Nokia today posted strong third-quarter revenues of $14.4 billion that helped European stocks rally, but it wasn’t all good news. Concurrent with its quarterly earnings, the company expressed concerns that it would continue to lose market share and also announced that it would be cutting 1,800 jobs.
Nokia returned to profitability after a loss during the same quarter last year. The company posted $565.3 million in third-quarter profits. Nokia’s total mobile device volume was up 2 percent over last year to 110.4 million units, with converged mobile device volumes, which include smartphones and mobile computers, reaching 26.5 million units, up 61 percent from the same time last year.
In a statement, Nokia’s recently appointed CEO, Stephen Elop, called the current state of the industry “remarkably disruptive,” saying that Nokia must reassess it’s role in and approach to the industry.
“Some of our most recent product launches illustrate that we have the talent, the capacity to innovate, and the resources necessary to lead through this period of disruption. We will make both the strategic and operational improvements necessary to ensure that we continue to delight our customers and deliver superior financial results to our shareholders,” Elop said.
Nokia recently launched it N8 high-end smarpthone, which comes loaded with Symbian ^3, its latest version of the mobile OS that the company hopes will be more competitive with other smarpthone platforms like iOS and Android.
Still, even with hardware and software improvements, the company now expects its mobile device volume market share to be slightly down in 2010 compared to 2009. Nokia had previously targeted its mobile device volume market share to be flat in 2010 compared to 2009.
Nokia put forward guidance for it devices and services division of net sales between $11.4 billion and $10.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010.
