With Apple and Google's Android now dominating the smartphone market, the world's largest phone maker is pinning its hopes of a business turnaround on the success of two models unveiled by chief executive Stephen Elop at the annual Nokia World event in London.
The first Nokia handsets to run on Microsoft's Windows Phone interface, the Lumia 800, priced €420 (£365), and the Lumia 710, at €270, are aimed squarely at the mid-market, which is dominated by the Android operating system.
The phones were produced in a frantic eight-month period after Elop decided to abandon the "burning platform" of Nokia's own operating software in favour of Windows Phone.
The Lumia phones run on its latest iteration, 7.5 Mango, which has had a limited distribution so far on handsets by HTC, LG and Samsung. In competition with Google's free Android software, Microsoft has struggled to get Windows Phone onto a wide range of handsets, with just 2% market share in mid-2011, according to analyst IDC.
Microsoft will be hoping that Lumia, which Elop described provocatively as "the first real Windows phone made by anyone", will deliver its software to a much wider audience. With sales of PCs declining in favour of mobile connected devices, Microsoft's influence over consumer technology will fade unless it can make its presence felt on smartphones and tablets.
The US behemoth is understood to be lavishly bankrolling the Lumia launch, paying unspecified billions to Nokia as a thank-you for using its software, and the new advertising campaign will have a budget three times higher than for any previous Nokia range.
The Lumia 800 will be released in November in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, with customers able to pre-order immediately from nokia.com, and 31 networks and independent retailers committed to marketing the product. Its case is a slimmer version of the colourful N9 released by Nokia earlier this year.
Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan will get the handset before the end of the year, with further markets early in 2012. The United States is not on the list, because Nokia has no Lumia models yet that will work on 4G superfast mobile internet, which is already in use in across the Atlantic.
The cheaper Lumia 710, which echoes the iPhone with its curved edges and white or black casing, will be available first in Russia and the far east, before heading west in 2012.
Proclaiming a "new dawn" for Nokia, Elop said: "Eight months ago, we shared our new strategy and today we are demonstrating clear progress of this strategy in action." He added: "We're driving innovation throughout our entire portfolio."
Elop is keeping one eye firmly on developing markets, unveiling four "Asha" handsets named after the Hindi word for hope, aimed at the "next 1 billion" users in those parts of the world where most people's first experience of the internet will be via a mobile phone.
The 3.7” screen offers Super AMOLED resolution, and Windows Phone’s living tiles really do look impressive; showing you the weather, a boarding pass or a friend’s photograph, the display hardware here is as good as this software needs. And the phone’s tactile, matte finish means the Lumia is not like the bar of soap that many other phones often seem to be modelled on. It’s also pleasingly weighted, at 142g.
Unique apps on the Lumia are limited; Nokia Drive offers a decent satnav alternative, but so do iOS apps and so does Google Maps on any Android phone. A Music app provides pre-arranged playlists, for people who would like a radio substitute. Elsewhere, of course, other Windows Phone apps can be downloaded from the main Microsoft Marketplace.
There’s no front camera on the Lumia 800, which will be a pity when Microsoft roles out Skype, but it does mean the all-screen design, hardly evolved from the N9, looks lovely. There’s a single-core 1.4GHz processor inside the Lumia 800 and 16GB of internal storage, and an 8mp camera on the back. With 512MB of RAM, the phone performs perfectly well enough.
What this device does, simply, is to give Windows Phone the flagship hardware it has deserved since the Mango update. That doesn’t make it as compelling a product as a top Android phone, but it puts Windows back in the game. And it shows up rival manufacturers: Samsung, for instance has excelled in designing Android devices, but its Windows devices have not had the same style.
Admittedly, with Nokia and Microsoft so closely aligned, why should others focus on Windows? If the Lumia ranges does as well as it could, then rival manufacturers may well see merit in putting more resources into developing Windows Phones. This, of course, is what Microsoft hopes and it may well work.
The Lumia 800 finally makes Windows Phone good enough to compete for early adopters’ attentions. But in truth that is not where Nokia or Microsoft is aiming – they want regular, mid-market upgraders to think Nokia is a good choice. They’re right, for the first time in years.
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