Windows Phone still lags behind Android, iOS, and RIM, but this year, Nokia plans to change that. One such way is the Lumia 710 which is available for free at Walmart in black and white on a two year contract through T-Mobile. For customers renewing their contract, the smartphone will cost just $49.99 which is quite the discount from the original $379.99 price tag.

When it comes to Windows Phone, the Nokia Lumia 710 is more of a base model out of the Lumia line. Still though, specs aren’t bad at all.

• 3.7 inch screen
• 480×800 resolution
• Gorilla Glass display for extra protection
• 1.4GHZ single core processor
• 512MB RAM
• 8GB storage
• 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, and 720p HD video recording
• Up to 7 hour 40 minute talk time with 3G

The phone was announced in December and is a good entry phone to the Windows Phone operating system. Nokia also announced the Lumia 900 at CES which got very positive reviews overall.

Via PC Mag:

“Nokia first announced that it would focus its efforts on Windows Phone-based devices in Feb. 2011, and the first Nokia-Windows smartphones were introduced at October’s Nokia World in London. Though the Windows operating system has been well-reviewed, particularly the ”Mango” update, the mobile OS has struggled to compete against Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.”

The company and Microsoft have a lot of catching up to do, but the lineup of smartphones thus far, shows that there’s some promise. While only commanding around 1% of the mobile phone market share, this may just be the year that they change that and overtake RIM for the number three spot.

Windows Phone Gets A Boost, Nokia Lumia 710 Free At Walmart is a post from: The Inquisitr

Nokia has been announcing new phones, particularly the Lumia 900, and there’s high hopes for the company this year. They’re betting all their cards on Windows Phone and plan on bringing out a better line of smartphones in 2012.

Competition with Samsung is heating up, especially considering the CEO, Choi Gee-sung, said that they’re confident they will outsell Nokia this year which is definitely a possibility considering the success of their Galaxy Tablets and smartphones.

Via AllThingsD:

“Indeed, Morgan Stanley expects shipments of Nokia’s new Windows Phones to hit 37 million units in 2012, and 64 million units in 2013.”

Can Nokia pull it off? It all depends. Their line of Windows phones did okay last year, but not the greatest. It is the beginning of the year after all and hopes tend to be the highest at the start.

There’s a tremendous amount of competition in the space. Android,  iOS, and RIM (in that order) are the top 3 in terms of market share, with Nokia behind at around 1% market share which was pretty steady all through 2011.

With the maker of BlackBerry continually declining, there is a good chance that if Nokia and Microsoft pull off a great partnership, they could potentially surpass RIM this year which, frankly, wouldn’t be too difficult if they can hit their numbers and if more people continue to flock over to other phones, as they have been doing for a while now.

“We’ve got a lot of room to go in selling Windows Phones,” CEO Steve Ballmer said during his remarks at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week. “But I feel very much like the work we’re doing is really going to pay off.”

Nokia Expected To Sell 37 Million Smartphones In 2012 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Competition in the mobile market keeps heating up. Samsung, maker of all things electronic, says they’re confident they’ll outsell Nokia this year and end their 14 year reign of being the biggest seller of mobile phones.

Quite the declaration from the company’s Vice Chairman and CEO, Choi Gee-sung. Samsung seems to be onto something after quickly rising to become the number one maker of smartphones in the third quarter of 2011.

Their line of Galaxy Tablets and Galaxy smartphones, especially the Galaxy S II, continue to be a very popular seller. Despite patent disputes with Apple, they continue to sell a lot of smartphones and tablets.

“Samsung’s bullish forecast is in line with some analysts, including Royal Bank of Scotland, betting Samsung would build on its momentum to overtake Nokia in 2012, but on average analysts have expected Nokia to keep its lead on the market.”

“According to the latest polls by Reuters, Nokia was expected to sell 418 million phones in 2011, versus Samsung’s 320 million, the gap narrowing this year to 388 million versus 359 million.”

Nokia is exclusively using the Windows Phone 7 OS and the Nokia Lumia 900 is their latest generation and is very promising. With that said, it’s really going to come down to a battle between Android and Windows Phone and frankly, Android is still top dog.

“”Considering how strong Nokia still is in the emerging markets, Samsung’s expectation seems to imply that Nokia will miserably fail in mature markets,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.”

As with anything, only time will tell and with it being the beginning of 2012, who knows what both companies have up their sleeves just yet.

Samsung Plans To Sell More Smartphones Than Nokia In 2012 is a post from: The Inquisitr

While market share for Windows Phone 7 isn’t the greatest, Microsoft is looking to change that. In a partnership with Nokia, the company showed off the Nokia Lumia 900 which also happens to be the first Windows Phone with 4G LTE capability.

