Nokia said its troubled Devices & Services unit had “exceeded expectations and achieved underlying profitability in the fourth quarter of 2012”, with better than anticipated results both for its mass-market mobile handsets and its Lumia smartphones.

In a statement, the company also said that its Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) infrastructure joint venture had performed well, with a strong showing in higher margin product categories and geographic regions, and better-than-expected cost management.

Nokia said that Devices & Services net sales in the quarter were around €3.9 billion (US$5.2 billion), with total device volumes of 86.3 million units.

The company sold €1.2 billion worth of smartphones, including 4.4 million Lumia devices and 2.2 million powered by its legacy Symbian OS platform.

For its feature phone and basic handset business, sales were around €2.5 billion, with total volume of 79.6 million units.

The company has also progressed with its practice of classing its Asha touch-screen handsets as “smartphones”, despite the fact that few others in the industry seem keen to adopt this practice.

By lumping them in with the Lumia and Symbian devices, Nokia is able to claim smartphones volumes of “15.9 million units” for the three months – more impressive than the 6.6 million achieved using the traditional definition.

Sales at NSN are expected to be around €4 billion for the quarter, and Nokia again noted the impact of a restructuring programme intended to cut operating expenses and production overheads.

For both Devices & Services and NSN, Nokia expects seasonality to have an impact on the figures for the first quarter of 2103, although for the former it also noted continuing challenges related to the “competitive environment”.

Nokia is set to report its full results on 24 January 2013.

Europe’s leading operators are considering the creation of a pan-European infrastructure partnership to better integrate national telecom markets, says a report in the Financial Times.

The idea followed a meeting between Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s competition chief, and top executives from operators such as Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telefonica and Telecom Italia.

However, the report says establishing a EU-wide network-sharing agreement “would be fraught with financial and technological obstacles, given the myriad differences in infrastructure and national rules”.

But such a move would bring Europe more in line with the US and China which have just three or four large operator groups, says the FT. Such an arrangement might also deliver consumer benefits in terms of single-rate pricing.

While opposed to national mergers that reduce competition, Almunia has indicated more enthusiasm for cross-border tie-ups that support a single, integrated EU market, a key aim for the commission.

Taiwan’s HTC has reported a 91 per cent slump in its fourth-quarter profits of just T$1 billion (US$34 million). This is the fifth consecutive fall in its quarterly profits and the lowest figure recorded since 2006.

Revenue fell by 41 per cent to T$60 billion.

HTC’s smartphone market share dropped to four per cent in the third quarter of 2012 from 10.3 per cent a year earlier, according to figures from IDC. The market share for the fourth-quarter is still to be announced.

HTC has a new flagship smartphone due out this year which analysts expect will help the company recover somewhat, but it faces continuing competition from Samsung and Apple in its core markets.

MTN Uganda has announced plans to deploy a LTE network during the coming months, which will make it the first to offer this technology in East Africa.

In 2013, the cellco plans to invest US$70 million added to another US$80 million spent in 2012.

In terms of network infrastructure, MTN Uganda has deployed close to 2,800km of fibre backbones achieved with multiple layers and rings across all national regions.

MTN Uganda has over the last six months rolled out 81 new base transmission sites to new coverage areas while commissioning another batch of capacity sites to enhance the quality of network services. MTN had a total of 1,100 sites at the end of 2012.

Over the past couple of years MTN has also made backhaul links expansion and enhancements to the Mombasa submarine cables (EASSY and TEAMS). This has enabled connectivity with the rest of the world while providing better connectivity and high level redundancy for voice and data services.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has announced it is bringing together its business in the Middle East and Africa into a new, single, regional organisation structure covering the Middle East & Africa (MEA). Igor Leprince, who was leading the company’s business in the Middle East until December 31, 2012, has assumed the role of head of MEA from January 1, 2013.

Igor Leprince

With this change, NSN is expanding its Asia and Middle East regional cluster to include business in Africa. Continuing under the leadership of executive board member Ashish Chowdhary, the new Asia, Middle East & Africa cluster (AMEA) will manage the company’s customer operations in MEA, India, Asia Pacific, Greater China and Japan.

As part of the company’s transformation, the new combined MEA region will allow NSN to further strengthen its quality of delivery for all its operator customers in the region. In addition, the move will allow the company to serve its large multi-country operators such as Bharti Airtel, Etisalat, Qtel, Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Vodacom and Zain in a more integrated manner both within the MEA region and across AMEA operations.

NSN operates in 30 countries in the combined MEA region.