Nokia this morning announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2012, and as we've seen with the company's previous reports, things were a little rough for the Finnish firm. Nokia has revealed that it suffered an operating loss of €576 million in Q3, which works out to be around $754.9 million. However, that's actually an improvement compared to recent quarters, with the company losing $1.013 billion in Q2 and $1.7 billion in Q1. Lumia shipments for the quarter finished at 2.9 million, which is a decrease from 4 million in Q2 2012.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop recognized that his company had a tough third quarter. "As we expected, Q3 was a difficult quarter in our Devices & Services business," the exec said, adding that Nokia had "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."

Elop went on to say that Nokia is continuing a transition and that it plans to carefully watch its financials, be more competitive, get its Devices and Services arm to a positive cash flow and provide more value to shareholders. Nokia said that it expects the fourth quarter of 2012 to be a challenging one for its Smart Devices business, pointing to "product transitions" and the company's ramp up plan for the arrival of new devices.

The third quarter of 2012 was a difficult one for Nokia, but with the announcement of its upcoming Windows Phone 8 products, it's not a surprise to learn that Lumia shipments dropped off quite a bit from the previous quarter. Nokia recently took the wraps off of the Lumia 920 and 820, both of which will arrive on AT&T here in the U.S. in November. T-Mobile will soon offer the Lumia 810, and it's also rumored that a device dubbed the Lumia 822 will make its way to Verizon. If you're interested in reading through Nokia's Q3 2012 report to help kickstart your Thursday morning, you can find it at the link below. The company will be holding a conference call to discuss its earnings later this morning that we'll be listening in on, so stay tuned for any other interesting tidbits that may be revealed.

Via Nokia