Nokia said on Tuesday that its new flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920, would cost $100 with a two-year contract on AT&T - an aggressive price for a brand-new handset with high-end features. It's a repeat of what Nokia and AT&T did with the last Lumia, which didn't sell well. Will things be different this time around?
The main difference now is that along with the phone, AT&T is throwing in a free plate that you can place the phone on to wirelessly charge the battery. And the phone, which goes on sale Friday, includes the newest version of Microsoft's mobile operating system, Windows Phone 8.
Nokia is staking its future on the success of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, which has also been unpopular compared with Google's Android system and Apple's iOS. But Microsoft has dragged Nokia down in the smartphone market. In the third quarter, Nokia posted a loss of $1.27 billion, and worldwide sales of Lumia smartphones fell to 2.9 million handsets in the quarter, down from 4 million in the previous quarter.
Incidentally, Microsoft's share of the phone market in the United States has shrunk to just 1 percent, down from 2.5 percent last quarter, according to Pete Cunningham, an analyst at Canalys. He said the Lumia and the Windows Phone system lost momentum after Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 would not be compatible with the older Lumia phones, which ran Windows Phone 7. The Lumia phones are aimed at tech-savvy consumers, so they were aware that they shouldn't buy a Lumia phone before Windows Phone 8 arrived, Mr. Cunningham said.
Whether the Lumia 920 is a winner depends on how well Microsoft and Nokia get the message out that they have a compelling alternative to Android and the iPhone, Mr. Cunningham said.
“Frankly, Nokia is running out of chances, so it has to make a success of it,†he said.
