Nokia today posted a forecast-beating 21 per cent jump in first-quarter profit on higher sales in India and China.
Shares of Helsinki-listed Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, surged 6.3 per cent in midday trading on the news.
Net income climbed to €1.05 billion ($1.29 billion), or €0.25 a share, from €869 million, or €0.19, a year earlier. That topped consensus forecasts for earnings of €0.21 a share.
Sales jumped 29 per cent to €9.5 billion. Mobile phone sales rose 25 per cent to €5.87 billion, while enterprise solution sales dropped 39 per cent to €186 million. Nokia sold 75.1 million devices in the quarter, up 40 per cent from a year ago and down 10 per cent sequentially.
The Finnish handset maker said its market share rose 3 percentage points to 35 per cent.
Nokia last week said the average selling price of its devices rose to €103 in the quarter, better than the €99 or less predicted in January, due to a relatively low number of entry-level phones coming onto the market.
But operating margin slipped to 14.4 per cent from 15.1 per cent, dragged down by a poor performance in enterprise solutions. In the past three years, profitability has slipped as Nokia's focus on making cheaper phones for emerging markets like China and India took a toll on margins.