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Nokia Unveils XpressMusic Touchscreen Smartphone

6:00 am on October 6, 2008 | Category: Cell Phones, Mobile Devices, Multimedia

The world’s leading cell phone maker, Nokia, has unveiled its highly-anticipated touchscreen handset, in a bid to challenge the Apple iPhone in the mobile music market.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone won’t be marketed as a do-everything smartphone, but seeks to target the niche audience of heavy wireless music and media consumers. The device comes with 12 months of unlimited access to Nokia’s Music Store, stereo Bluetooth functionality, and built-in stereo speakers. It can play and record video at a rate of 25 frames-per-second, and surf the internet, including Flash websites.

The Symbian 60-based device also features a 3.2-megapixel digital camera, GPS with voice navigation, and wireless networking capability. Like the iPhone, it has no physical keyboard, but rather an on-screen keypad and virtual QWERTY keyboard. Unlike the iPhone, however, the Nokia 5800 doesn’t support multi-touch input, which rules out some of the fancy navigation techniques that are possible on the high-end Apple device.

Overall, the Nokia 5800, which boasts as much memory as the iPhone (8GB or 16GB via a microSD card), should provide a new alternative for wireless media aficionados, at a highly competitive price (â‚¬279, before carrier subsidies). It is expected to be launched in India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia, and Spain by the end of this year, but won’t be available in most developed markets until early next year.

“The phone is competitively priced and Nokia’s competitive advantage is in emerging markets. When putting two and two together it’s logical they start the roll-out from emerging markets,” commented Strategy Analytics analyst, Neil Mawston, on the company’s apparent launch strategy. The research firm expects Nokia to ship some 10 million touchscreen handsets next year.

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