“The model, the Lumia 900, will be available in coming months exclusively from AT&T, the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier, the companies said at an event in Las Vegas yesterday. The handset will be one of the first Windows-based phones to use the next-generation technology known as long-term evolution, or LTE. Nokia didn’t give the sales date or price details.”

Users can expect the same operating system experience, just this time in a faster package.

“The Lumia 900 is not only about a great device, but it’s also about inspiring a great ecosystem,” Nokia Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop said at the event. “An ecosystem is more than just the apps. It’s more than the device. It’s more than the operating system.”

Nokia seems to be very passionate about the smartphone and Windows Phone 7, as they should be since they announced last year that they will be going all in with Microsoft’s new mobile OS.

“The Lumia 900 is probably the best device that has carried Windows Phone so far,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC in Seattle. “This is a hot device. The issue is how quickly they can get it here. The market is moving at an incredible velocity.”

Specs of the Lumia 900:

• 4.3 inch AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass
• 800×480 resolution
• 1.4Ghz single core processor
• 512MB RAM
• 1 megapixel front facing camera, 8 megapixel rear facing camera with ability to shoot video in 720p HD
• 16GB storage
• 4G LTE support through AT&T

Microsoft Reveals The Nokia Lumia 900, First Windows Phone With 4G LTE is a post from: The Inquisitr

A recently leaked memo reveals that American and Canadian based company’s Apple, Research in Motion and Nokia may have helped the government of India spy on U.S. agencies in order to receive larger shares of the overall Indian cell phone market.

Originally reported by Indian blogger Manan Kakkar for ZDNet the report says officials in the country were given backdoor access to mobile device data. While the company’s have not reacted to the claim it was also confirmed by cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian.

While the leaked information was likely used for a variety of reasons one such example surfaced in which the Indian government allegedly used those backdoors to steal emails from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group who’s main focus is the monitoring and investigating of national security implications within the US-China economic relationship.

According to reports Indian governmental officials were most interested in Chinese cybersecurity threats. Kakkar believes that information obtained through backdoor programs may have in fact given them the information they needed for an earlier hack of Symantec by Indian hacker collective the Lords of Dharamraja.

ComputerWorld goes on to reveal even more inform about the potential hacks and reasoning behind Apple, RIM and Nokia’s decision to move forward with backdoor device access.

Here’s a partial screen grab of the leaked document:

In the meantime representatives from all three tech company’s have denied their involvement in any type of backdoor access program for their mobile devices.

Do you think it is wrong for North American company’s to give backdoor access for mobile data to other countries in exchange for a larger market share in those regions?

Apple, RIM and Nokia Allegedly Helping India Spy On United States is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Nokia RAZR had that sweet-ass web browser that almost let you check movie times from your phone.

Before iPhone is a post from: The Inquisitr

Technological Setbacks is a post from: The Inquisitr

Yesterday evening, Nokia sent out press invites for an event to be held at CES 2012 and, interestingly, it looks to be a Windows Phone-focused one as you may be able to tell from the invite shown above with “Metro UI” essentially written all over it.

The invitation reads: “Join our press conference and get the latest news from Nokia, hear from some of the leading minds in the industry about the future of smart devices and applications and witness stunning demos of Nokia technology in action.”

Unsurprisingly, Nokia didn’t send along any accompanying information to give us so much as a clue as to what they’ll be showing off at the event but, again, it looks like “Windows Phone” will be at least one of the topics Nokia will be discussing at CES 2012.

Nokia hasn’t seen a great deal of success recently when compared to their competitors, so it’ll be interesting to see what they have to show off at CES 2012. Could it be a new Windows Phone, or perhaps a Windows 8 tablet? I suppose we’ll have to wait until CES to find out.

Source: Engadget

Nokia announces CES 2012 press event, hints at Windows Phone discussion is a post from: The Inquisitr

Nokia has been selling their Vertu luxury line of mobile devices for more than a decade and now reports are circulating that that the company has plans to offload their high-end mobile line as they focus more on smartphones and cell phones for budget-conscious consumers.

Vertu has always been a strange side project for Nokia, moving away from their standard mobile phone and smartphone offerings to offer bold luxury designs that are typically embedded with gemstones and precious metals which can cost thousands of dollars to obtain.

Offered with Vertu devices is a “concierge” service which allows quick access to a live assistant who can book reservations and provide other help to users as needed.

The Vertu line was a popular offering among well off buyers for years however iOS and Google Android handsets have lately taken away most of the company’s market share with some designers creating luxury versions of iPhone’s that have eclipsed the Vertu line.

The company’s newest Vertu phone known as the Vertu Constellation (pictured above) sells for $27,000 and attempts to offer a more “smartphone” friendly setup with an AMOLED display, eight-megapixel cameras and alligator skin with sapphire crystal.

According to reports the companies divestment proposal has managed to find interest from several private equity groups.

