Mobile losses dragging back Siemens profits

German conglomerate Siemens http://www.siemens.com has announced that its mobile phone business has continued to make losses, despite a rise in first quarter profits. As the Financial Times (FT) http://www.ft.com reports, the Munich-based company reported strong earnings in its autos, medical and power generation sections, but losses in the mobile phone business were only offset by the 208 million euro sale of a portion of shares held in Juniper Networks. The loss of 143 million euros in its mobile division is the company's third straight quarterly loss and is mainly due to its handsets not being able to lure customers away from bigger competitors such as Samsung and Nokia.