Nokia (NYSE:NOK) offered a glimpse into its smartphone plans in a week dominated by news of Research In Motion's (NASDAQ:RIMM) new BlackBerry 6 platform and Torch smartphone as well the continued growth of Google's Android platform.
Niklas Savander, Nokia's head of sales and marketing, took to Twitter to answer questions about the company's smartphone strategy. Although he revealed little that was not already publicly known, he did provide some insight into the company's thinking.
The Nokia executive said the company's long delay between product announcements and actual releases is "not helping anyone." When asked why Nokia has not adopted Android, Savander said that the company's smartphone platform choices--Symbian and MeeGo for its high-end offerings--give the company the best opportunity to deliver value, and that Nokia's Qt application development platform will play a key role. He also said the company is making steady progress in the U.S. market (he pointed to T-Mobile USA's support of the Nuron), but noted Nokia has no plans to work with Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S).
Meanwhile, Symbian, which thanks to Nokia's global reach commands the largest share of the global smartphone market, pointed out that it is shipping on 300,000 phones per day, according to figures released by research firm Canalys. The item is a response to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who said sales of Android smartphones now total about 200,000 each day--up from 100,000 per day two months ago.
Nokia plans to release the N8, running on Symbian^3, at the end of the third quarter, and also plans to release a MeeGo product before the end of the year. Nokia said it shipped 24 million smartphone units in the second quarter, up 42 percent from the year-ago quarter and 12 percent from the first quarter. However, the company said its smartphone market share stood at 41 percent, unchanged from the year-ago quarter or the first quarter.
For more:
- see this Nokia post
- see this PCMag.com article
- see this Boy Genius Report post
- see this Gizmodo post
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