Perhaps a move to Google Android based devices via the Vertu line could once again make the company the darling of the luxury phone market. One thing is for certain a WP7 Vertu phone (The OS Nokia is focusing on lately) just doesn’t seem as appealing as a more robust mobile OS when you’re paying thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars for beauty and technology.

Nokia Wants To Dump Vertu Luxury Phone Line is a post from: The Inquisitr

Nokia managed to hold onto their “worldwide leader” status for the Smartphone market during Q2 2011 sales, however the company did watch their worldwide reach fall from 41% to 22% of the market.

According to Gartner the company moved 23.9 million smartphones in Q2 2010, mostly from sales of Symbian based devices.

Gartner also revealed that many of those sales likely came from bargain basement prices that Nokia offered to clear out remaining inventories.

Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza said of the company’s actions:

“I think Nokia’s channel situation is pretty lean and in the third quarter we will not see the same effect from destocking as we saw in the second quarter,” while adding, “It’s clear that Nokia’s smartphone business will remain under challenge.”

Nokia sold 97.9 million mobile devices when non-Smartphone devices were included in the company’s count, while 2010 witnessed 111.47 million units moved during the same period.

As the company watches their sales drop, the overall market has been very healthy with 428.7 million mobile devices sold in the second quarter of this year, that’s an increase of 16.5% year-over-year based on quarterly periods, while Smartphone sales increased by 74% globally.

In comparison Apple constituted 18.2% market share, while Google Android based devices now make up 43.4% worldwide, up from 17.2% the year prior.

Nokia has big plans for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform which has had some moderate success which Microsoft hopes will grow when Windows 8 is released with further Smartphone integration capabilities for WP7 powered devices.

In the meantime, partnering with Google Android might not be a bad move for Nokia, I’ve personally always liked the design models they’ve offered and top notch cameras, but Symbian offers a UI from another generation and it simply can’t compete with iOS, Android or even WebOS for that matter.

Smartphone Wars: Nokia Still Worldwide Leader, Loses Nearly 50% Market Share is a post from: The Inquisitr

2011 is definitely the year of the Smartphone with an estimated 420 million units expected to ship around the world before the end of the fiscal year according to data from IMS Research

The company also predicts that by 2016 one billion Smartphones will be sold annually and will make up more than half of all mobile handsets sold around the world.

Among the industry’s big winners is Samsung which climbed from 3 percent of the market in Q1 2010 to 13 percent in Q1 2011.  Apple as should be expected also witnessed some growth, capturing 19 percent of the global market in Q1, up 3 percent year-over-year. HTC is also a big winner, increasing their market share from 6 percent to 10 percent of the Smartphone market in a 12 month period.

It’s not good news for all Smartphone manufacturers though, Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry line of devices lost 5 percent of their market reach over the last year, dropping to 15 percent of the global market while firing 2,000 workers this week, while Nokia year-over-year market share dropped by 16% to just 24% of the overall market. Nokia hopes to gain some market share back when their first Windows Phone 7 devices arrive.

While Google doesn’t manufacturer their own devices they also had an excellent year with their Google Android mobile operating system grabbing an astounding 38 percent of the worldwide market and 27 percent of the overall U.S. market, beating out Apple for the number one Smartphone sales record.

Smartphone Sales Skyrocket In 2011, 420 Million Phones Will Go Out The Door is a post from: The Inquisitr

Amazon on Thursday began listing the U.S. version of the Nokia E6 handset with a full U.S. Warranty.

Priced at $446 without a contract, the phone features a QWERTY keyboard, 8-megapixel camera with 720p video recording and built-in GPS navigation.

The phone also features a 2.46-inch touchscreen and also offers a microSD card slot and free Ovi Maps Navigation with included voice-guided directions. Also include in terms of connectivity are Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Throw in a stainless steel design and it’s not a bad offering but it’s no Android or iOS device.

The phone won’t ship for at least one to two months.

Nokia E6 Shows Up For Pre-Order At Amazon is a post from: The Inquisitr

Well isn’t that embarrassing. Radio Shack in their newest flier this week really wanted to show off a bunch of Android Smartphones, there’s just one problem, Nokia isn’t running their devices on the Google Mobile OS. Oops.

Radio Shack Creates Nokia Android Fail is a post from: The Inquisitr

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled on Friday that Apple did not violate five patents Nokia accused the company of ripping off.

According to the complaint, the patents involves electronic devices, mobile phones, computers and portable music players, in other words, most major aspects of Apple’s core business.

The suit was filed in October 2009 and various countersuits have since been filed, with new suits being added as Nokia believed they had found more infringements in different jurisdictions.

Recently added to the battle is four new suits filed by Nokia against Apple in European courts.

According to MacRumors:

ITC staff have already issued a preliminary position siding with Nokia regarding Apple’s countersuit claiming patent infringement, but an agency judge has yet to issue an official ruling on that case.

