Finnish phone giant Nokia has announced the release of its interim financial report for Q3 2012, revealing net sales of €7.239 billion for the quarter. This is down from €7.5 billion in Q2 2012 and a year-on-year drop of €1.741 billion compared to Q3 2011’s €8.980 billion.

Compounding the bad results is the fact that the firm again suffered an operating loss amounting to €576 million, luckily not as much as Q2 2012’s figure of €826 million.

Nokia’s mobile phone shipments increased quarter-on-quarter to 77 million units, following  strong sales for its new range of Asha full-touch devices with volumes of 6.5 million units. However, Lumia shipments dropped from last quarter’s four million smartphones to 2.9 million units.

The decrease is not that surprising since buyers appear to be holding off on purchasing the current line of Windows Phone Mango-operating Lumia smartphones, until the Q4 2012 release of the company’s Windows Phone 8-running Lumia 920 and 820 devices. This despite Nokia’s software update plans for its current range of Lumia devices including the Lumia 900, 800, and 710.    

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop stated that Q3 2012 was a difficult quarter. “In Q3, we continued to manage through a tough transitional quarter for our smart devices business as we shared the exciting innovation ahead with our new line of Lumia products.”

“In our mobile phones business, the positive consumer response to our new Asha full touch smartphones translated into strong sales. And in Q3, our mobile phones business delivered a solid quarter with sequential sales growth and improved contribution margin,” Elop concluded.

In related news, Nokia also recently unveiled two new Asha full-touch features phones, the Asha 308 and 309 budget devices.