First Quarter Brings Big Losses for Nokia amid Plummeting Sales

There was a time once when, for those who were planning to buy a cell phone, Nokia was the go-to brand. But then the smartphone market started up, and Apple entered the field, and those days vanished. This is almost perfectly evident by the recent losses that Nokia posted following a disastrous first quarter sales picture, weighing in at fully $1.2 billion.

Nokia made its announcements earlier today that the competition for smartphones simply got to be too much for them, and triggered losses across the board. Net sales dropped 40 percent. Smartphone sales fell over half. Revenue sank almost a full third – 30 percent – and the company’s outlook could best be described as “dismal.”

CEO Stephen Elop, for his part, said that Nokia faced “greater than expected competitive challenges,” and some big problems in major markets like Great Britain. But unexpectedly, the bright spot for Nokia was their sales numbers in the United States, which “exceeded expectations.” Elop went on to say that Nokia was “navigating through a significant company transition in an industry environment that continues to evolve and shift quickly,” though a statement from Nokia that followed didn’t provide much in the way of hope. The statement detailed the departure of global sales head Colin Giles, and that the sales unit would be taking a restructuring to reduce “a layer of sales management.”

Nokia’s sales have been declining since their pinnacle in 2008, and the company has turned to Windows – specifically, the Windows Phone 7 platform – to bring the company back. And given that Nokia sold over two million Lumia phones – the phones with the Windows Phone 7 OS in them – in the first quarter, it started to look like Nokia’s best shot had Windows stamped all over it.

But following large numbers of layoffs in 2011, declining sales, and big losses, Nokia will be staging its comeback from a weaker position than in previous years. Whether Nokia’s Lumia line can be the start of something big or simply their last stand will remain to be seen.