Nokia posts €826m Q2 loss and ships 4 million Lumia devices units

Nokia posted a second quarter operating loss of 826m, as net sales of its smartphone devices suffered a 34 per cent year-on-year drop.

Stephen Elop, CEO of the Finnish firm, described the quarter as difficult, but noted that it was part of the transition process, a statement which investors will be all-too familiar with.

We shipped four million Lumia smartphones in Q2.

"Nokia is taking action to manage through this transition period. While Q2 was a difficult quarter, Nokia employees are demonstrating their determination to strengthen our competitiveness, improve our operating model and carefully manage our financial resources," he noted in a statement.

"We shipped four million Lumia smartphones in Q2, and we plan to provide updates to current Lumia products over time, well beyond the launch of Windows Phone 8. We believe the Windows Phone 8 launch will be an important catalyst for Lumia."

IT Pro is awaiting confirmation of exactly how many Windows Phone devices the firm sold. Even if the firm did sell 4 million smartphones, it is still a long way short of the 35+ million units Apple and Samsung shift each quarter.

As part of its restructuring, Nokia announced it was going to axe 10,000 jobs globally in July. This would bring the total planned job cuts at the firm to 40,000 since Stephen Elop took charge in 2010.

The Finnish firm plans to close its only plant in Finland and is also set to book additional restructuring charges of around 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) by the end of 2013.

Since the emergence of the iPhone, smartphones have grown exponentially in popularity and Apple and Samsung have become market leaders.

Samsung overtook Nokia, in shipments terms, in April and the Korean firm posted a record quarterly profit of $5.9 billion, despite concerns over Europe's debt crisis.

Nokia halved the price of its flagship smartphone - the Lumia 900 in the US on Monday, after just three months on sale. It remains to be seen whether the launch of Windows Phone 8 will boost the firm's smartphone sales later this year.