HELSINKI (AP) - Nokia Corp. on Wednesday unveiled its first Windows cell phones, in a bid to recapture lost ground to chief rivals in the tough top-end smartphone market.
Nokia’s Lumia 800, priced at some euro420 ($580), and Lumia 710 with a price tag of euro270, are the Finnish cell phone maker’s first models based on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software after the two companies announced they would team up in February. The company also introduced four other smartphone models aimed at emerging markets.
Nokia stock was up more than 1 percent at euro4.89 ($6.81) in early afternoon trading in Helsinki.
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said the Lumia 800, with Carl Zeiss optics and 16GB of internal memory, will be available in some European countries in November, including France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Britain. It shipped in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the year-end.
The Lumia 710, with a 1.4 GHz processor, navigational applications and Nokia Music _ a free, mobile music-streaming app _ will first be available in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year.
“Eight months ago, we shared our new strategy and today we are demonstrating clear progress of this strategy in action,” Elop said at a Nokia presentation in London. “We’re driving innovation throughout our entire portfolio, from new smartphone experiences to ever smarter mobile phones.”
The world’s top cell phone maker launched four smartphones aimed at emerging markets, with QWERTY keyboards and touch screens, aimed at helping “the next billion” users connect to the Internet, Elop said.
The new Asha range, priced at euro60 to euro115, some with twin SIM cards, music features, interactive maps and the popular Angry Birds game pre-loaded, will be shipped globally in the fourth quarter or early 2012.
Nokia, which claims 1.3 billion daily users, has steadily been losing the smartphone race as it is squeezed in the low end by Asian manufacturers like ZTE and in the high end by Apple Inc.’s Phone, Research in Motion’s Blackberry and Google’s Android devices.
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