Considering all the announcements we got before Nokia World, we weren't sure what else the Finnish phone giant could have up its sleeve for us. But today we've been presented with the X6 and X3 – two new additions to the Comes with Music family.
The X6 is the most impressive of the two handsets, and save for the small call buttons at the bottom, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a fully fledged MP3 player.
Packing a 3.2-inch touchscreen, 32GB of storage and 35 hours of music playback into a skinny body, it can certainly hold its own next to an iPod, but then its phone credentials are also pretty impressive.
The slim X6 features a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, video recording, A-GPS, HSDPA, Bluetooth and Flash Lite support, not to mention a 16:9 widescreen for good movie viewing.
The X3 on the other hand is a slider phone, and the first Series 40 device to be Ovi Store-enabled.
You'll get a 2.2 inch screen, 3.2 megapixel camera, Flash Lite support and up to 16GB of storage via microSD card.
It also puts a big emphasis on music with a 3.5mm jack, built-in FM radio, stereo speakers and dedicated music keys.
As mentioned, both handset are Comes With Music devices, so you can squeeze in all the music you can possibly manage as well.
The X6 and X3 are set to hit shelves towards the end of the year, and prices will be around £400 and £100 respectively. Be sure to check out our gallery for more images and specs of both handsets, and be sure to let us know what you think below.
Model features touch screen, slide-out keyboard, will retail for around $712
Nokia's new N900 phone uses the Linux operating system, which should work well in parallel with Nokia's Symbian operating system in its high-end product range, the company says. "This is in no way putting Symbian in jeopardy," said Anssi Vanjoki, head of sales at Nokia. "Open-source Symbian is going to be our main platform, and we are expanding and growing it the best we can."
The Finnish firm has been looking for business opportunities from offering services like music downloads or games to cell phone users as the handset market itself is maturing, but so far its offerings have gained limited traction.
"As Nokia announces the software platform that will drive its future services aspirations it created a dedicated solutions unit — the challenge will be to ensure that all these elements work in harmony in the face of fierce competition from Apple and Google," said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.
Nokia has kept its overall market share stable, close to 40 percent, but it has lost share among more expensive models to the likes of Apple.
High-end products are important for Nokia because the company has not only lost market share there but its average selling prices have declined faster than the industry average.
Goldman Sachs expects Nokia's value share (a measure reflecting average prices as well as underlying market share) for phones costing more than $350 to decline to 13 percent this year from 33 percent just two years before.
The Linux bet Analysts see Linux as a key for Nokia to gain back ground in the coming years.
The Finnish firm has dabbled with Linux since 2005, using it in "Internet tablets" — sleek phone-like devices used to access the Web that have failed to gain mass-market appeal in part due to their lack of a cellular radio.
The new N900 model, with cellular connection, touch screen and slide-out keyboard, will retail for around $712, excluding subsidies and taxes.
Nokia's workhorse Symbian operating system controls half of the smartphone market volume — more than its rivals Apple, Research in Motion and Google put together.
Nokia said Linux would work well in parallel with Symbian in its high-end product range.
"This is in no way putting Symbian in jeopardy," Anssi Vanjoki, head of sales at Nokia, told Reuters.
"Open-source Symbian is going to be our main platform, and we are expanding and growing it the best we can, both in terms of functionality as well as distribution ... populating more and more of our product line with Symbian," he said.
"If you look at the energy management properties we have in ARM, at least today, they are clearly better, miles and miles better, than what we have in Intel architecture," Vanjoki said, adding the company would not count out using Intel processors in the same product range later.
Linux is the most popular type of free, or so-called open source, computer operating system available to the public. It competes directly with Microsoft, which charges for its Windows software and opposes freely sharing its code.
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Nokia X6 – looking good
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