Optus, Telstra, and Vodafone are gearing up to sell the Lumia 800, which will be available in black, cyan, magenta, and white, Nokia announced today.
“Interest locally for Nokia Lumia, our first range with Windows Phone devices, has been extremely positive,” Nokia Australia’s managing director, Chris Carr, said.
“There is a significant appetite from operators and retailers looking to offer consumers a real smartphone alternative.”
Mr. Carr said he hoped the Lumia 800 would be a turning point for the company in Australia.
Once the market leader in smartphones, Nokia’s fortunes have plummeted worldwide on its failure to produce state-of-the-art smartphones in the wake of Apple’s iPhone and new Android smartphones.
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“Nokia Lumia will change the way people think about Nokia,” Mr. Carr said. “It signifies a new beginning for the company, bringing together the very best of Nokia’s handset design and services with the latest Windows Phone software.
“With uptake from all Australian operators and major retailers, the launch of the Nokia Lumia 800 signals our intent to regain leadership in smartphone design and usability.”
As well as the social network offered by the Windows 7 operating system, Nokia is plugging free, turn-by-turn navigation, new Nokia music services such as Mix Radio, a free music streaming service, and Gigfinder for finding nearby music entertainment, as benefits.
The phone has 16GB of internal memory plus 5GB of additional cloud-based SkyDrive storage, an 8 MP camera with a 28mm Carl Zeiss wide-angle lens, and HD video, with Nokia’s own version of touch-to-focus.
Nokia last week posted a fourth-quarter, 2011 net loss of $US1.38 billion as sales slumped 21 percent.
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said the Finnish company had already sold “well over” 1 million Lumia devices.
Including other models, Nokia sold 19.6 million smartphones in the last quarter of 2011, down from 28 million a year earlier. By comparison, Apple sold 37 million iPhones.
The Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 hit stores in Europe and Asia last November, while the Lumia 710 went on sale in the US this month.
Mr. Elop said Nokia would be shipping Lumia phones to Canada next month, and China and South America during the first half of this year.
