Nokia: Just 600,000 Phones Sold In North America

Nokia may have roughly doubled Windows Phone sales quarter-on-quarter, but the company is still struggling to make an impact on the North American market, shipping just 600,000 handsets in the country. According to Nokia's Q2 2012 financials [pdf link], the US and Canada were by far the least interested in the company's wares, with Asia-Pacific leading the volumes of devices and services sales (with 28.6m units).

Symbian continues to slide, meanwhile, blamed for much of Nokia's issues. Symbian's difficulties in penetrating the North American market to begin with meant it was the only region not particularly impacted by the OS' decline. "All regions showed a significant year-on-year decline in the second quarter 2012 except for North America," Nokia reported, "where the sharp decline in sales of Symbian devices was more than offset by sales of our Lumia devices."

Meanwhile, year-on-year average smartphone selling price increased, thanks to Windows Phones being generally more expensive than their Symbian counterparts. ASP was €186 ($229) in Q2.

However, all is not good in Nokia's gross margin: a "significant" year-on-year and sequential decline was down to "approximately €220 million of allowances related to excess component inventory, future purchase commitments and an inventory revaluation related to our Lumia, Symbian and MeeGo devices" the company says.

AT&T recently halved the price of the Lumia 900 in the US, now offering the smartphone for $49.99 on a new, two-year agreement. However, the handset will not be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, instead only getting the Windows Phone 7.8 halfway-house update.