Problems continue to haunt Nokia as the Finnish mobile phone giant said on Thursday that its June quarter results may not be too pleasing to investors, who were rattled enough in the previous periods as the once mighty global phone maker gradually loses its market leadership.

Losses were already seen in the first three months of the current year and the numbers to be reflected after June will not be too encouraging as Nokia warned of negative profit margins in the period after the company's mobile products registered lower sales turnovers than expected.

Since it launched the Lumia, Nokia's new smartphone powered by Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, the company has shipped out some two million units but tech market research firm IDC has estimated that short of one million handsets were only sold since October last year.

In contrast, leading smartphone makers Apple and Samsung have breached the 100 million mark since the past two quarters as Apple's iPhone and Samsung's slew of Galaxy phones left behind the Lumia in global sales.

Even Nokia's comfortable territory, the feature phones market, was not spared by the competitors this year as the company saw its worldwide shares in the segment profusely slipped with the arrival of cheap dual-SIM phones quickly accepted by global device consumers wishing to capitalise on offerings of enjoying two network services in a single handset.

Analysts said that by the time Nokia had caught up with the rage, low-priced units from China have flooded global markets and the company's version proved a laggard and pricey at the same time.

Nokia's reactionary behaviour has been blamed as the key reason for its consistent decline since Apple wowed the world with the first iPhone smartphone and Google followed suit with its Android mobile platform that rival phone makers immediately picked as their preferred operating system.

Four years after, Apple was crowned as the king of smartphones while Samsung snatched Nokia's throne in the feature phone department as of the first quarter of 2012, with experts predicting that the South Korean firm will likely sustain its run once the June results start coming out next month.

Nokia seemed to agree as it conceded yesterday that its fortunes will not improve after the Q2 results, citing stiff competition that the company expects to only get stiffer as months march on to the anticipated release of its Windows 8 smartphone - the product of its collaboration with Microsoft.

Before that happens, Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop indicated on Thursday his plan to further slash the company's 53,000-strong mobile division workforce by at least 10,000, which is on top of the 14,000 job cuts that he declared shortly after assuming the Nokia top post.

Mr Elop's move will officially kill Nokia's European operations, Reuters said, as the company plans to shut down its last phone-assembly plant in Finland to cut costs and prevent more losses.

The Nokia CEO also announced closer partnership with Microsoft in order for the two to issue real quick affordable Windows smartphones that would rival the millions of Android smartphones that have been attracting the attention and money of budget-conscious consumers the world over.

The company is banking on the likelihood that fresher lines of Windows 8-based smartphones, high-end and entry-level, to be released later this year would withstand the onslaught of Apple, Google and Samsung and eventually give it some traction to recover the grounds it lost in the previous quarters.