Nokia fights back with new Symbian smartphones

Nokia announced a new lineup of Symbian-powered smartphones on September 14 during its annual Nokia World event, along with a new version of its Symbian platform and a new look for the company's Ovi app store.

"Today our fight back to smartphone leadership shifts into high gear," said Niklas Savander, executive vice president, Markets, Nokia.

"Despite new competition, Symbian remains the most widely used smartphone platform in the world. The new smartphones introduced today feature the latest Symbian OS, which is faster, easier to use, more efficient and developer friendly."

In addition to Nokia's already announced N8 smartphone, the company announced the E7, C7 and C6 smartphones.

The E7 is targeted at business users. It comes with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for secure, push email access, a 4 inch touchscreen, and a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. The E7 is expected to sell for €495.

The C7 is a social networking smartphone for the younger generation. It integrates live updates from Facebook and Twitter and helps you see new email messages, all on the home screen. It has a 3.5 inch AMOLED display and a rounded-edge design. The handset is priced at €335.

The Nokia C6 is a compact touchscreen smartphone for multimedia lovers. The device ships with a 3.2 inch AMOLED display and keeps users in control of their lives with ample social networking, email, and mobile entertainment features. The C6 will sell for €260.

The new devices come as Nokia faces increasing competition in the smartphone arena.

A September 7 report on the smartphone market by IDC suggests Nokia's leading market share will drop by 18 percent over the next five years as rival devices based on Google's Android platform make huge market share gains.

The report also predicts phones based on Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform will steal some of Nokia's thunder.

Nokia's new family of Symbian handsets is set to start shipping before the end of 2010.