Nokia struggles as rivals twist the knife

Mobile firm reports profit slump and fall in market share

Nokia has faced stiff competition from Apple, Google and RIM

Nokia has posted disappointing first-quarter results as the company struggles to compete in the smartphone market.

Commentators have suggested that Nokia's first-quarter profit slump was a result of its losing market share in the smartphone market to the likes of Apple's iPhone.

"We continue to face tough competition with respect to the high end of our mobile device portfolio, as well as challenging market conditions on the infrastructure side," Nokia chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in a statement.

Nokia's net sales for the quarter stood at €9.5bn (£8.2bn), a drop of 21 per cent from the previous quarter. The mobile phone giant saw its shares drops by around 13 per cent on the news.

The results also come in strong contrast to Apple's yesterday, which reported an impressive year-on-year rise in iPhone sales of 131 per cent to reach 8.75 million units.

The smartphone market has seen strong growth in the past four quarters, and Nokia has faced competition from Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry.

RIM has extended its business phones into the consumer space, Apple has made its iPhone cheaper and Google has launched its open source Android platform.

The going is not expected to get any easier for Nokia when Microsoft joins the fray with Windows Phone 7 later this year.