French website Mon Windows Phone, which translates to My Windows Phone, recently posted snippets from an article in a local newspaper that they failed to name Les Echos. Said article has several quotes from Paul Amsellem, Head of Nokia France, that confirm what many of us have been feeling ever since we saw Nokia unveil the Lumia 800 in London last month. First, the Lumia 800 is the equivalent of a BMW 5 Series, meaning it’s good, but it’s not a flagship device. There will be a BMW 7 Series and BMW 3 series equivalent. Before Nokia World took place we heard about a device called the Nokia 900 that’s supposedly going to come with a massive 4.3 inch screen, NFC support, and possibly LTE. Is that the BMW 7 Series Paul was hinting at? Paul also doesn’t call the lower priced Lumia 710 a BMW 3 Series, so we’re wondering if Nokia is going to introduce an even cheaper Windows Phone, possibly running the as yet to be launched Tango version of the OS. Rumors we’ve been hearing say Tango will support lower resolution screens and BlackBerry style form factors.
Second, and quite possibly the more interesting tidbit, is that Nokia indeed enter the tablet market by releasing a device running Windows 8 as early as June 2012! Now considering Windows 8 runs on ARM, and Nokia’s in bed with Qualcomm, and Microsoft’s in bed with Nokia, this is potentially really exciting. What Nokia brings to the table is design. Every ARM based Windows 8 tablet will have roughly the same guts, so Nokia doesn’t need to worry about differentiating themselves with specs. If they can make something that screams unique and original, they may very well take on the iPad. Now that being said, it’ll be up to Microsoft to market Windows 8 as a viable alternative to the iPad. Whether or not they’ll be able to do that is a totally different question.
Third and finally, Paul says Nokia used to have a 25% market share in France, but that’s now 16%. He thinks with Windows Phone they can break 22%, but doesn’t exactly say when that’ll happen.
[Image above is a screenshot from this YouTube video]
Update: Confirmation from Reuters regarding the Windows 8 tablet.