Nokia’s Lumia 800, which was announced in late October of last year, then hit the market a few weeks later in mid November, is finally coming to the United States. It’ll be available from Microsoft’s retail stores starting next Tuesday, otherwise known as Valentine’s Day, for $900. Now that price tag might seem a bit absurd, but you get a lot more than just the phone. You also get a Nokia Play 360 speaker, Purity HD stereo headset (read: Monster Headphones), and an unnamed Bluetooth headset. To give you an idea of how much the accessories cost, Amazon is selling the Lumia 800 for $510 with free shipping. So in other words you’re paying $390 for a speaker, a pair of headphones, and a Bluetooth ear piece. Will Americans snatch this up? We severely doubt that. The unsubsidized model of buying smartphones simply doesn’t work over there. That and most folks are looking forward to the Lumia 900 on AT&T, which is rumored to launch on March 18th for just $99 with a two year contract.
While we’re on the topic of Nokia launching devices in the United States, we have to question why Nokia partnered with AT&T instead of someone like Verizon. We know the Lumia 710 launched on T-Mobile in mid January, and is already available for free in some places, but offering the flagship Lumia 900 on AT&T is just plain suicide. In Q4 2011 AT&T sold 9.4 million smartphones. Know how many of them were iPhones? 7.6 million. In other words, out of every ten smartphones AT&T sold during the busiest shopping season of the year, eight of them were made by Apple. Nokia is essentially competing against AT&T’s entire portfolio for less than 1.8 million units of sales.
Anyway, at the end of the day we’re still recommending that you skip out on Windows Phone completly until the next version of the OS hits the market later this year. There are rumors suggesting Windows Phone 7.5 will not be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8, so why even bother buying today’s Lumias when Microsoft’s next generation platform is just half a year away?
[Via: All About Windows Phone]