Bangalore: Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia Corp hinted that its Smartphone partnership with Microsoft has started showing a positive outcome as the company revealed the fourth quarter mobile phone sales, which exceeded expectations, hinting a return to profitability in its mobile trade.

As a response to its Q4 results, Nokia’s share price had a gush of 11 percent to close at €3.32 on Helsinki Stock Exchange. The company said it sold 86 million devices in the past three months of 2012, which included around 4.5 million Lumia Smartphones, whereas revenues summed up to €3.9 billion. Last year, the company had posted a fourth- quarter net loss of €1 billion with a 19 percent fall in revenue.

In Q4, Nokia claims that it sold 15.9 million Smartphones, up from 6.3 million in the previous quarter.  The company has been having a tough competition against Apple Inc and Samsung and is now also losing ground to Asian makers in lower end devices. Samsung had surpassed as the world’s No. 1 mobile maker in the beginning of 2012 ending a 14 year old dominance of the Finnish manufacturer in the market. In 2011, Nokia had announced that it would join hands with Microsoft to create a Smartphone that would run on Windows software. Lumia, the most updated Windows handset was launched last year.

CEO Stephen Elop said he was pleased with the company's "solid" fourth-quarter performance.

"We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability," he said. "We focused on our priorities and as a result we sold a total of 14 million Asha smartphones and Lumia smartphones while managing our costs efficiently, and Nokia Siemens Networks delivered yet another very good quarter."

The company was of the opinion that operating expenses in the last quarter of 2012 was very lower than expected. The devices and services sector saw operating margins of “between break even and positive 2 percent.” The company’s network joint venture with Germany’s Siemens AG and Nokia Siemens Network had "record was underlying profits and a third consecutive quarter of underlying profitability”, along with an expected operating margin to be 13-15 percent.

Nonetheless, the company put forward a warning that the seasonality and competition would have a negative impact on the phone division’s first quarter profitability comparing to the last three months of last year. January 24 is supposed to be the due date for Nokia to report on the fourth-quarter earnings.

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