Nokia unveils Windows phones, competition for Apple, Samsung??

okia chief executive Stephen Elop said beleaguered company was seeing a 'new dawn' as it launched its first range of Windows handsets marking its intent to fight back against Apple's iPhone and rivals using Google's Android's operating system, and regain market share in the crucial battle for smartphone sales.

"Today marks the rebirth of Nokiaa¦We are signalling our intent, right now, right here to be the leaders in smartphone design and craftsmanship," Elop said. He was speaking at NokiaWorld 2011 event in London. The two Windows phone - Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 - will be available in India by the year-end and is priced at 420 euros (about 29,000) and 270 euros (about 19,000), respectively.

"World is ready for something new. Lumia is light ... Lumia is the first real Windows Phone," Elop declared to the 3,000 strong London audience.

He also unveiled enhanced basic phones called Asha - "hope" in Hindi - aimed at emerging markets of India, Africa and Latin America, and having web surfing capabilities similar to that of smartphones.

"The line is blurring between smartphones and mobile devices. There's multiple customisable home screens, very similar to a lot of smartphones," Elop said.

The handset maker said the 'Asha' range of phones would help it target the "next one billion" consumers to get online as only about 30% of the world's population had access to the internet.

"Our research suggests the next billion is a really young crowd. They see technology as a way to upgrade their life, despite affordability constraints they are extremely savvy phone users. For those people today we are producing 12 phones per second, one million phones per day, 365 million phones per year," he added.

The Nokia Asha series of four handsets - 300, 303, 200 and 201 - is priced between 60 euros ( 4,100) and 115 euros ( 8,000) and will begin shipping between the year-end and early 2012, Elop added.

Analysts that the Asha range of basic phones could have a bigger impact on the company in the short-term as 60% of its business comes from non-smartphones. Interestingly, Nokia has dumped rival browsers in its basic handsets and has installed its own browser that it claims can compress web commands by 90% speeding up internet access on 2G networks.

The Nokia chief executive said the company had made rapid progress post February 2011 when it had announced that it was abandoning its Symbian operating system for its smartphones and opting for Microsoft's Windows platform.

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