Andre Yoskowitz
22 Apr 2012 16:15
Nokia has lost its German court case this week, another blow to the company's reputation.
The court in Mannheim found the Finnish-based mobile giant violated patents owned by IPCom, the German patent firm.
Overall, the ruling is quite useless, however, as Nokia no longer uses the methods or the phones affected: "We respectfully disagree with this decision, but almost all of these phones predated the grant of the patent in February 2011 and our products today use different methods. The judgment does not rule whether Nokia's current mobile devices infringe the patent."
The news comes on the heels of the company's quarterly earnings, which were terrible. For the Q1, Nokia posted a net loss of $1.2 billion on revenue of $9.72 billion. Revenue fell 30 percent year-over-year and the company had a profit of $451 million in the same quarter last year.
Most harsh for the phone maker was smartphone sales, which dropped by 55 percent to $2.23 billion. Overall mobile phone device sales fell 40 percent to $5.5 billion.