Earlier this week, Wednesday to be precise, Nokia’s first Windows Phone, the Lumia 800, went on sale in England. It’s a device that was leaked as far back as June, and one that’s been eagerly awaited since Nokia’s February 11th announcement where they said they’re going to kill Symbian, throw MeeGo under the bus, and bet the future on Microsoft. So now that it’s been roughly 2 days, how are sales going? According to Nokia spokesperson Ray Haddow:
“The level of pre-orders, as well as reaction in shops today, lead us to be very positive about the launch of the Nokia Lumia 800. The public have had hands on in many retail stores over the past week and were in store in abundance today, not only trying out this amazing device, but signing up for some of the great deals available. In addition, we’ve had lots of people saying that they intend to switch to the Nokia Lumia 800 at their next upgrade. Especially given some of the great offers available at the moment.”
Sounds all well and rosy, but that’s not what the Finacial Times is reporting. According to their sources pre-orders for the Lumia 800 didn’t exceed those of the Apple iPhone 4S, which is expected, but more importantly Nokia pre-order numbers failed to eclips those of “recent high-end phones using Google’s Android operating system.” Orange, one of the UK operators who sold the Lumia 800 on launch day, say it’s their most successful Nokia launch ever, though they do admit that half of the sales were because of their bundling scheme whereby if you signed up for a contract you also got a free XBOX 360.
Can we tell a lot about the future of Nokia’s Windows Phone from just 2 days worth of sales? Absolutely not. One operator who spoke to the Financial Times said: “The company is only just coming back into the market so it will take some time to regain its identity among smartphone users.” Aye, it’s going to take quite a while to regain the trust that was lost after the disaster that was the Nokia N97.
