Nokia grows profits and smartphone share in Q4
By Thomas Ricker 
posted January 28th 2010 7:00AM
posted January 28th 2010 7:00AM
Pretty good news for Nokia today as it announces its Q4 results. Net income jumped 65% to €948 million (on €12 billion in sales) or 26 eurocents per share, from €576 million euros, or 15 eurocents a share, earned in Q4 2008. That handily beat the consensus forecast of 19 eurocents per share. Importantly, Nokia grew its smartphone (or "converged devices" in Nokia parlance) marketshare to a healthy 40%, up from 35% just last quarter. Looking forward, Nokia cautioned that it expects its adjusted operating margin in Devices & Services in Q1 2010 will be at the low end of its 12% to 14% target. At the time of this posting, Nokia stock has jumped about 9% in recognition of these good times.
APPLE BIGGER THAN NOKIA ACCORDING TO KEYNOTE LAST NIGHT.
@rhezaganteng
Yeah, maybe Jobs shouldn't have said that... current figures show Apple quaterly revenues at 15.68 billion dollars and Nokia at 16.8 billion dollars.
@rhezaganteng
Yeah, somebody should ask Steve by what measure he meant Apple was bigger in mobile devices than Nokia. There aren't actually any figures in line with the comment, but hey, who cares about the facts - it seems somebody was fool enough to believe it and state it again!
@Rev aw come on. i'm sure he realised it was stooping a bit low, but it makes people so happy to hear something like that. the audience who caught that is a lot bigger than the audience that will pick up on the difference now. make the consumers believe you're doing well, and they'll hop on even more willingly.
@aphalone By his "magical" measure
@Rev Most blatant lie of all was how he lumped MacBooks with "mobile devices"...and the sales revenue figure probably included their iMac and Mac Pro sales as well.
@brrip In other words you mean blatantly lie? That's a top notch quality you want in someone trying to sell you something.
@avinash240 actually, i was saying that the lie works because the truth here obviously isn't getting much coverage. the lie is on the page 1 of every big paper i saw today.
and glad to be on the s60 bandwagon, even though we've got no engadget app
@brrip
There is an Engadget widget in the Ovi store.
@rhezaganteng Somebody should sue Steve Jobs now, I hope its Nokia.
@sourav
Awesome!!! I just got my new N900 and its the bestest phone ever... I love Nokia..
Posted from my N900
@rhezaganteng Yeah, and Steve also said the iPad was the "most important thing he's ever done". LOL. What a salesman...
@r3loaded
Seriously. In what world does a Macbook qualify as a mobile device? And if it is, wouldn't HP have something to say in this space?
@rhezaganteng
you are the one :)
apple fanboys....
@WickedEast You are all right. Jobs is an idiot. It would have been much better if he came out to a gloria estafon song screaming WHHOOOO, GIVE IT UP FOR ME, and then hurting himself and trying to play it off.
@brrip
I totally agree with you, but why are you glad to be on the S60 bandwagon?
I have an unlocked E71 which I adore but S60 is really just too dull for me. I love the hardware completely, but I suppose I just want something a little more exciting. Of course, I suppose if you're a very business oriented person and needs all the functionality then that's all there for you, but for me, I basically just use it for email, browsing the web, texting, and occasional calling, so I'm going to go with Android until Nokia revamps the UI and makes it more fun to play with.
Not saying that you shouldn't like S60, as I'm sure there are reasons to, but I'm wondering why you do because I really am unsatisfied with it the way it is now.
@aphalone
I sort of agree. What makes these figures even more remarkable is that the Xmas line up of Nokia smartphones was the blandest I'd seen for a while.
It appears what people want are phones that make calls, allow a bit of browsing - enough to check the news and Facebook maybe, take photos and play music. I guess that's why they've sold so well.
The one thing this does show is that 'mindshare' is meaningless. People buy things they want, not what the tech press talks about.
@Omagus I would agree with you, but Nokia counts the Booklet 3G in their "converged devices" category.
@rhezaganteng
Most of Apple's so called "mobile devices" doesn't include cellular (voice & data) capabilities. Virtually all of Nokia's devices are on 3G and you can make a mobile call.
@Junzhi Forget about UI, how about basic stability of the OS? I prefer S60v3 over S60v5 which is really pathetic to use. How about a new S60v3 E-series that isn't an E71 rehash? How about that with a modicum of stability and removal of ridiculous UI "notifications" that will screw your workflow any time it wants to notify you that with that ridiculous "beep" and hold you up for 3 full seconds every time. Just make a decent E-series and I could get on board. I don't need a flashy touch UI.
