Nokia, the embattled Finnish former leading mobile phone maker, surprised markets on Thursday with a report that sales of its new Lumia smartphones have boosted fourth-quarter earnings, triggering a jump in its share price, following six consecutive quarterly losses.

Nokia sold 4.4m Lumia devices in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing its total smartphone shipments to 6.6m devices, the first rise in smartphone shipment numbers in a year.

However, the firm expects its main handset unit to post a fall in net sales in the fourth quarter of 2012, to €3.9bn from €6bn a year earlier, with total unit shipments projected at 86.3m units, down from 113.5m.

IHS iSuppli tech research company said last month that Samsung is expected to account for 29% of worldwide cellphone shipments, up from 24% in 2011

Nokia would fall to the runner-up spot, the first time since 1998 it was not in peak position for overall cellphone shipments during a full calendar year.

“The competitive reality of the cellphone market in 2012 was ‘live by the smartphone; die by the smartphone,’” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS. “Smartphones represent the fastest-growing segment of the cellphone market - - and will account for nearly half of all wireless handset shipments for all of 2012. Samsung’s successes and Nokia’s struggles in the cellphone market this year were determined entirely by the two companies’ divergent fortunes in the smartphone sector.”

Global smartphone shipments were set to rise by 35.5% in 2012, while overall cellphone shipments would increase by approximately 1%. This rapid growth would propel 2012 smartphone penetration to 47%, up from 35% in 2011.

HS iSuppli said the Samsung and Apple duopoly represents the dominant force in the smartphone market, with the two companies accounting for 49% of shipments in 2012, up from 39% in 2011. While Nokia and Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry, also held double-digit shares of the market in 2011, Samsung and Apple remain the only two players that will each command a double-digit portion of the smartphone space in 2012.

Nokia's share price rose almost 18%.

Commenting on the preliminary Q4 financial information, Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, said: "We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in Devices & Services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks. We focused on our priorities and as a result we sold a total of 14 million Asha smartphones and Lumia smartphones while managing our costs efficiently, and Nokia Siemens Networks delivered yet another very good quarter."

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