Nokia this morning unveiled the first two Windows Phones to result from the partnership it struck with Microsoft earlier this year. It’s a key moment for Microsoft in the Redmond company’s attempt to regain traction against Google and Apple in the smartphone market.
The higher-end Nokia Lumia 800 (right) and the budget-minded Nokia Lumia 710 (below) are slated to be available starting next month in selected European countries, before rolling out to Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan by the end of the year. The devices will expand to the U.S. and China early next year.
Betting on Microsoft is a big gamble for Nokia, which is struggling to reverse a slide that has seen it fall from the No. 1 smartphone vendor in the world (with 37 percent market share) to No. 3 (with less than 16 percent) behind Apple and Samsung in the course of a year.
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft executive, unveiled the new phones at Nokia World in London this morning.
Microsoft’s communications chief Frank Shaw strikes an optimistic tone in a blog post today about the Nokia deal: He writes, “We’re achieving scale and gaining ecosystem momentum by working together with mobile operators, developers and content providers to demonstrate that our ‘people first’ approach to the smartphone experience is unique and compelling.”
Here’s how Nokia is pitching the two phones.
The stunningly social Nokia Lumia 800 features head-turning design, vivid colors (cyan, magenta and black) and the best social and Internet performance, with one-touch social network access, easy grouping of contacts, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9. It features a 3.7 inch AMOLED ClearBlack curved display blending seamlessly into the reduced body design, and a 1.4 GHz processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor. The Nokia Lumia 800 contains an instant-share camera experience based on leading Carl Zeiss optics, HD video playback, 16GB of internal user memory and 25GB of free SkyDrive storage for storing images and music. The estimated retail price for the Nokia Lumia 800 will be approximately 420 EUR, excluding taxes and subsidies.
The purposely built, no-nonsense Nokia Lumia 710 can be personalized with exchangeable back covers and thousands of apps to bring the Lumia experience to more people around the world. The Nokia Lumia 710 is designed for instant social & image sharing, and the best browsing experience with IE9. It is available in black and white with black, white, cyan, fuchsia and yellow back covers. With the same 1.4 GHz processor, hardware acceleration and graphics processor as the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 710 delivers high performance at an affordable price. The estimated retail price for the Nokia Lumia 710 will be approximately 270 EUR, excluding taxes and subsidies.
