The Nokia Lumia 920 has certainly seemed to be off to a good start so far, selling out constantly across the globe and in as little as 20 minutes in the Chinese market. We’ve heard that Windows Phone 8 is starting to take off in a way that Windows Phone 7 never did.

You have to wonder though, how much of it is hype, and how much is reality? While the Nokia Lumia line might not be selling on the same level as flagship devices from Apple and Samsung, the company has now reported its earnings for 4th quarter 2012– and they aren’t bad at all. In fact, they are rather impressive.

The company managed to sell 4.4 million Lumia units, versus 2.9 million in the 3rd quarter. Beyond their Windows Phone 8 handsets they also sold 9.3 million of their touch-screen Asha feature phones.

Notably, their aging Symbian smartphones sold 2.2 million units, marking the very first time that Windows Phone sales have been higher than Symbian, which is still reasonably popular in many developing nations across the globe.

Nokia has a tough road ahead of it when it comes to rebuilding itself from its recent years of fiscal decline, but its Windows Phone 8 offerings certainly seem to be off to a good start so far. Personally, this is great news for the mobile industry and for consumers. The more competition, the better.

What do you think of Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phone 8 handsets, do you think they are worthy of all the hype and praise or not?

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China has long been known as a place to pick up low-cost smartphones, but that’s just in regards to domestically made phones right? Well not anymore as Nokia’s plans for the Lumia 920T have emerged.

Currently Chinese smartphone users are expected to buy their phones outright from the start and pay for what they use on a monthly basis, this has led to some amazing phones arriving on the mainland at very affordable prices. However, international players have been eyeing the market and tend to grab their share with subsidised devices.

This is Nokia’s plan anyway, and they are hoping to grab a huge share of the market with the Windows-powered Lumia 920T, with retail price starting at just 1 Yuan ($0.16). Of course customers will then be expected to pay a monthly fee for the phone, but 1 Yuan (less than the price of a shopping bag) is going to be a hard bargain to a pass up.

The only problems we can see from the offer is with the supply chain of the Lumia 920T. Considering how stock shortages have plagued the international Lumia 920, will the same situation occur with the Chinese variant?

[ Source ]

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Windows Phone 8 has been on the market for several days now, so how are things going? While there has been reports that there weren’t enough units ready to meet the demand, it still seems that devices are selling well. In particular, the Nokia Lumia 920 is doing exceptionally well so far.

We previously reported that Windows Phone 8-powered Nokia Lumia 920 hadn’t moved up on Walmart and Best Buy bestseller lists, but that largely could be that they just don’t change the lists quickly enough. Interestingly though, Amazon now places the Nokia Lumia 920 at the very top (1st place) of AT&T’s bestselling devices list.

When it comes to overall smartphone sales from all carriers how does it rate? It’s at number 17. This isn’t bad at all, especially considering that AT&T is the only carrier selling the Lumia 920.

Although Nokia hasn’t been that popular in the United States for a while now, the strong reception of the Lumia 920 is a good sign. It’s too early to say that Windows Phone 8 is a massive success by any means, but Microsoft could finally have a mobile OS that firmly positions the company in third place in the mobile market. Of course, they will have some competition for third place in the form of Firefox OS and the upcoming RIM Blackberry 10.

Do you think that Microsoft Windows Phone 8 has what it takes to finally solidify its position in the smartphone market? Are you more interested in HTC, Samsung or Nokia’s WP8 devices?

[ source ]

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Remember in the 1990s and early into 2000s when Nokia was riding high? It was at the top of the mobile phone world, selling more devices than any other company. Then, something changed and somehow we find ourselves here today with Nokia revealing an operating loss of 826 million Euro. That’s right around $1 billion US. What happened?

Well, the good news is that the operating loss is offset by licensing royalties and a regular cheque from Microsoft, getting them to a net cash rise of 102 million Euro (about US$125 million). You have to keep in mind, though, that Nokia enjoyed an operating profit of 344 million Euro just one year earlier. To make matters worse, Nokia announced its Q2 results today and it’s nothing but gloom; only 4 million Lumia’s sold worldwide, and 600,000 handsets sold in the USA.