More to follow as national and international cases continue to work themselves out in court between these two firms.

US International Trade Commission: Apple Didn’t Violate Nokia Patents is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the more interesting rumors boiling just under the surface has to do with Nokia, and their gradual loss of marketshare to companies like Apple and Google’s Android. Stephen Elop, Nokia’s non-Finnish CEO and formerly a division president at Microsoft, has made it clear that for Nokia to survive it must start looking outside of the company.

I have written and talked about this many times over at my home blog which concentrates on Microsoft. the prompting of this has been the talk that Nokia might be considering some form of partnership with Microsoft and that would involve the use of Windows Phone 7 OS as the new Nokia handset OS.

Well it appears that in the lead up to Elop’s big announcement ahead of Capital Markets Day and the Mobile World Congress an internal company memo to all of Nokia’s employees has been leaked.

Courtesy of Engadget here is the full text of that email:

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally – taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

Nokia’s CEO memo to the troops leaked is a post from: The Inquisitr

iPhone, Android and Blackberry tend to dominate the conversation about mobile phones and features, but “feature phones,” the term used to distinguish “dumbphones” from their more multi-tasking brethren, make up nearly 80% of the worldwide market.

In a blog post yesterday, Facebook announced that they’re releasing an app for people on more traditional cell phones to allow more people to use Facebook away from home and their primary computer-like devices. Says Facebook:

Today, we’re launching a new mobile app to bring Facebook to the most popular mobile phones around the world. The Facebook for Feature Phones app works on more than 2,500 devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and other manufacturers, and it was built in close cooperation with Snaptu. The app provides a better Facebook experience for our most popular features, including an easier-to-navigate home screen, contact synchronization, and fast scrolling of photos and friend updates.

The post goes on to list 14 carriers worldwide who have waived mobile access charges for the first 90 days after launch to get feature phone users good and hooked on the functionality. Facebook mobile product manager Mark Heynen says in the post that the company is working to continue adding carriers and networks worldwide.

If you’re a non-smartphone user, have you tried the Facebook for Feature Phones app? How does it stack up to your normal Facebooking experience? Do you anticipate using it after the 90 free days is up?

Facebook adds app for ‘feature phones’ to enhance mobile Facebook experience is a post from: The Inquisitr

Nokia today launched the X2-01 an entry-level phone with a QWERTY keyboard, 2.4-inch QVGA display with 320 x 240 pixels of resolution and quick one-click access to social networking websites directly from the home screen.

The phone comes with a 1,020mAh battery, enough for 20 days standby and 4.5 hours talk time, while featuring a VGA camera, support for up to an 8GB microSD card and Bluetooth 2.1.

The phone comes in a wide variety of colors including; red, deep gray, silver, lilac and azure. The cost is just $110 and that doesn’t include discounts, so expect it to sell for even less with a one or two year contract.

Here’s the phones commercial:

Nokia Admits To “Major Power Flaw” In Some N8 Handsets, N7 Also Possibly Affected is a post from: The Inquisitr

Nokia needs to come out hitting if they expect to compete in any real way in the Smartphone market and now Reuters is reporting that they plan to announce their Nokia E7 at the upcoming Nokia World 2010 conference. Other rumors are stating that they will also be placing the E7 as their newest flagship device.

That same Reuters source has also confirmed that the E7 will have a large touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard, which matches Nokia E7 leaks that were announced several weeks ago.

On the other hand, no one really knows what OS the E7 will be running, with some rumors pointing to Symbian^3 and other rumors speculating MeeGo.  There’s also speculation of an 8MP camera with dual-LED Flash on the backside of the device.

Hopefully come mid-September we’ll learn more at Nokia World 2010, which would be a good time to debut the smartphone if rumors that are pointing to a November 2010 release are in fact correct. [via The Nokia Blog]

Nokia E7 Rumored For Nokia World 2010 Announcement is a post from: The Inquisitr

Nokia opened their first retail store in Prague many years ago and last month HTC followed suit, opening their first retail store in the same Czech Republic city where Nokia originally revealed their first location years earlier.

PocketNow reports that HTC has also opened a store in Moscow, a move that came just several weeks after their initial store opening.

Considering that for years HTC was the number one Windows Mobile phone manufacturer and that they have quickly become one of the top Google Android providers, I have to admit I think this move is overdue. Whether plans for the store were put on hiatus due to the economy or other factors, HTC phones have always been top selling devices.

HTC may have chosen to wait on physical retail locations since they have always had strong ties to unlocked mobile phone retailers including eXpansys, Plemix and various other online sellers, while other stores have also experimented with their unlocked devices including Best Buy.

Here’s a closer look at one of the stores inside displays:

[via Pocketnow]

HTC Has Retail Stores, We Have The Proof [Pics] is a post from: The Inquisitr