Analysts warn no evidence of turnaround yet for Nokia's Lumia

The company's flagship store in downtown Helsinki said there would be a wait of a few days for the Lumia 920. Finnish telecoms company DNA said "many hundreds" of customers were still on its waiting list and that the backlog was unlikely to be cleared before Christmas.

"The situation is that we still don't have the 920s," said DNA retail executive Sami Aavikko, saying consumer interest in

Lumia had improved with the newest models while declining to give sales figures.

Some sources said one problem has been a shortage of Qualcomm chips. Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said in November it would be "exiting the calendar year with supply and demand more evenly matched", and a spokeswoman declined to comment further.

Elop told Finland's public broadcaster YLE on Tuesday there was "very positive activity underway" with Lumia sales. Nokia has declined to comment on sales data or confirm any component shortages, and a spokesman said it was "working very hard to get devices into the hands of consumers as quickly as possible".

Given low supplies, however, analysts said it was hard to gauge the real level of demand for the new Lumia phones.

Some industry executives and analysts have said consumer recognition for Windows Phones has improved thanks to spending on billboards and other advertisements over the past month.

"Are they lining up like they do for the iPhone? No. Are sales covering our costs, for instance marketing? Yes," said Deutsche Telekom Germany's marketing chief, Michael Hagspihl.

Many telecoms carriers as well as network equipment executives are hoping the Lumia succeeds, to prevent Samsung and Apple from gaining too much power. Nordea analyst Sami Sarkamies was one of the more optimistic analysts, saying investors should focus on the improvement, albeit from a low base.

"My take is that there we have a seen a pretty substantial development since last year," he said. "Previously there hadn't been that market pull."

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