You know Nokia was once the number one cell phone company in the world? It lost that throne too. Samsung now sells more mobile phones than its Finnish competitor. Nokia is also losing on the low-end from other competitors, mostly in emerging markets. Back in 2007, Nokia had a 40.4% market share. That dropped to 27% last year and 21% in the first quarter of this year. It’s a slow and painful bleed.

It’s not like Nokia isn’t trying to innovate. It has spent $40 billion in R&D–roughly four times what Apple has spent–in the last decade working on new devices, but there’s a problem. Many of these never made it past R&D. Frank Nuovo is a former designer at Nokia and he already envisioned a smartphone with a color touchscreen above a single button seven years before the iPhone. In the late 90s, Nokia also had an iPad-esque tablet in the works that never materialized. As Nuovo put it, “We had it completely nailed.” The company culture encouraged research, “but squandered opportunities to bring the innovations it produced to market.”

Yes, Nokia spent a lot of money on innovation, but it didn’t really produce “winning devices or software.” Instead, it now has at least two abandoned operating systems and a bunch of patents. In fact, the patents, worth about $6 billion, are said to make up the bulk of Nokia’s overall value. Even Stephen Elop agrees that if they had “been landed in products…I think Nokia would have been in a different place.” They spent too much time selling to the low-end and not enough time pushing the higher-end devices to market. And the iPhone arrived and gobbled it all up.

[Source]

The post Understanding How Nokia Lost Over $1 Billion in Q1 2012 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The white Lumia 800 doesn’t change up the hardware at all, still touting the same Lumia 800 specs. This includes a 1.4GHz processor, 3.8” 800×480 AMOLED ClearBlack curved display, an 8MP Carl Zeiss rear camera, 16GB of internal storage, Windows Phone Mango, FM Radio, and a 1450 mAh battery.

There is really something about the clean look that white brings to the 800, and personally, I kind of prefer it to the original black phone. What do you think? Do you have a color preference when it comes to smartphones?

Espoo, Finland – Nokia announced today that the Nokia Lumia 800 will be available in white, beginning later this month.

Image: Nokia Lumia 800 in white With Windows ® Phone 7.5 software on board, the white Nokia Lumia 800 features head-turning design and the best social and Internet performance, with one-touch social network access, easy grouping of contacts, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9. It features a 3.7-inch AMOLED ClearBlack curved display blending seamlessly into the reduced body design, and a 1.4 GHz processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor. The Lumia 800 contains an instant-share camera experience based on leading Carl Zeiss optics, HD video playback, 16GB of internal user memory and free SkyDrive storage for storing images and music.

Lumia smartphones include signature Nokia experiences optimized for Windows Phone, including Nokia Drive, which delivers a full-fledged personal navigation device (PND) with free, turn-by-turn navigation and dedicated in-car-user-interface; and Nokia Music introducing MixRadio*, a free mobile music-streaming application that delivers hundreds of channels of locally-relevant music. Windows Marketplace also gives Lumia users more than 55 000 apps to choose from.

“Since we began selling it late last year, the Nokia Lumia 800 has received rave reviews around the world,” said Ilari Nurmi, Vice President of Product Marketing, Nokia. “Now in white, the Lumia 800 brings with it an even more premium look and feel with its gloss finish, but packed with power and performance underneath its sleek body.”

More information about the Nokia Lumia 800 can be found at www.nokia.com/lumia800.

*Availability of Mix Radio varies market by market

About Nokia
Nokia is a global leader in mobile communications whose products have become an integral part of the lives of people around the world. Every day, more than 1.3 billion people use their Nokia to capture and share experiences, access information, find their way or simply to speak to one another. Nokia’s technological and design innovations have made its brand one of the most recognized in the world. For more information, visit http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia.

Media Enquiries:

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Email: press.services@nokia.com

www.nokia.com

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