James Delahunty
15 May 2007 18:48
Finnish mobile phone giant, Nokia, hopes that Apple Inc.'s upcoming iPhone will help to boost consumer interest in more expensive models with advanced features. Smartphones can be multimedia gadgets, can surf the web, take excellent photos and play games but since many cost more than $400 before subsidies by mobile carriers, the average consumer may not look twice.
"The (U.S.) consumer ... hasn't had a lot of choice to go out and purchase these kind of higher-end, feature-rich multimedia devices. If that can help that market grow, I think that gives us an opportunity," Nokia Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Rick Simonson said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs has set a goal of selling 1 million iPhones in Calendar 2008. "Don't get me wrong, they will bring some things to the table that we have to be responsive to, but we have been investing in this area or some time," Simonson said. "We are leading in multimedia convergence."
Simonson pointed out Nokia's N73 and N95 best-selling handsets as examples of multimedia feature-rich handssets already on the market from the company. "It (the N95) is already out there, doing many of the things that people are talking about the iPhone doing. The iPhone is interesting. It's very much a validation of what we've been doing, in terms of saying there is a multimedia device out there that people will pay for," he said.
A 4GB iPhone costs $499 and an 8GB costs $599. Apple has said it could sell as many as 10 million units.
Source:
Reuters