Surprise! Nokia sold 4.4M Lumias last quarter, beating expectations — January 10, 2013

Nokia released preliminary results for the fourth quarter today and, well, things don’t look quite so bad.

Nokia said it shipped a total of 86.3 million phones last quarter. While the vast bulk of these sales (70.3 million) came from its low-end devices, the company also shipped 15.9 million smartphones — including 4.4 million Windows Phone-equipped Lumias.

That’s up a bit from the 2.9 million it sold in the third quarter, and in line with the 4 million Lumia devices it shipped in Q2 2012. (Nokia also shipped 9.3 million Asha phones and 2.2 Symbian devices, in case you were wondering.)

In all, these numbers helped Nokia’s devices and services unit report $5.1 billion (€3.9 billion) in sales, which, while down year-over-year, isn’t as bad as most people have been expecting.

CEO Stephen Elop is, understandably, beaming.

“We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in Devices & Services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks,” he said in a statement.

Investors, too, are pretty content: They helped push Nokia’s shares up roughly 15 percent today.

But Nokia notes that its next quarter won’t be quite as good. Citing “seasonality and [a] competitive environment” the company expects that its profitability will take a hit during the first quarter of this year.

We’ll have the full picture on Nokia’s earnings later this month, but for now, it looks like the company’s having a pretty good day.

Filed under: Mobile