Nokia tallies strong feature phone sales in third quarter of 2017, led by iconic 3310

Research firm Counterpoint Research pulled out its trusty slide rule and computed that during the third quarter of 2017, which covered July through September, Nokia licensee HMD Global sold 2.8 million Nokia smartphones worldwide. During the same time frame, the company sold 13.5 million Nokia feature phones. For the quarter, Nokia placed 16th among smartphone manufacturers and third among those producing feature phones. Combined, Nokia was the eighth largest handset producer worldwide for Q3.

The 2.8 million smartphones that Nokia sold globally during the third quarter easily topped the 1.5 million intelligent handsets rung up by Nokia for the first half of 2017. Recent reports show that Nokia continued to do well in the fourth quarter of 2017, which ended at the end of last month.

Nokia's feature phone division had strong results last year thanks to the re-release of the iconic Nokia 3310. The phone originally appeared in 2000 and 17 years later, an updated model with 3G capabilities was launched. This year, we could see continued growth in the smartphone side of the company thanks to six new models that HMD Global plans on releasing this year. One of those handsets, the Nokia 9, will be a new flagship with a 5.5-inch screen, an 18:9 aspect ratio and the Snapdragon 835 chipset under the hood. A dual camera setup (with Zeiss optics) will be on back, and Android 8.0 will be pre-installed.

source: NPU