Nokia Unveils New Lumias, Investors Shrug

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -Nokia (NOK) shares slumped on Wednesday, as investors shrugged off the handset maker's first phones running Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Phone 8.

At a press event in New York, Nokia showed off two new phones; the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820. The slightly larger phone Lumia 920 has a 4.5-inch HD display and Nokia's PureView camera technology, which it's touting as way for users to take high-quality photos typically associated with SLR cameras. The 920 also offers 32 Gbytes of storage.

The Lumia 820 has a 4.3-inch screen, 8 gigabytes of storage, and an 8-Megapixel Carl Zeiss camera. Both devices use a dual-core Qualcomm (QCOM) processor.

The Finnish company is desperate to maintain its foothold in the smartphone market in the face of stiff competition from Apple (AAPL) and Google's (GOOG) Android phones.

Investors, though, were unmoved by the latest additions, pushing Nokia's stock down more than 16% to $2.36. Volume was approaching 200 million, more than four times the issue's daily average churn.

Nokia threw its weight behind Microsoft's Windows Phone last year and sold 4 million Lumia devices during its recent fiscal second quarter, up from 2 million during the prior quarter. Rival Apple, however, sold 26 million iPhones during its recent fiscal third quarter and 35.1 million in the prior quarter.

Nokia looks set to face a massive challenge from Apple's eagerly-anticipated iPhone 5, widely expected to debut at a major press event in San Francisco next week.

In a note released early on Wednesday, Brian White, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets, said that Nokia will regret launching its new smartphones at the same time "as the world's most anticipated consumer electronics launch ever, the iPhone 5."

White also feels that Motorola which unveiled new Droid RAZR phones on Wednesday, and HTC, which hosts its own smartphone launch on Sept.19, are in the same unenviable position as Nokia.

Nokia has not yet released pricing and availability information for its latest Lumia phones. "Stay tuned for more info in the near future," explained a Nokia spokesman, in an email to TheStreet. Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system will arrive in the fall.

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