sales during the quarter fell 5.3 percent to 12 billion euros. But the number of handsets shipped rose 12 percent to 126.9 million units.
“In the fourth quarter the demand environment for handsets ended up being better than we anticipated and we took advantage of this upside,” Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said during a conference call.