Looks like no one bothered to tell Nokia that there's an economic downturn in progress. The Finnish phonemaker issued a strong fourth-quarter earnings report Thursday, announcing that profits rose 44 percent from a year ago to $2.66 billion while sales spiked 34 percent to $22.8 billion. On a conference call with analyst Thursday morning, chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo called it an "impressive fourth quarter" and said that Nokia's performance "seems at odds with the volatility we are all witnessing in the equity markets and financial sector." Not that he's complaining about that, of course. The world's largest phonemaker also announced that its global market share grew to an estimated 40 percent in the fourth quarter. The company shipped 133.5 million handsets in Q4, almost three times the number shipped by its closest rival, Samsung, as Nokia CFO Rick Simonson pointed out during today's call with analysts.