Nokia: Windows Phone 8 announcement did not affect Lumia sales, WP7 sales will continue well after the introduction of WP8

More cautiously optimistic news for both Windows Phone and Nokia have bubbled up from Nokia’s earnings release today.

Nokia’s Windows Phone shipments have doubled both in USA and overall, going from 300,000 to 600,000 in USA and 2.2 to 4 million worldwide.

The good news going forward is, consistent with our own findings, that the announcement of a lack of a Windows phone upgrade has not affected Lumia sales negatively, with Stephen Elop at a Nokia investor call quoted as saying  today,  “Lumia activations were flat to up in the weeks following Windows Phone 8 announcement.”

Nokia also confirmed for the first time that it intends to continue selling existing Windows phones “beyond the launch” of Windows Phone 8 and intended to continue updating these handsets, suggesting somewhat that Windows Phone 8’s low end strategy may be Windows Phone 7.8.

He confirmed also that it was rapidly dwindling Symbian sales which were the problem, with Nokia in its statement blaming most of the declines on falling demand for Symbian devices, which could not be offset by rising demand for Lumia devices.

Sales of Nokia smartphones rose 45 percent in North America, to  €128 million, the first such increase in at least a decade. The company’s loss in the three months through June was €1.4 billion, or $1.7 billion.

“Nokia is taking action to manage through this transition period,” Mr. Elop, a former Microsoft executive, said in a statement. “We shipped four million Lumia smartphones in Q2. We believe the Windows Phone 8 launch will be an important catalyst for Lumia.”

Nokia also saw good news in the feature phone department, with sales increasing to 73.5 million, up 2 percent from a year earlier.

IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo noted “Nokia’s quarterly loss was less than expected, and the volumes of its basic feature phones are increasing, which is a good sign. The results on Lumia show that the company’s turnaround strategy, which is a long-term project, could succeed.”

“Nokia has been in free fall in recent quarters, and while it is not out of the woods yet, it does seem as if it is pretty close to the bottom,” added Canalys analyst Pete Cunningham.

Nokia currently has cash reserves of €4.2 billion, down from  €4.9 billion in Q1 2012, but much better than the  €3.7 billion analysts predicted.

Nokia shares are up as much as 15% on the earnings news.

Via NY Times, The Verge and Unwiredview.com