Last week Nokia held their annual Nokia World event in London where they announced 6 new handsets. The last 2 to be unveiled, the Nokia Lumia 710 and the Nokia Lumia 800, were the ones that the entire mobile industry have been eager to see ever since the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer decreed back in February of this year that they’re going to dump Symbian and switch to Windows Phone. To no one’s surprise, Western European countries are going to be the first to get these two devices, while the United States will have to wait until 2012, though no specific details were given. The folks at This is my next spotted a few Verizon Wireless employees at the event, which makes it rather obvious that Big Red will likely be peddling these two smartphones at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas less 3 months from now. So now that we know that Freedom Land will get the best Windows Phones that will soon be on the market, how exactly will Nokia convince people to pick them up?
If you’re looking to purchase a smartphone today, chances are you’re considering either an iPhone or a “Droid”. The latter is what Verizon calls their Android devices, and thanks to the huge marketing blitz they’ve been running nonstop since the Motorola Droid launched in October 2009, everyone calls Android smartphones Droids. According to Chris Weber, Nokia’s U.S. head who spoke to The Wall Street Journal, Nokia’s not going to convince current iPhone and Android users to switch. Instead they’ll be targeting first time smartphone owners “who are intimidated by the technology or worried they can’t learn how to use them”. Weber says Nokia “is committed through and through to the U.S. market”, something we’ve heard for ages, and that “significant” amounts of cash will be spent on marketing in 2012.
After Weber showed off a Windows Phone device to an unnamed U.S. operator, said operator was amazed at how tightly integrated various services are with the operating system. Weber’s best argument against Android is that it’s “not an elegant solution”. Will Windows Phone convince people still clinging to their feature phones to switch to the smart side? It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
[Image credit: CARgroup]