If the mobile blogs are to be believed, Nokia is undercutting most everyone as it makes a new push into the smartphone market.
With Windows Phone’s market share in the single digits, drastic action would seem to be the order of the day, and that’s exactly what Nokia is doing, according to a new report from a mobile blog.Boy Genius Reports, which is usually pretty accurate, says the Nokia Lumia 900 will be available on March 18 for just $99 with a two-year contract from AT&T. The blog is echoing what Paul Thurrott at the SuperSite for Windows reported earlier this month, except BGR claims this is through its own sources.The phone was named “Best of CES” in the smartphone category by CNET, Popular Science gave it a “Product of the Future” awards and Popular Mechanics gave the Lumia 900 an “Editor’s Choice” award. Lest we forget, the Palm Pre earned similar accolades three years ago, but there’s a difference between Palm and Microsoft/Nokia.If the price holds true, it would follow on Nokia’s aggressive pricing. It introduced a lower-end phone, the Lumia 710, in December, for $49.99 with a two-year contract. Wal-Mart had a special where the phone was free. The caveat was the phone is on T-Mobile, a mobile provider in serious trouble.Pricing is one of the best ways to jump-start a lagging business, and Microsoft knows this. Nokia isn’t much of a player in the U.S. in the smartphone market, but it’s a monster in the rest of the world, and Windows Phone devices on sale in Europe are selling like crazy, according to Forbes.Windows Phone needs some drastic moves if it wants to have a prayer against Android and iPhone. This definitely helps.
The Lumia got raves when it was shown at CES, a hard thing to do given how much gets tossed out to the public at that show. The stylish, super-thin phone features a 4.3-inch AMOLED screen, 1.4GHz Snapdragon APQ8055 chipset, 16GB of internal memory, an 8MP camera plus a front-facing camera and video capture capabilities of 720p at 30fps.
