Reporting its third-quarter earnings on Thursday, Finnish handset-maker Nokia revealed that it suffered a €576 million loss during the quarter; with its sales plunging 19 percent year-on-year.

According to the statistics put forth by Nokia, the company's net sales during the third quarter dropped down to €7.2 billion, from the last year same quarter sales figures of €8.9 billion.

In its third-quarter report, Nokia said that its smartphone sales for the quarter stood at barely 6.3 million units, which marked a notable decline of 63 percent as compared to the company's smartphone sales in the 2011 third quarter. Moreover, the overall handsets sales of the company fell to 76.6 million, reflecting a 15 drop year-on-year.

Despite the sales decline, which incidentally underscored a 4 percent better performance quarter-on-quarter, Nokia's €576 million loss during the third quarter was comparatively better than the company's first-quarter and second-quarter loss figures of €1.3 billion and €826 million respectively.

Nonetheless, noting that the third quarter was "a difficult quarter in our Devices and Services business," Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement that, during the quarter, the company not only "continued to manage through a tough transitional quarter for our smart devices," but also "shared the exciting innovation ahead with our new line of Lumia products."