LAS VEGAS—Can Nokia make inroads into
the U.S. smartphone market?
The Finnish phone maker has certainly
managed to attract buzz at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) here,
where its products on display include the high-end Lumia 900 and 800 and the
more midmarket Lumia 710.
Ever since Nokia opted to abandon its
homegrown operating systems (including Symbian) in favor of Windows Phone, a
new line of products and a renewed push for market share were inevitable. Now
that the contours of Nokia’s overarching strategy are more visible, it’s clear
that the company is betting that a small collection of higher-quality
smartphones will offer an effective counterargument to the market flood of
Google Android devices of highly varying quality.
The Lumia 900, in many ways the U.S.
counterpart to the internationally released Lumia 800, features a 4.3-inch
AMOLED display (with 800-by-400 resolution) and 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE)
support, along with a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It will debut
sometime on AT&T in the coming months, according to Nokia.
“We’ve recreated the popular
polycarbonate unibody design pioneered by the Nokia N9 and the Nokia Lumia 800
for this new, bigger model,” read a Jan. 9 note on the Conversations by Nokia blog, referring to two
earlier high-end Nokia smartphones. “It’s really hard to do it any damage from
our experience here.”
Meanwhile, Nokia is also targeting the
middle ground with the Lumia 710, a midmarket device with a 3.7-inch screen
(also 800-by-400 resolution) and a 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor. It will appear
on T-Mobile Jan. 11. Nokia and the carrier are heavily marketing the device
based on its low price—$49 with a two-year contract.
That broad range of Windows Phone
devices—with key offerings at both the high end and more midmarket—is what will
ultimately help Microsoft in its quest for greater smartphone adoption, said
Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Windows Phone. “We’re going to
continue to have that range,” he told eWEEK
in a Jan. 10 interview. “Top to bottom, we’ll have the best story.”
In addition to Nokia, other
manufacturing partners such as HTC have committed to building a new generation
of Windows Phone loaded with Mango, which includes hundreds of tweaks and new
features. Also during CES, HTC announced the Titan II, a 4G LTE-capable device
with a 4.7-inch WVGA screen due on AT&T at an unannounced future
point.
But those other manufacturers are
already well-established in the U.S. smartphone market. Nokia’s
quest—symbolized by its big CES push—is to join their ranks as a major
competitor.
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