At Nokia these days, even the good news gets delivered in an ugly wrapper. Strip out one-off charges, including a €908m writedown on the group’s networking equipment business, and the handset maker’s earnings would have been better than expected. What investors got instead was a surprise third-quarter loss. Unimpressed by a modest quarter-on-quarter improvement in phone shipments, a stabilisation of selling prices and an improved full-year outlook, they marked the company’s shares down more than 10 per cent on Thursday.

Problems at Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture with Siemens of Germany, are the last thing Nokia needs as it tries to convince investors that it can regain its lost mojo. The unit, which makes the switches and base stations that power mobile networks, is bleeding market share in an industry where scale matters. Ironically, Nokia’s efforts to tighten the rigging at NSN after big losses in 2007 and 2008 may be partly to blame for its troubles.