Nokia's China sales dip 20 percent last year

Nokia reveals the finer details of its decline in 2011, which showed weakening in almost every key area. One of the notable drops was in its key market China, where the number of devices sold dropped 20 percent to hit 65.8 million units.

The company made its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing in the U.S. on Thursday, which revealed that revenue in China dropped by 18 percent last year to 5.1 billion euros (US$6.7 billion), after jumping 23 percent in 2010.

In terms of net sales for phones by area, China was the third most important contributor, accounting for 17 percent of revenue, down 1 percentage point from 2010, the filing stated.

News site Tech in Asia added in its report on Friday that Nokia's situation was a lot more critical than what the numbers suggested, in light of China's growing middle-class's "switch to Android or iOS in growing numbers".

It noted that the only number going up in China was net sales for the Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) business, which grew 1 percent.

However, the report noted that this may not be directly comparable to 2010, because of Nokia's acquisition of the majority of Motorola Solutions' wireless network infrastructure assets in 2011.

On the global front, Nokia made an operating loss of US$1.5 billion, compared to an operating profit of US$2 billion in 201, the filing showed.