Go nokia!
sent from my n900!
Seriously nice results that really show to all the doubters. I hope nobody says after these figures that Nokia is loosing marketshare.
Have you seen their reporterd operating profit, 140% increase to 1.141 billion euros.
I say that again....EUROS.....
@blade235
So that's like 1.7 billion dollars?
Actually, 1.141 billion * 1.4 = 1.60 billion dollars, which is just a hair short of Apples 1.67 billion dollars Q4.
Yeah, I'm a bit bummed too that it didn't beat that number. :/
@crappish It depends on what day Nokia converts their euros to US dollars. Not that they should do that.
One number that don't need conversion is the number of units sold. In that department, Apple is just a hair short... by roughly 100M units.
one of the biggest manufacturer of phones in the world but totally ignored by Engadget, and many others.
@gigeaky
It is ignored by the american market because the mob controlling the communications, let's say "AT&T and Friends".
@gigeaky
Yeah, I mean this was pretty lame. Seriously, if Apple had increased their global smartphone marketshare that much, we would get at least 20 new headlines. Engadget didn't even bother to follow the situation properly.
@gigeaky
Americans don't like shitty phones.
@E30 Kid
Then why do you continue to buy the iPhone?
@gigeaky
Exactly. And I'm completely pissed by this. Engadget and especially Mashable cover a lot less Nokia as it deserves. Why are you so Americanocentric in a global gadget economy?
Nokia is still the number one and they don't cover it... sigh!
@gigeaky Who cares what Engadget says, the reports show clearly that even the fabled Joshua Topolsky cannot influence the masses. Engadget is just a recreation for 0.001% of people.
@fatjoe That's why they got their hands-on devices from Apple before official announcement. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Just saying... not that I agree with this -- I take whatever's written here with a big dose of salt.
@Tes
I have a Droid, no iPhones are within my possession. Again, I like good phones, not resistive pieces of crap.
127 million devices sold in 3 months... Amazing!
@aphalone
67.8 million smart phones in 2009. Isn't that more than RIM and Apple together?
@Rev
Yes, it is.
@xbit Had Apple did this, we would have seen the front page dominated by that news and BS. Come on Nokia is just a small company; they don't deserve a lot of letters here.
/s
@aphalone I wonder how many laptops+iPods+iPhones Apple sold in their latest quarter. Let’s see 21M iPods + 9M iPhone +…
Who’s the largest mobile company in the world again? Steve?
Now here a serious company. Only Apple can sell a digital picture frame as "magical" and "most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price" .Magical my ass.
@Sarcasme that's what exactly I thought about iPad.
iPad = kodak frame + iPhone + iPod touch + MB pro - keyboard - track pad - minus minus....!
@avis Looks like the Engadget bunker, but I could not identify which editor is this one that is shouting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4
@fatjoe .. the Joojoo doesn't have similar specs. It has 1/2 the battery life, 1/4 - 1/6 the disk space size and can't run native apps. Great I can play Flash games but I can't even run VNC/SSH.
@fatjoe If you slap the fruit logo on a box of Kleenex, dye the tissues in pastel candy colors, reduce the number of tissues per box and have Jobs announce that it costs 5$, some people will believe that box of tissues is a good deal. Then, with media hype and a massive ad campaign to numb people's reason and plenty of them will be convinced they need that 5$ box of Kleenex.
Wow go go Nokia.
Posted from N900!
Apple sell a lot of phone, but Nokia is on another level, I travel a lot around the world, and everywhere I go Nokia phones rules the world. In the Sahara desert, in the jungles of Africa, In the amazon, in Dubai 5 stars hotels and in the immigrants slums working there....
@Sarcasme
That's because you now they always will work no mater of what conditions you use them in. Some water or dust wont kill a Nokia.
Have to say really great result, I thought it would be good but not that good.
Some Engadget nitpicking
This will probably not make it to the biggest news of the day because they want as few as possible to see Nokia made a amazing profit again
It's even more impressive when you keep in mind that this has all been happening before they had announced Ovi Maps with free navigation. So Q1/2009 might be even better.
Really excited what new phones they'll announce in 2 weeks in Barcelona.
@ArticiaS
Yeah and N900 was only out for december and totally sold out during it, at least in Europe. Well it is still sold out in most places.... Very promising I would say.