Nokia Q4 boosted by license fee, 2018 outlook bleak

HELSINKI (AP) - Nokia has reported better than expected fourth quarter earnings as a result of a one-off license fee from China's Huawei, but said short-term outlook for its core network business remained bleak despite an upward trend in North American sales.

The Espoo, Finland -based maker of telecommunications gear said Thursday that its net profit for the October-December period was 709 million euros ($883 million) against 672 million a year earlier.

Profits were boosted by a one-off patent payment of 210 million euros but operating profit from the networks business was down 25 percent. Sales were flat at 6.7 billion euros.

CEO Rajeev Suri said he expected market conditions to improve substantially in 2019 and 2020 during the full roll-out of the next generation 5G networks.