Nokia To Unveil Cheaper Windows Phone

Nokia debuted a new, cheaper and more budget-friendly smartphone using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, targeting a wider market for its new range of smartphones.

Cheaper phones are the key for Nokia and Microsoft in their battle to win a larger share of the market, analysts say.

In addition to the new Lumia 610 Nokia will also unveil at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona a global version of its high-end Lumia 900 phone, which AT&T is scheduled to roll out in the United States, the sources said.

Nokia is set to unveil the phones at a news conference next Monday, on February 27.

Nokia last year dumped its own smartphone software platforms in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, which has so far had a limited impact due to the high prices of phones using it.

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Android Catching iOS

Tablet computers loaded with Google’s Android operating system narrowed the lead of Apple’s iPad on the global market in the fourth quarter, research firm Strategy Analytics said on Thursday.

Global tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in the fourth quarter, growing 2-1/2 fold from 10.7 million a year earlier, the research firm stated.

“Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes,” analyst Neil Mawston said in a statement.

Android’s market share rose to 39 percent from 29 percent a year earlier, while Apple’s share slipped to 58 percent from 68 percent a year before.

The tablet computer market grew 260 percent last year to 66.9 million units as consumers are increasingly buying tablets in preference to netbooks and even entry-level notebooks or desktops.

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Windows Phone 7 Roadmap Leaked?

A purported Microsoft slide showing the 2012 Windows Phone roadmap seems to indicate that we could see the next major update by mid-2012.

The Tango update is scheduled for the second quarter of 2012, but it won’t be aimed at high-end phones. Instead, Tango is supposed to bring Windows Phone to dirt cheap devices, or “products with the best prices” as Microsoft calls them. This seems to indicate that it will be even better at resource management than Mango, which is already far ahead of iOS and Android in terms of its OS footprint.

The big new, of course, is Apollo. The new OS is scheduled to appear in Q4 and it should enable Microsoft to offer competitive superphones. Currently Windows Phone devices max out at WVGA resolutions and single-core Qualcomm chips. Apollo could change all this and pave the way for dual-core designs with high resolution screens, probably 720p.

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Nokia Drops Luxury Brand Vertu

Nokia’s Vertu mobile phones sell for thousands but the firm is looking to unload this relatively low volume part of its business as it tries to focus on producing Windows Phones. According to the Financial Times (FT), Nokia has appointed Goldman Sachs to oversee the sale of its UK subsidiary.

Vertu’s market value is not known but the firm makes between 300 to 400 millionin annual sales and, according to the FT, private equity groups have expressed interest. The brand is fairly well known as a maker of expensive mobile phones and it might attract high-end ‘designer’ brands that want to break into the mobile phone market.

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Intel, Samsung Behind New Phone OS

Two Linux software groups have decided to collaborate, they said on Wednesday, to develop a new operating system for cellphones and other devices in partnerships with Intel and Samsung Electronics.

However, analysts said the new Tizen platform is likely to struggle to attract wider developer and manufacturer support to compete with the dozen or so other mobile operating systems in a market dominated by Apple and Google’s Linux-based Android.

Even industry majors Nokia and Hewlett-Packard have canceled their mobile platforms this year.

“The best hope for them is that big operators get worried by Android’s increasing smartphone dominance and decide to consciously switch their allegiances to rival platforms to restrict Google’s huge influence over the mobile market,” said analyst Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics.

LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation said the new Tizen platform is an open-source, standards-based software platform that supports multiple devices including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle ‘infotainment’ systems.

The initial release is planned for the first quarter of 2012, enabling the first devices using Tizen to come to market in mid-2012, the two groups said.

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