Nokia N8 Rhymes With Late
Updated since 9:14 am EDT with Nokia share price.
NEW YORK, (
) --
Nokia
(NOK) - Get Report
unveiled the N8 Tuesday, its boldest effort yet to catch up with
Apple's
(AAPL) - Get Report
iPhone.
Three years and
late, Nokia has introduced a thin touch-screen phone that will be available in select markets -- read maybe the U.S. in the third quarter.
The standout features include a 12-megapixel camera with high-def video, free Navteq-powered navigation and 16 gigabytes of memory. The N8's 3.5-inch screen and a half-inch thickness is roughly the same as the iPhone.
The N8 is the first phone to use Nokia's Symbian 3 operating system, which promises to heat up the legal battles, because it uses multitouch controls like pinch and finger-spread zoom. This is one of the technologies popularized by Apple's iPhone and at the core of
lawsuits against Nokia and more recently
HTC
. Nokia started the patent fight last year
accusing Apple of infringement
on some of its wireless technology.
The Next Crisis For Customer Satisfaction (Forbes)
Nokia has been struggling to develop a touch-screen phone that could help it compete with the likes of Apple and an expanding roster of
(GOOG) - Get Report
Android-powered phones made by
Motorola
(MOT)
and HTC.
Nokia has managed to remain the top smartphone maker globally, but it has lost a lot of turf to rivals like
Research In Motion
(RIMM)
and Apple.
>> Who Owns Nokia?: Karen Finerman
The N8 is
and the touch-screen trend.
One of the biggest challenges, beyond phone design, is finding support among U.S. phone companies to sell the phones. Telco subsidies cover as much as $300 of the customer's cost of the phone. In the exchange, the telco gets subscribers locked into two-year service contracts.
In recent years, Nokia's promise of a new generation of touch-screen phones has been a disappointment. The N8's arrival hopes to deliver on that promise and get Nokia back in the game.
Nokia shares continued their week-long 18% slide, falling 2% in midday trading Tuesday.
--Written by Scott Moritz in New York.









