Nokia on Monday announced the launch of the much-awaited Nokia Lumia family of smartphones based on Windows Phone in the country.
The Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710 will be available in select retail stores across key cities and towns in mid-December. This announcement follows close on the heels of the global unveiling of the devices last month at Nokia World, the company's annual event for customers, partners and developers.
Both devices will be available for pre-order starting early December. Though the company did not announce the price in India, the devices are priced between €420 and €270 in Europe.
Mr D. Shivakumar, Managing Director, Nokia India, said, “Over the past few months, we have been gearing up the ecosystem for the Nokia Lumia family in India and today we have in place strong operator partnerships, an all-new retail look and a ready developer ecosystem delivering rich content to make the Nokia Lumia experience a truly amazing one for Indian consumers.”
Also present at the launch, Mr Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, said, “The Nokia Lumia devices are a powerful combination of Microsoft and Nokia's core assets and deliver new experiences through the integration of service assets across location, search, entertainment, social, advertising and commerce.”
Features
The device has Nokia Maps & Drive, which delivers a full-fledged personal navigation device (PND) with free, turn-by-turn navigation voice guided navigation in 50 languages, including Hindi. Nokia Music and the all new MixRadio a free, global, mobile music-streaming application that delivers hundreds of channels of locally-relevant music will be available in India in the first half of 2012.
Nokia has been working on an extensive developer engagement and outreach programmes in collaboration with Microsoft, covering over 1,000 developers in India. The Windows Phone Marketplace will have 750 locally relevant apps created by Indian partners when the Nokia Lumia hits the shelves in India.
In addition, users will also have access to over 35,000 apps from Microsoft, both paid and free to download, on the Windows Marketplace.
Retail network
The handset maker also unveiled a complete, made over look for its retail network. More than 5,000 of its top retail outlets selling the Nokia Lumia range across the country will sport a new identity.
The rebranding elements include a 3D and 2D in-store branding and a live device environment across all stores. A specialist field sales force at these outlets will deliver experience to consumers on live devices placed at every retail outlet selling the Nokia Lumia.