Good sales performance of the latest line-up of Nokia Windows phones helped the company post a quarterly profit for Q4 2012. It sold 4.4 million Lumia handsets in the last quarter, up from 2.9 million in the previous three-month period.

The entire Nokia Group made 8.04 billion euros (£6.76 billion) in net sales over the period, while operating profit has been revealed to be 439 million euros (£369 million). It marks a significant improvement over the Q3 results, which saw the company lose money to the tune of 576 million euros (£484 million).

Net sales (in terms of revenues) are down year-on-year, from 10 billion euros (£8.41 billion) in Q4 2011, but the company made a staggering loss at the time of almost a billion euros, so the swing back to profitability over the past year has been quite dramatic.

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Of course, aside from the strong sales performance of its Windows Phone 8 devices, Nokia has undertaken a major restructuring process in the past year which will have accounted for a lot of the change in fortunes, but this must be seen as a good step for a former mobile giant on its journey back to the limelight.

The full earnings report can be found (in pdf form) at www.results.nokia.com.