Nokia overtakes BlackBerry in smartphones - but still lags miles behind Android and Apple

Nokia sells 600,000 more Lumias than BlackBerry sells smartphones in the second quarter, despite continuing falling sales

Nokia has overtaken BlackBerry in smartphones, according to the latest sales figures for its Lumia Windows Phone devices revealed in its second quarter results.

However, while the total of 7.4 million sales of Lumia smartphones comfortably beat the 6.8 million smartphones that BlackBerry sold in the same quarter, it is still well down on the 33 million smartphones that Nokia sold in the final quarter of 2010 - just before Stephen Elop decided to ditch Symbian for Windows Phone.

Nokia's numbers will also comprise significant numbers of obsolete Windows Phone 7 devices that it has been struggling to sell-off at a discount.

However, there were some indications that the company's long decline since Stephen Elop became CEO is at an end. While year-on-year group revenues fell by 24.5 per cent to €5.7bn, the decline compared to the first quarter was very much smaller, down by just 2.7 per cent.

The company's operating loss has also been reduced to "just" €115m, although cashflow worsened with a net cash outflow of €196m following a cashflow-positive first quarter.

But it is the sales figures for Nokia's phones - both its smartphones and its feature phones - that will be most keenly analysed.

In total, it sold 61.1 million units, down 27 per cent on the 83.7 million it sold in the same quarter a year earlier. This was mainly due to continuing falling sales of Nokia's bedrock feature phones, where sales declined from 73.5 million to 53.7 million.

However, the crash in sales of smartphones appears to have been arrested, with sales up compared to the first quarter from 6.1 million to 7.4 million units, although it had sold 10.2 million units in 2012.

CEO Elop was keen to emphasise the rising sales of Lumia devices this year. "We are very proud of the recent creations by our Lumia team, from the Lumia 520 - our most affordable Windows Phone 8 product which has enjoyed a strong start in markets like China, France, India, Thailand, the UK, the US and Vietnam - to the Lumia 1020," he said.

He added: "Overall, Lumia volumes grew to 7.4 million in the second quarter, the highest for any quarter so far and showing increasing momentum for the ecosystem. During the third quarter, we expect that our new Lumia products will drive a significant part of our Smart Devices revenue."

Figures for Nokia Siemens Networks, which Nokia acquired outright in June 2013, were reported separately. These showed a decline in net sales of 17 per cent, year-on-year, to €2.8bn. This was presumably a major part of the reason why Nokia was able to snap up Siemens' half-share of the company for what was widely considered a low price.