Nokia unveiled three new smartphones at its Nokia World conference and has vowed to fight back in the increasingly competitive market.
“Today, our fightback to smartphone leadership shifts into high gear,” Niklas Savander, head of Nokia markets unit, said.
The company recently experienced a management overhaul, with its CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo being replaced by Stephen Elop.
This was followed by Nokia’s lead of Mobile Solutions Anssi Vanjoki’s resignation just days later.
Elop and Kallasvuo will not be speaking at Nokia World, which will continue on to Wednesday.
While Nokia still owns about 40pc of the global smartphone marketshare, it has also faced stiff competition for higher-end phones from Apple and BlackBerry maker RIM.
According to Nokia, it currently sells around 260,000 smartphones every day.
“In the last quarter, people bought more Nokia smartphones than Apple and Android combined,” Savander said.
Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi feels that while Nokia isn’t on top yet, it’s paving the way to improving confidence in the Nokia brand.
“The products are a clear improvement … but we know they are not where Nokia needs to be yet, and any other promise around ‘we are working on it’ would have not convinced anyone,” said Milanesi.
“A new CEO and the old guard stepping down might give investors more confidence that things are really changing.”
New phones from Nokia
The company introduced three new phones – the E7, a new version of the C6 and the C7.
The Nokia E7 is aimed at business users, offering a 4-inch 640×460 pixel touchscreen, a QWERTY keyboard and an 8-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p video. It can also create PowerPoint slides. It’s priced at €495.
Both the Nokia C6 and the Nokia C7 have an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, the ability to record 720p video and the memory in both devices can be expanded with a 32 GB microSD card.
The C6 has a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen and 340MB of internal user memory.
The C7 has a 3.5-inch AMOLED screen and a case which consists of stainless steel and glass. It has up to 350MB of internal memory and 8GB of storage memory.
The C6 costs €260 and the C7 costs €335.
All three will be available before the end of 2010.
