VR-Zone

 

Net sales were at just over €10 billion, a drop of 21 percent from the €12.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010. Even worse, Nokia's operating profit for the last quarter went from €884 million in 2010 to a loss of €954 million in 2011. This led to a full year loss of over €1 billion, compared to a more than €2 billion profit in 2010.

 

Even reasonable sales of over one million units of its newly launched Windows Phone devices could do little to rescue the company's plummeting income, with its earnings report full of minuses everywhere, which won't help with equally poor investor confidence.

 

 

The company's CEO, Stephen Elop, tried to sugar-coat the paltry figures by saying that the fourth quarter “marked a significant step in Nokia's transformation.” If that means it's transforming into a money-losing firm, then we guess he's right.

 

Elop admitted that Symbian, Nokia's almost dead mobile operating system, is facing a swiftly changing market, which will mean lower sales than expected. The company largely abandoned it to work with Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, which both companies are depending on to close the gap with Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

 

Despite the grim figures, Elop said that the company is “pleased with the performance of our mobile phone business.” We can only imagine that he must have seen a different report.