Nokia World: Nokia comes out fighting

Challenging times ahead, but firm will continue to dominate, say execs

Nokia is pinning its hopes on new smartphones like the E7

Nokia executives went on the offensive at the start of Nokia World in London today, declaring that, despite all the recent turmoil at the company, "Nokia's fight back has begun".

The firm has had a tough few days with the appointment of a new chief executive and the departure of vice president Anssi Vanjoki just days before the launch of make or break products.

Niklas Savender, executive vice president of markets at Nokia, said during a keynote speech at the start of the two-day event that Nokia is going through a "tough, challenging transition" and that there is "a lot of work to do".

However, he expressed confidence in the company's ability to continue to dominate the mobile market.

"We are not going to apologise for the fact that we are not Apple, Google, Samsung or anyone else. We are Nokia. We are arguably the most global company in any industry," he said.

"In the past quarter people bought far more Nokia smartphones than Apple and Android combined. On average, people buy 260,000 [Nokia] smartphones everyday. More smartphone sales than any other company by far."

Savender's statement refers to all Nokia devices, not just high-end smartphones, according to Nick McQuire, EMEA research director for enterprise mobility at analyst firm IDC.

"Nokia has managed to keep share in smartphones by dropping prices, scaling sales across many regions and focusing on the low end of the market. But it is struggling at the high end, which is why it announced these [E7, C6 and C7] devices today," he said.

"It has also tried to focus on Symbian^3 and highlight some of the high-end components of its services such as navigation and maps. The new Nokia leadership needs to prove success in this space against Google, Apple and BlackBerry."

Symbian continues to hold just over 40 per cent of the market, according to Nokia, and Savender made a "conservative" estimate that the firm will ship 50 million smartphones, including the N8 and E7 devices.

"The Nokia N8 maintains our long tradition of mobile devices that offer style, innovation, good value and performance, day-in day-out no matter how you hold them," he added in a clear dig at Apple's iPhone 4 antenna problems.

Savender also emphasised the importance of mobile navigation and Nokia's Ovi Maps product. Nokia believes that 800 million people will be using GPS-enabled devices and services by 2013, and that everything will have a location co-ordinate.

Nokia has no plans to make any MeeGo product launch announcements at this event, but Savender said that there should be an announcement about a MeeGo device before the year is out.