Nokia Corp. will deliver its second touchscreen handset by June of next year, the company said at the opening of its Nokia World exposition in Barcelona.
The N97 is a touchscreen, horizontal slider with QWERTY keypad that will sell unsubsidized for $700. It was not immediately clear whether the device would launch in the United States. Little more than a year ago, Nokia spent considerable effort – and marketing money – to convince consumers (and journalists) that the U.S. market was ready for its “multimedia computing devices.”
The device will offer a bevy of social networking capabilities, offered under Nokia’s Ovi brand, designed to provide a “personal Internet” and “social location” services, according to Nokia. Click here to read about Nokia’s Ovi updates.
In that sense, the device-and-services package fulfills Nokia’s promise that when it launched a full-fledged touchscreen device, its hardware and software would be integrated to provide users with new experiences and carriers with revenue-generating services.
But the N97 does not attempt to meet the iPhone’s sleek attributes. Instead, it provides a large, high-resolution screen (Nokia claimed 50% more resolution than the iPhone) with a fairly hefty weight and thickness. But its specifications rival those of its competitors: 32 GB of onboard memory (48 GB with card), assisted GPS and compass to establish location, a 5-megapixel camera with video, HSDPA speeds and Wi-Fi and, naturally, multimedia capabilities.
Observers were generally impressed with the device, the latest iteration of Nokia’s top-of-the-line mobile computing device, the N95, popular in Europe and Asia, among other markets.
But many also noted that Nokia’s entry will hit the market deep into 2009, and that competitors already have staked out much of the high ground in the touchscreen handset market and will continue to innovate as the N97 hits the market.
Analyst Ben Wood at CCS Insights praised the device’s launch, but questioned “how good it will look in six months, given the pace of innovation in the mobile devices space, particularly from the Korean players,” according to Forbes.com.
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Analyst Tero Kuittinen at Global Crown Capital Equity Research cited the touchscreen’s size and resolution, the 5-megapixel camera/camcorder and the device’s computing power in praising the N97 as “an important step for Nokia.”
“Nokia is going for the same consumers that turned the N95 into the biggest smartphone hit of 2007 – people who want a compact laptop/video camera replacement, not a slim phone,” Kuittinen wrote in a note to investors today.
“This is not a model that will appeal to consumers smitten by the iPhone or the slim Korean big-display models, but it’s not meant to be,” the analyst added.
Nokia still needs to make a slim touchscreen phone akin to the iPhone, according to Kuittinen.
But the Finnish handset-and-services giant will deliver the only device in the so-called “BMW niche” occupied by the N95 predecessor to the N97, he said.
“We expect the N97 to make a substantial splash in Europe and Asia in the summer,” Kuittinen concluded. “Nokia does need a cluster of lighter, slimmer smartphones to complement the N97 and we believe they are arriving in 2009.”
Video provided by Nokia.
