Nokia's Elop: Boosting Windows Phone volumes is the top priority

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that driving up sales volumes of its new Lumia smartphones is the key priority, as well as attracting support from the app developer community.

"We want to see volumes begin to move," Elop at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecoms conference in Barcelona, according to the Wall Street Journal. "We need to get developers recognising there is a growing opportunity here, so that we attract applications."

Elop added that the company would initially aim to lower operating expenses and build volume, which should help the company's bottom line. Elop told the WSJ that the company intends to push Windows smart-phone prices down to kick-start sales, leading to higher prices and profits over time. Improving margins would come at a later stage, he told the Financial Times. "We are interested first and foremost about volume," he said. "Our highest priority is to help Windows phones to compete with Android. This is the first showcase product."

However, the newspaper claimed that sources from within two UK operators said there were far fewer preorders for Nokia's Lumia than Apple's iPhone 4s, with the new Nokia devices also being slower than recent high-end Android-based smartphones.

Orange UK, a keen advocate of the new Nokia handset, countered this viewpoint claiming that the device had been the most successful Nokia launch and had been popular in pre-orders. But the operator accepted that around half of the preorders had been driven by a deal that gave away a free Xbox games console.

Looking forward, Elop says the deal with Microsoft will allow it to differentiate its handsets even further when Microsoft launches its new Windows 8 software due next year. 

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see this Financial Times article (reg. req.)

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