Summary Nokia's overall year-on-year sales fell 17 percent to12.7 billion euros ($17.3 billion).
HELSINKI (AFP) - Nokia announced falling mobile phone sales and lower profits on Thursday in its last financial report before handing its mobile phone business over to Microsoft.
The former world leader s sales of mobile devices dropped 29 percent in 2013 compared to the outcome the previous year.
Nokia s overall year-on-year sales, not including the handset business, fell 17 percent to 12.7 billion euros ($17.3 billion).
Nokia s telecom services business, a former joint venture with Siemens known as NSN -- which will now be the company s mainstay -- reported an 18-percent decline in sales to 11.3 billion euros in 2013.
However, NSN managed to turn a 795-million-euro operating loss in 2012 into an operating profit of 420 million euros in 2013.
The company s interim chief executive, Risto Siilasmaa, described the end of 2013 as a "watershed moment in Nokia s history" referring to the November decision by shareholders to sell the handheld business to the US tech giant Microsoft for 5.44 billion euros ($7.35 billion).
The deal, concluded in November, marked the end of the once iconic Nokia branded mobile handsets, which have experienced a spectacular fall in sales since the arrival of Apple s touchscreen iPhone in 2007.
"I am pleased with the progress we have made thus far in our strategy evaluation and excited by the opportunities ahead," Siilasmaa said in a statement, which added that the new slimmed-down company was "more focused, more innovative and more disciplined."
