Nokia unveils premium line of phones


AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- Nokia unveiled new premium phones on Wednesday that included one with an MP3 music player that it said will outsell Apple's iPod and a camera phone that it forecast will surpass Canon, the world's top digital camera maker.

Nokia unveiled its N91 multimedia phone, which will have a 4-gigabyte hard drive that can store thousands of music files. The phone, which will also run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks, is due out by the end of the year.

Nokia said its other new phones, the N90 and the N70, will have two-megapixel cameras with high quality Carl Zeiss lenses. The N90 will be in shops in the second quarter at a price of around 600 euros ($784), while the N70, also a 3G phone, will hit the shelves in the third quarter. Apple's original iPod retails for about 319 euros in Europe while Canon's cameras start at less than half the cost of the N90.

"Now there's no need to take a separate camera with you to make pictures," he said as he pointed to the Zeiss lenses also used in high-quality standalone cameras.

The hard disk-based music phone would have been launched sooner but Nokia is still working with Microsoft and its online partner OD2 to develop a music download service for mobile devices, Vanjoki told Reuters in an interview.

"But it will be this year. We're not going to miss Christmas," he said.

Nokia is also confident there will be an open standard for digital music protection, which it intends to use in its phones. Nokia does not want to use a proprietary format from Microsoft, despite an ongoing argument between the mobile phone industry and a handful of patent holders of key anti-piracy technology, he said.