Nokia Emits New Lumia Phone — Wall Street Journal.

LONDON—Scrambling to help catch U. S. and Asian rivals inside growing global smartphone sector, Finnish mobile device-maker Nokia Corp.

concerning Tuesday launched another element to its Lumia Your windows program phone lineup, emphasizing high-end video camera features, wireless charging and using lightweight components.

Nokia’s Lumia 925, slated to take sale in Europe and China next month, debuted at a The united kingdom news conference following months of hype within the size, weight and features of a new Nokia Lumia unit. The phone, which uses Microsoft Corp. ‘s

Your windows program software, will come which has a €469 ($609) price tag in Europe and grow available through Vodafone Set

PLC in Europe, China Mobile, China Unicom

together with T-Mobile Inc. Pricing to get non-Europe markets wasn’t available.

The announcement follows two phone debuts last week—the Asha 501 meant for emerging markets like India along with the Lumia 928 for Ough. S. buyers. Nokia is racing to keep pace with more widely used offerings from Samsung Electronics Co.

Ltd and Apple company Inc.

During the thing conference, Nokia executives said “we thrust camera technology like crazy” after displaying a device with one more lens designed to better capture day light and a so-called Good Camera feature that captures multiple images at any one time. Executives also pointed out using aluminum in the device’s construction, which will help decreased its weight.

Nokia’s launch comes a similar day as a account showed that appetite for basic mobile devices fell during the first 90 days of 2013, and sales of touch screen phones rose by 43% weighed against the first quarter recently, now representing essentially share of the global handset promote.

The report—by exploration firm Gartner Inc.

—showed that 210 k smartphones were sold with the first quarter as demand for devices like Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 and Apple’s iPhone continued to grow. Sales of so-called attribute phones, meanwhile, slipped 21% to be able to 216 million, with soggy demand for low-end devices hurting various companies relying on gross sales of no-frills feature phone handsets, including Nokia. Gartner bottoms its report on business to consumers, unlike some that monitor sales so that you can retail channels.

The rapid growth in the smartphone market during the primary months of 2013—fueled simply by demand in Asia—indicates sales of more sophisticated items built around open os’s such as Google Inc. is

Android platform will soon represent the bulk of industry sales. During the initial quarter, 49. 3% associated with device sales were mobile phones, up from 34. 8% a year ago and 44% in this fourth quarter.

“Consumers inside the Asia-Pacific who have used feature phones have become switching to smartphones, and that is certainly driving the growth, ” Gartner principal homework analyst Anshul Gupta said within a interview.

The move to smartphones is developing as the global handset market appeared stagnant. Altogether, global handset sales elevated 0. 7% in the initial quarter from a 12 months earlier with Asian need offsetting weakness in many other regions.

“Local Asian brands such as India’s Micromax have enhanced their capabilities significantly and make quality smartphones selling at all around $80, ” Mr. Gupta proclaimed. “They have all the basic features for example Android operating system, dual SIM cards together with a large display, so all those who have used $60-$70 feature phones are now really moving on. ”

Among the big global vendors, South Korea’s Samsung kept the very best spot as its share in the world-wide mobile phone market grew to 23. 6% because of 21. 1%. Nokia remained second though its economy share dropped to 16. 8% from 19. 7%, while Apple closed the gap slightly with a market discuss gain to 9% because of 7. 8%.

Gartner’s data mirrors Nokia’s first-quarter file last month, where the ailing company—once a world’s dominant handset maker—posted a good 21% decline in income of basic mobile phones for example the Asha line. Sales involving its Microsoft Windows-based Lumia mobile phone handsets, launched in an effort to deal with the problem against Samsung and Apple in the high end, grew firmly but still made up just some fraction of its full shipments.

“Nokia is significantly hit from the decline in feature phones, ” Mr. Gupta claimed Tuesday. “Samsung has been aggressive inside the smartphone market so its smartphone sales growth has compensated for its falling sales of attribute phones. That’s not the situation for Nokia because the country’s smartphone sales are escalating only marginally. ”

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