Microsoft hit by biggest loss in its history on Nokia smartphones

Microsoft has effectively admitted defeat in its bid to become a major player in the mobile phone market

As Apple announced iPhone revenue was up 59 per cent over the last year, Microsoft effectively admitted defeat in its bid to become a major player in the mobile phone market.

The once-dominant computing giant announced a net loss of $3.2 bn (£2.1bn) after substantially writing down the value of its smartphone business.

It follows a $7.5bn writedown relating to the mobile devices division it bought from the Finnish firm Nokia in April 2014.

For the same period last year the company reported a net income of $4.6bn.

Meanwhile, Apple said that shipments for the iPhone came in at 47.5 million and the iPad sipped 10.9 million units.

“We had an amazing quarter, with iPhone revenue up 59 per cent over last year,” the company’s chief executive officer Tim Cook said in the earnings release, adding that it had also had a great start for the Apple Watch. Strong Chinese sales boosted the earnings.

Despite the strong results, Apple stock fell by 7 per cent in after-hours trading as it sold fewer iPhones than Wall Street forecast, although it later clawed back some of those losses.

Calling the iPhone 6 “a runaway success” Mr Cook said that the product category is continuing to gain significant market share and that the phone’s growth was triple the rate of the smartphone market overall.