Bad Christmas for Nokia

Nokia says it sold 8.2 million Lumia phones last quarter. Lumia phones are the devices that run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 operating system. Lumia sales had actually been growing quarter over quarter in 2013, but saw a decline in the final quarter. It sold 8.8 million Lumias in Q3 2013.

That’s a troubling stat since sales declined during the holiday season. It’s also a bad sign for the Windows Phone platform in general. Nokia is pretty much the only manufacturer that sells Windows Phones these days. HTC, Samsung, and others don’t take the platform very seriously and concentrate on Android instead.

Remember, Microsoft is still in the process of buying Nokia’s smartphone and tablet business for $7.2 billion, but the deal hasn’t gone through yet. Everything should be finalized before the end of the first quarter of 2014. Microsoft will report earnings this afternoon around 4 p.m. Eastern.

~ Steve Kovach – Business Insider