A Choice of Nokia Windows Phones Before Year’s End?
“The year 2012 is when we’ll see a portfolio of [Windows Phone] products shipping in volume. The pressure is on all of us, myself included, to have those first devices this year but we haven’t announced a specific date yet.”
Looks like Nokia is on track to meet the unofficial mandate given by its new chief executive, Stephen Elop, earlier this year: Deliver a Nokia Windows Phone before 2011’s end.
In an interview with Forbes today, Jo Harlow, Nokia’s EVP of Smart Devices, while stopping short of saying definitively that the company will bring a Windows Phone handset to market in 2011, said she’s optimistic that it will do so.
“I’m quite pleased with our progress,” Harlow said. “Our target is absolutely still this year…and the target looks good,” adding the company is shooting for a “small portfolio” of devices, not just one.
And there’s little reason to doubt her. Nokia executives said last month that they already have test builds of Mango, the latest iteration of Windows Phone, running on prototype Nokia hardware.
