Post date: Jul 19, 2012 9:33:40 PM
Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia reported a steep loss for the second quarter, although not as much as feared, as it continues to lose market share to Apple and Samsung Electronics.
FINLAND-NOKIA - Nokia's had a long run of disappointing results - its latest are only somewhat more encouraging.
The Finnish mobile phone maker made a slightly smaller loss than predicted in the second quarter, and ended that period with more cash than investors expected.
That's despite losing market share to Apple and Samsung Electronics.
Nokia reported an adjusted loss per share of 8 euro cents and held net cash of 4.2 billion euros.
Manoj Ladwa is a Senior Trader at TJ Markets.
Manoj Ladwa, Senior Trader, TJ Markets, saying
"The amount of money that they've got on their books, which was slightly better than expected, well that's down to cost cutting, they've reduced jobs drastically over the last couple of years or so, they've had to on the back of reduced demand for their product."
Nokia shares rose on the results - briefly climbing by 16%.
But the stock has lost 80% of its value since early 2011, when the company decided to drop its own smartphone software in favour of the Windows operating system.
Manoj Ladwa, Senior Trader, TJ Markets, saying
"At some point the shares do become oversold and that's where Nokia is at the moment, so we're starting to see on the back of these numbers investors coming in and picking up stock on the potential that they could be relatively cheap. But looking at their guidnace going forward as well, I think they may struggle, so we could see the shares move higher over the next few days or so and then they start to shift back down again."
Nokia was once the world's dominant mobile phone maker - but it was late to embrace smartphones and has lost out to competitors.
It sold 4 million Windows phones in the second quarter - roughly doubling that of the first quarter - but still only a fraction of Apple's expected sales of 30 million iPhones or Samsung's 50 million smartphones.
Joanna Partridge, Reuters