Nokia to sell Windows Phone in 2 years

MANILA, Philippines – Nokia has 31 percent market share in the smart phone market worldwide and still ranks as number one handset in the Philippines with over 50 percent market share.

However, it has lost the lead in terms of ‘mind share’ in the high-end market in the Philippines and wants to regain its post via its partnership with the Windows Phone in the next two years, says Nokia Philippines Senior Services Marketing Manager Rhomel Marcojos, Over the long-term, the Finnish handset manufacturer will use the Windows Phone for its primary smartphone strategy but will not produce it in volume until 2012.

“We want to lead in the smartphone category,” he stressed though at the moment, they have not yet defined how they will differentiate themselves in the market.

Suffice it to say that Nokia has lots of assets, the manager pointed out. “We have maps, navigation and billing interphase with operators and Ovistore which others do not have.”

In the meantime, the company will continue to ship out 150 million new Symbian phones worldwide for this year, he added.

Every day, more than 1.3 billion people connect to one another with a Nokia device from mobile phones to advanced smartphones and high-performance mobile computers.

But to date, some 200 million users still use the Symbian platform and Nokia is not likely to scrap the platform immediately, he noted.

“Symbian continues to evolve. We will ship new Symbian devices and continue to evolve and innovate on the platform, including enhancements to Qt on the Symbian platform.”

While Symbian is meant for Nokia’s middle to its high-end market, the company’s own proprietary Java platform, Series 40, is for the middle to the low-end market.

“Developers for the mobile phone segment can already distribute Java apps to 600 million Series 40 devices,” according to Marcojos.

“Our next one billion mobile users who will connect to the internet will use Series 40.”

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google
• Tumblr
• Pinterest