Solid but unspectacular just won’t cut it for the Lumia series. That’s the takeaway following Nokia’s (NASDAQ:NOK) quarterly earnings announcement yesterday. As expected, the Finnish company reported significant losses, totaling $1 billion on $9.22 billion net sales.

As a result of Nokia’s protracted recovery period after once being the world’s undisputed leader in mobile phone manufacturing, Nokia stock has been bearish. Compared to February 2011, Nokia shares are valued at just 80 percent of what they used to be. This was the month when Nokia first mooted a move from the old Symbian operating system to Windows Phone, as defined by the Lumia series of smartphones.

Nokia actually sold a million more mobile phones in Q2 2012 than in Q1 2012 – a total of 83.7 million phones were shipped last quarter. However, the average price of all Nokia phones sold went down to $59 from $63. Recently, AT&T announced a $50 price cut for the Nokia Lumia 900, a device currently considered the manufacturer’s flagship.

While the Lumia line made some improvements in quarterly sales, doubling to a total of 4 million, this apparently wasn’t enough for Nokia. As mentioned, the Lumia, particularly the 900, has been a “solid but unspectacular” seller despite its positive reviews and Best in Show award at CES 2012.

Lumia sales were far from impressive in America, as only 600,000 units were shipped in the United States in Q2 2012. Symbian-powered smartphones, on the other hand, shipped to the tune of 6.2 million, down from 10 million in Q1 2012.

Nokia can only hope that the upcoming Windows Phone 8 platform will do more to change the company’s fortunes once the new operating system is released in Q4 2012. Current Windows Phone 7 devices such as the Lumia cannot be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, which certainly wouldn’t help Nokia as it tries to avoid another financially depressing quarter.