Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is an impressive operating system. Nokia makes nifty hardware. So despite Windows Phone's tiny market share to date and Nokia's recent woes, I want to be optimistic about the Finnish phone maker's return to the U.S. market with slick new Windows Phone-powered handsets. But boy, there are some odd things going on with Nokia's first Windows Phones that are being marketed here in the States.
File under “good news if true”: Nokia’s Lumia 900, the company’s first premium Windows Phone for the U.S. market, may cost $100 on contract.
In a release exuberantly titled “Lumia 900 Introduction to Trigger Smartphone Renaissance for Nokia and Microsoft,” IHS iSuppli analyst Wayne Lam has some predictions about where the phone market is going between now and 2015. The only prediction I feel safe making about smartphones in 2015 is that it will be startling if nothing disruptive has happened in the category by then… and once a category gets disrupted, all bets are off.
The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show didn’t technically kick off until Tuesday morning, but already, Nokia’s Lumia 900 has become one of the most buzzed-about products.
More than a year after the first Windows Phones launched in the United States, one of them may finally get star treatment. Nokia’s Lumia 900, codenamed “Ace,” will reportedly launch in March on AT&T as a “hero” phone, meaning it’ll get extra advertising and a big sales push at AT&T stores. Microsoft, AT&T and Nokia will apparently spend about $100 million to market the phone.
With U.S. Senators getting involved in the issue about whether or not Americans’ cell activity is being monitored and recorded without their permission, it’s worth asking the most obvious question: How did the offending Carrier IQ software get onto the mobile devices in the first place?
Android, Nokia and Blackberry users, your every key press is being tracked, claims Connecticut systems administrator Trevor Eckhart.
Even though Nokia’s Lumia 800 is just one Windows Phone among many, there’s a lot of hubbub about it, and for good reason: the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft is a desperation move by both companies as they try to reclaim business lost to the iPhone and Android. For techies, this is high drama.
Ben Bajarin is the Director of Consumer Technology Analysis and Research at Creative Strategies, Inc, a technology industry analysis and market intelligence firm located in Silicon Valley.
Eight months ago, Nokia bet its future on Microsoft, abandoning other smartphone efforts so it could create Windows Phones instead. Now, we’re seeing the first fruits of that strategy shift in Nokia’s Lumia 800 and Lumia 710.
Britain’s Trevor Prideaux liked smartphones but found he had a problem—born without a left arm, touchscreens were hard to use one-handed. Luckily Nokia stepped in and worked with medical professionals at the Exeter Mobility Centre to design a specially fitted prosthetic arm with a dock that houses his Nokia C7 perfectly.
