Nokia's profits beat estimates

Nokia reported a bigger-than-expected jump in fourth-quarter earnings on strong device margins.

Nokia reported a bigger-than-expected jump in fourth-quarter earnings on strong device margins.

Quarterly diluted earnings per share jumped 47 per cent year-on-year to €0.47, beating market projections for €0.44.

Profits were given a boost by a 25 per cent operating margin in its core mobile phones division - a marked improvement on the 17.8 per cent recorded a year earlier.

That unit's strong performance helped lift group sales 34 per cent to €15.717 billion and its market share to 40 per cent from 39 per cent in the third quarter.

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Nokia said an attractive portfolio of handsets helped it win a "substantially" bigger slice of the market in the Middle East and Africa and eke out "modest" gains in Europe and Asia. But it said it ceded some ground in both China, its largest market, and the US during the quarter.

The Finnish group shipped some 133.5 million devices during the period, and said the figure would have been higher were it not for component shortages.

Nokia is predicting its market share for the first quarter of this year to remain at around 40 per cent, but with industry mobile device volumes seen falling from the seasonally-strong fourth quarter.