Nokia Corp. sprung a surprise Thursday by saying its fourth-quarter financials aren't as bad as expected, with both its handset and network infrastructure businesses contributing sales and margins better than Nokia's forecasts.

The news gave its share price a near 14 percent lift on the Helsinki exchange to €3.45 (US$4.54).

You can see all the details in this extensive press release but the main points are:

• Better than expected sales of mobile devices, including Lumia smartphones, resulted in fourth-quarter net sales of €3.9 billion (US$5.14 billion) and the possibility of a small adjusted operating profit (after one-time costs) for the Devices & Services division. Nokia had been expecting the division to report an adjusted operating loss. The company says it shipped 86.3 million devices, including 4.4 million Lumia smartphones.

• Better than expected sales of high-margin products and lower costs helped Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) hit fourth-quarter revenues of €4 billion ($5.27 billion) and achieve an adjusted operating margin (excluding one-time costs) of between 13 percent and 15 percent, compared with the 8 percent (plus or minus 4 percent) that had been forecast.

But the company also warned that the first quarter of 2013 is already looking tough for the business, so the fourth-quarter fillip is not the start of a trend of increasingly profitable quarters.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading