Nokia's third-quarter loss was not as large as expected, and the company forecasts a profitable quarter for the mobile phone business as the company prepares to sell new models based on Microsoft's operating system. The shares rose over 10 percent in before U.S. markets opened.

Nokia and Microsoft are progressing toward the unveiling of devices intended to support the mobile device market position of both companies. A year in the making, the partnership will soon be vetted by customers.

Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive, will likely announce a line of handsets based on Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system software in next week's Nokia World event in London.

Nokia will also continue selling and upgrading Symbian phones through 2016. Elop set a goal in February of distributing 150 million additional Symbian handsets.

Nokia has been losing pace to Google and Apple in the smartphone market. And with just 2-3 percent of the market, Windows Phone has had poor performance in the smartphone market to date. Nokia had been the world's largest handset maker since 1998 with market shares as high as 40 percent, but researcher Gartner Inc has now estimated Nokia's market share at 22.8 percent in Q2. Apple sold over 17 million iPhones in Q3 and broke records by selling more than 4 million iPhone 4S devices in the first weekend. Google Android market share is now hovering around 50 percent, and around 15 percent share for Apple.

Nokia expects to deliver a total of 12 Windows Phone 7 device lines in 2012. They should all offer clear benefits over the Symbian platform that is being phased out.

Nokia reported a Q3 net loss of $93.6 million as sales plummeted 13 percent, which was not as bad as expected, on sales of $12.3 billion, down 13 percent from a year ago. Nokia sold over 106 million handheld units, also better than expected. Smartphone sales were down 38 percent from year-over-year, lagging at 16.8 million. Although low-end phone sales were more than estimated, Nokia took a hit on margins. Operating margins were down to 2.4 percent in the third quarter, compared to 11.3 percent the previous year, and average sales prices were down 20 percent from the prior year.