An image on a Microsoft partner’s Christmas card appears to show a Nokia smartphone with AT&T branding, thought to be the Nokia Ace, which has also been called the Lumia 900 and the Ace 900. Microsoft and AT&T are expected to announce the phone at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The image clearly shows the 4G logo as well as a front-facing camera.
HTC and Samsung are also expected to release LTE Windows phones during the first half of this year. That would bring the total number of Windows smartphones made by Nokia to five: the Lumia 710 (set to be available Jan. 11 in the U.S. through T-Mobile), the Lumia 800 (currently available unlocked in the U.S. through Amazon), the Ace, the Samsung Mendel and the HTC Radiant.
Nokia is still the world’s biggest seller of mobile phones, but the Finnish company knows it cannot hold on to its lead unless it catches up with rivals Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market. Nokia spent $3.7 billion on handset research and development last year, twice as much as Apple spent on all R&D.
Regardless of how elegant or powerful Nokia’s smartphones might be, they are unlikely to succeed unless developers are willing to create apps for the Windows operating system, which still has just 5% of the smartphone market. Microsoft is working hard to woo app developers, and at the same time the software giant has sanctioned a “jailbreak” for Windows phones, a download which allowed users to unlock their phones in order to purchase apps from sources outside the Windows Phone Marketplace. Just today, that tool went off the market, with developer ChevronWP7 Labs saying it has stopped selling the product for now.
