Nokia's Windows Phones will start coming out at a relatively rapid clip after the first one appears later this year, Nokia's executive vice president of smart devices, Jo Harlow said today.
"We should be launching new devices in a rhythm that might be every couple of months, every three months, something like that," she said.
The first Windows Phones came out in October, and we haven't seen many devices since then. According to recent sales figures from Gartner, the phones haven't sold very well, although our Reader's Choice survey shows that the relatively few people who own Windows Phone devices love them.
The slow pace of Windows Phone hardware may be due to Windows Phone 7 being a "secondary platform" for manufacturers like HTC and Samsung, Harlow said. But as Windows will be Nokia's primary platform, Nokia will focus more heavily on Windows Phones, she said.
"We're going to keep coming with new devices in order to have something to talk about," she said.
Nokia already seems to be influencing the Windows Phone platform. Along with the mapping software that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed when they made their agreement in February, Harlow said that some of Nokia's cloud services may help fill Microsoft's gaps in countries where Microsoft doesn't have a major presence. For instance, the Nokia Music Store may take the place of Zune in countries where Microsoft's music store isn't available.
Nokia's future Windows Phones may also come on CDMA networks in the USA and use non-Qualcomm chipsets, Harlow said.
Nokia's attitude towards CDMA "has changed" and "we are in discussions with all of" [the U.S. wireless carriers], Harlow said, then saying nothing, but smiling when I responded, "CDMA devices are in the works."
Microsoft's existing relationships with U.S. carriers will help Nokia get on shelves here, she said.
"We are working in a collaborative way across the triad of Nokia, Microsoft and the operators," she said.
Nokia has been a Texas Instruments customer for many years, but switched to Qualcomm for its first Windows Phones, as Microsoft requires Qualcomm chipsets in Windows Phone devices. That may change, though.
"You have to have multiple chipset suppliers that allow you to address different levels of performance, different parts of the business geographically given different modem requirements, etcetera. So the starting point is clearly with Qualcomm … we are in the process with Microsoft of defining other chipset suppliers as well."