New Nokia WIN7 Smartphone Could Be A ‘Dud’ In OZ

Nokia is facing the real risk that their new Lumia 800 and 710 Windows Smartphones phone could be “duds” by the time they launch in Australia, after the Finish Company chose to skip introducing the new phone in OZ prior to Xmas in favour of launching several other European Countries.Nokia’s first smartphone that runs Windows Phone 7 is set to hit some retail chains in the U.K. next week. New research released by Gartner overnight reveals that despite a $500M marketing campaign by Microsoft has only managed to capture 1.5% of the Smartphone market.

Back in 2009 Microsoft had 3.5% of the smartphone market. Gartner predicts Nokia and Microsoft, who are in a strategic partnership, will rebound in the fourth quarter as their Lumia smartphone hits European markets.

Some analysts including IDC executives believe that there is a real risk if the Nokia Windows offering fails in European markets it will prove difficult to launch in markets like Australia and the USA where past Windows OS smartphones have failed to attract interest from consumers.

Both HTC and Samsung are offering new Windows Phone 7 smartphones in direct competition with Nokia’s new models with both Asian companies claiming that they intend to expand their Windows devices in 2012.

According to the Gartner research in overall mobile phone sales, Nokia saw sales slip 5 percent, but remained No. 1 with nearly 24 percent of the market.

At No. 2, Samsung boosted its sales by 7 million and is gradually closing the gap, with almost 18 percent of the market. LG lost sales and market share but remained in third place, followed by Apple, which improved by selling 17.3 million iPhones in the third quarter for 3.9 percent of the market.

In all, more than 440 million mobile devices were sold worldwide in the third quarter, up 5.6 percent from last year. Smartphone sales, which totalled 115 million units, were up 42 percent from a year ago, but down 7 percent from the second quarter of 2011.