Nokia reported earnings per share (diluted) were Euro -0.01 for the period from January 1 to June 30, 2011.
Stephen Elop, CEO at the Finnish giant, admitted sales in the quarter had not gone well, and that the pressure on Nokia would continue unabated: “…while our Q2 results were clearly disappointing, we are executing well on the initiatives that are most important to our longer term competitiveness. Some progress is already evident, and thus we are targeting to end this year with more net cash and liquid assets than at the end of Q2 2011. We firmly believe that our deliberate and unwavering commitment to making the changes necessary at Nokia is the right way to deal with the disruptive forces in our industry and drive value creation for our shareholders.
“During this time of transition, we expect competitive pressures to continue. However, we have a clear strategy to address the concerns about our product competitiveness. In Q2, both our Smart Devices and Mobile Phones business units moved forward on their plans.”
He added that Nokia itself did not expect such a bad result for the quarter: “The challenges we are facing during our strategic transformation manifested in a greater than expected way in Q2 2011. However, even within the quarter, I believe our actions to mitigate the impact of these challenges have started to have a positive impact on the underlying health of our business. Most importantly, we are making better than expected progress toward our strategic goals.”
Within devices and services, net sales were down 20% at Euro 5.47 billion. Smart device sales were down 32% to Euro 2.369 billion, while mobile phone net sales dropped to Euro 2.551 billion, down 20%. Mobile device volume dropped 20%, to 88.5 million, while smart devices plummeted 34% to 16.7 million. Mobile phone volume was down 16%, to 71.8 million.