US lawsuit alleging Nokia lied over Lumia sales is dismissed, as shareholder drops charge

Nokia has revealed that a US suit filed by an investor who claimed the company had overstated the introduction of its Windows Phone has been dismissed, seven months after it was filed.

Nokia says that the case — Chmielinski v. Nokia Corporation, filed in New York in May — has closed after Nokia shareholder Robert Chmielinski agreed to dismiss it without any compensation. Chmielinski had claimed that the company had deliberately misled the market and investors after lying about sales figures relating to its Lumia devices; CEO Stephen Elop and CFO Timo Ihamuotila had been named defendants.

“Nokia’s migration to a Windows platform was not going as well as represented,” read the complaint that Chmielinski had filed, via his lawyers, in May.

Chmielinski had been seeking unspecified damages plus costs. He claimed that company and the two aforementioned executives willfully misled and defrauded shareholders between October 2011 and April 2012 by making false statements about a potential turnaround thanks to strong Lumia sales.

The switch to the Windows Phone platform did nothing to stop Nokia’s position in the smartphone market from deteriorating, Chmielinski said, and he believed that this led to significant economic losses for thousands of Nokia shareholders.

Well received by pundits, Nokia’s Lumia devices have yet to challenge Apple or Android’s dominance in the smartphone market. The company did, however, make an important step this month when it launched a customized version of its Lumia 920 in China. China Mobile, the world’s leading operation, will offer the $739 device; that’s notable since it doesn’t offer the iPhone.

Nokia lost $754 million in its last quarter, during which time it sold just 2.9 million Lumia phones, down 1.1 million sequentially.

Here’s the brief statement put out by the Finnish firm today:

Class action complaint filed against Nokia in May 2012 has been dismissed

Espoo, Finland – Nokia Corporation announced on May 4, 2012 that it was aware of the filing of a securities class action complaint naming Nokia Corporation as a defendant. Also two of Nokia’s executives were named as defendants. The case, entitled Chmielinski v. Nokia Corporation, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on May 3, 2012. After further investigation, the plaintiffs have agreed to dismiss the case against all defendants without any compensation being paid to any plaintiff or their counsel by any defendant. The complaint has been withdrawn and dismissed with prejudice by the court.

Image via Nokia_fan / Flickr