Nokia Corporation has published its quarterly results for the third quarter of 2012. Net sales were down 19% on the same quarter last year to €7.24 billion (£5.9 billion) and the company made a much bigger loss than it did in Q3 2011: €576 million compared with €71 million last year. However, the loss was less than the two previous quarters.

Device numbers were down as well, with Nokia shipping 6.3 million smart devices (down 63% year-on-year) and 76.6 million other mobile phones (down 15% year-on-year) in the quarter. Less than half of those smart devices - 2.9 million - were Nokia Lumia handsets.

Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO, said “As we expected, Q3 was a difficult quarter in our Devices & Services business; however, we are pleased that we shifted Nokia Group to operating profitability on a non-IFRS basis [excluding restructuring costs etc]. In Q3, we continued to manage through a tough transitional quarter for our smart devices business as we shared the exciting innovation ahead with our new line of Lumia products.”

“In our mobile phones business, the positive consumer response to our new Asha full touch smartphones translated into strong sales. And in Q3, our mobile phones business delivered a solid quarter with sequential sales growth and improved contribution margin. In Location & Commerce, we made progress establishing our platform offering with customers like Amazon. This is in line with our plan to expand our location offering to more customers. And, Nokia Siemens Networks had a remarkable quarter in which we achieved record profitability on a non-IFRS basis and the Nokia Siemens Networks cash balance increased for the fourth quarter in a row.”

“While we continue to focus on transitioning Nokia, we are determined to carefully manage our financial resources, improve our competitiveness, return our Devices & Services business to positive operating cash flow as quickly as possible, and ultimately provide more value to our shareholders.”

[Results presentation (pdf)]