Nokia plans to launch Nokia5800 XpressMusic phone in India by Nov price tag close to Rs 20,000

[Amol21]

Nokia plans to introduce its touch screen phone Nokia 5800 XressMusic phone by the third week of November for a price tag close to Rs 20,000.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and, with a single touch, images or videos can be shared via a favorite online community, such as Share on Ovi, Flickr, or Facebook. Music playlist song titles can also be shared through Bluetooth, MMS or online sharing.

The company is betting big on the model as depending on its response, Nokia plans to line up its touch screen product line in India in future.

[Udumbu]

This unexpected twist to the Nokia touch-screen saga left industry-watchers shocked on Thursday, as the Finnish handset-maker revealed that its first ever keypad-free phone would only be released in Asia, the Middle East, Russia and Spain before the end of 2008. Although these markets accounted for more than half of Nokia's sales in the second quarter, Europe and the U.S. could have contributed a sorely needed boost to end-of-year trading.

According to a company representative, the issue is one of operator customization. Network operators like France Telecom's Orange or Vodafone need their own specific palettes, logos and menus; these apparently will take a few weeks longer to sort out for the touch-screen display. Nokia's representative told Forbes.com that in distributor-led markets like Asia and the Middle East, such customizations were not needed.

The new 5800 phone does deliver what it set out to achieve. It will be attractively priced at an unsubsidized cost of 279 euros ($390). By contrast, similarly unsubsidized 8-gigabyte 3G iPhones cost 499 euros ($700) in Italy or 350 pounds ($619.19) in the U.K.