Nokia fights back with advanced camera phone

Nokia unveiled a new flagship metallic Windows phone yesterday, featuring a hi-tech SmartCam which can takes 10 images at once, as it battles to wrestle market share back from Samsung and Apple.

However, shares in the Finnish telecoms giant fell more than 5 per cent as the research company Gartner reported that it had lost almost 5 percentage points of market share in the first quarter of 2013.

The Lumia 925, launched in London yesterday, will be rushed to the market in Europe and China next month and sell for about £400.

Running on the Windows 8 operating system, the Lumia 925 boasts a 4.5-inch display, the "brightest" picture yet, Nokia said, an 8.7-megapixel camera and, unlike the company's previous models, an aluminium chassis. The Lumia 925 is 8.5mm thick and at 139 grams is lighter than the Lumia 920 released last year. Nokia has invested heavily in camera technology in an attempt to set its phones apart from rivals.

Global sales figures for mobile phones rose 0.7 per cent in the first three months of 2013, driven by demand for smartphones and strong growth in the Asia Pacific region, which helped to offset much weaker sales elsewhere.

However, Samsung took much of the gains, remaining market leader with 23.6 per cent, ahead of Nokia on 14.8 per cent and Apple on 9 per cent. Nokia had held a 19.7 per cent share just a year ago.

Those figures followed a 13 per cent rise in sales by Samsung, a 16 per cent increase by Apple, and a 24 per cent fall by Nokia, compared with the same period last year.

Gartner said that overall sales of the cheaper feature phones were slowing, as consumers kept hold of their phones for longer.