Nokia appears to be edging back into the smartphone race, after reporting a 27% rise in sales of the Lumia touch screen handsets on which chief executive Stephen Elop has staked the future of the company.
Despite competition from the latest Apple phone, Lumia shipments reached 5.6m in the first quarter of this year, and Nokia is forecasting they will rise as much again in the June quarter, reaching over 7m.
This would leave Finnish manufacturer with the beginnings of a sustainable smartphone business, although still some way behind the 37m iPhones analysts estimate Apple has sold this year and Samsung's 62m shipments.
But Nokia's forecast was greeted with scepticism by some analysts. "We struggle to understand how this number is possible without either the beginning of consumer traction, or a massive channel inventory stuffing," said Pierre Ferragu, at Bernstein Research.
The boost to Lumia devices, which run on Microsoft's Windows Phone software, was not enough to prevent Nokia's overall revenues crashing 27% from the previous quarter after sales of basic phones fell faster than expected. Consumers are opting for fully fledged internet phones, denting demand for the traditionally large volume of basic phones made by Nokia. The company sold 62m handsets in the quarter, well below the 73m units predicted by Wall Street, which had forecast revenues of €6.5bn. Nokia achieved just €5.85bn.
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