Report: Low-End Nokia Windows Phone on Tap (UPDATED 2/7)
Reports have another Nokia Lumia device heading into the Windows Phone stable.
Citing two unnamed sources "close to the company," the Reuters news service today reported that Nokia will unveil a Nokia Lumia 610 next week at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.
The key selling point of the device is supposed to be a very low price tag designed to make the Lumia, and by extension the Windows Phone OS, more competitive with Google Android-based devices.
According to the report, Nokia also next week will reveal a global version of the Lumia 900, the high-end phone AT&T is scheduled to roll out in the United States in the middle of next month.
If true, the release would bring to four the number of phones Nokia has created for the Windows Phone platform since October, when it unveiled the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710. Early last year, Nokia announced plans to pivot from delivering phones with its own Symbian OS to devices based on Windows Phone. For Microsoft, the success of Nokia is critical to the market share of the Windows Phone OS, which is desperately far behind Android and Apple iOS but seems to be gaining steam.
Reuters didn't say what countries or what networks would get the Lumia 610.
UPDATE, 2/27: Nokia unveiled the low-cost Lumia 610, which it says is aimed at younger smartphone users, at the Mobile World Congress event. The phone will cost 189 euros, making it the least-expensive Lumia phone. It will begin shipping in Q2 2012 and run on a Windows Phone software update that is "available from April," the company said in its press release.
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| Lumia 610 (Source: Nokia) |
The company also announced that beginning Q2 2012, it will make the Lumia 900 available outside the United States "in a DC-HSPA variant, for high speed data connection (42Mbits download) in countries where LTE is not available." The phone will cost 480 euros.
Nokia's release does not say in which countries either phone will be made available.
Posted by Scott Bekker on February 22, 2012