Is Nokia back on track?

Finnish phone maker Nokia may have reached its turning point, or what CEO Stephen Elop has called ‘the heart of our transition’, based on its latest earnings report.

The results are bleak: a full-year loss of €1.07 billion Euro, and a 9% drop in net sales year-on-year.

However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel in Lumia, the company’s new range of Windows-based smartphones, which have now reached ‘well over’ 1 million sales.

Failure of the Lumia range would have all but killed the former market leader, which put all its eggs in the Windows Phone basket when it ditched the Symbian platform early last year.

It’s still early days – to compare, Apple sold 37 million iPhones in its most recent quarter – but the sniff of success is enough to give investors hope that the heavy investment in marketing being put into the Lumia isn’t going to waste.

Elop acknowledged as much in his remarks accompanying the results, saying the company has demonstrated that it belongs ‘on the field’.

"Our specific intent has been to establish a beachhead in this war of ecosystems,’ Elop says, "and country by country that is what we are now accomplishing.

"To date we have sold well over 1 million Lumia devices. From this beachhead... you will see us push forward with the sales, marketing and successive product introductions necessary to be successful.

"While we progressed in the right direction in 2011, we still have a tremendous amount to accomplish in 2012, and thus, it is my assessment that we are in the heart of our transition.”

Nokia's Windows phones were thought by many to be the winner of the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month - check out our story here.