Nokia announced its second quarter financial results today. Some interesting things came to light with the reports. First, the head of Nokia's mobile devices unit said the company will be bringing a touch screen device to the market later this year. Second, Nokia's 1.34 million-per-day handset sales put another device's sales into perspective.Kapow! That's what Nokia effectively said to Apple today. During the second quarter, Nokia sold 122 million mobile phones, which breaks down to an average of 1.34 million sold each day. At this rate, Nokia alone may sell close to half a billion mobile phones during the 2008 calendar year. That's a hell of a lot of phones.

During the second quarter, Nokia sold 10 million N series devices, which are its multimedia-focused smartphones, such as the N78, N81, and N95. It also sold another 2 million E series devices, which are its business-line smartphones with enterprise-specific functions and programs. The N series and E series devices are more capable than standard handsets and command higher prices, with some of them reaching close to $1,000 (the E90). Nokia made gains in the North American market, but they weren't all that great. Nokia sold 4.5 million devices here, a 10% increase over the year-ago period.

What's more exciting than Nokia's sales figures, however, is a solid confirmation from Kai Oistamo, Nokia's head of mobile devices, that the Finnish company will be bringing a touch device to the market this year. This unnamed new device will not, however, be a high-end device. Instead, it will be aimed at the mass market. Oistamo also said that Nokia will be bringing an entire range of touch devices to the market, spanning entry-level to high-level phones.

The latest iteration of the touch-based S60 user interface I've seen will certainly bring enhanced usability to Nokia's N series and E series phones, something for which they are long overdue. Nokia did not specify which platform the touch-based devices will use. Whichever it is, the market is eagerly waiting to see what Nokia does with it and what innovations the market leader can bring to mobile hardware.