“Nokia Oyj jumped the most in a decade after sales of its flagship smartphone exceeded analysts’ estimates, signaling the former global handset leader is making progress with a plan to stem revenue and market-share declines,” Adam Ewing reports for Bloomberg.

“Sales of the Lumia phone increased to 4 million units in the second quarter from more than 2 million in the previous period, Nokia said today,” Ewing reports. “The Espoo, Finland-based company, which lost its 14-year run as the phone-industry leader this year, still projected continuing losses at its handset business… Analysts on average projected that Nokia would ship 3.8 million Lumia phones… Last week, the price of the Lumia 900 was cut in half at AT&T Inc. to $49.99 with a two-year contract in a sign the device is struggling to pull customers away from iPhone and Android models.

Ewing reports, “Rising Lumia sales are a bright spot for a company struggling to return to profitability as it reported a fifth consecutive quarter of plunging revenue. Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop is betting on the Lumia running Microsoft Corp. software to halt gains by Apple Inc.’s iPhone and handsets using Google Inc.’s Android software… Nokia rose as high as 1.62 euros for the biggest intraday jump since April 2001.”

“The second-quarter net loss widened to 1.41 billion euros from 368 million euros. Analysts predicted a loss of 641.1 million euros, according to the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg,” Ewing reports. “Revenue tumbled 19 percent to 7.54 billion euros, compared with the 7.32 billion-euro estimate… Total smartphone sales fell 39 percent to 10.2 million units and more basic handsets rose by 2.4 percent to 73.5 million units.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: When 4 million units of a highly-promoted phone is cause for massive celebration, call the hearse.

Nokia just crawled over a bar that was buried underground. Whoop-de-doo!