Nokia is officially going to announce their first Windows Phones for the Chinese market by the end of this month. We know that China is probably going to modified version of all of Nokia’s existing Windows Phones, but what about some fresh looking devices? Enter the Lumia 719, which was discovered on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. It has a body that can best be described as the genetic offspring of the Lumia 710 and the Lumia 610. This begs the question, is it going to be a budget device à la the 610 or a mid range device like the 710? That information will be discovered in less than two weeks. Another important question is will the 719 ever be sold outside of China? Again, we hope to hear more really soon.
Will the Chinese eat up Windows Phone? That’s difficult to say. According to Nokia’s Q4 2011 financial statement, the Finnish handset maker sold 14.7 million handsets in China during that quarter. That’s 33% less than the same quarter a year ago. The reason? There’s plenty of companies who’ll take custom versions of Android, load them up on cheap smartphones, and peddle them in the street while being perfectly content with living off low single digit margins.
There’s also a practical typographic issue. There’s no doubt in our minds that Nokia has enough people internally to make Windows Phone perfectly usable in Chinese, but anyone who has ever used a Windows Phone device knows that very little information is displayed at once. That design mandate to keep things looking clean and crisp comes at a cost of lower information density. Will that bother the target market of the Lumia 719?
Anyway, except some more information around the middle of next week. We’re keeping our eyes and ears glued to Nokia’s language since they haven’t said anything about how many Windows Phones they’ve sold since late January.