Finland's Nokia , the world's top cell phone maker, Tuesday introduced two media phones and a music service in an bid to increase revenue and win back popularity lost to rivals.
Nokia hopes to regain ground lost to phones such as Motorola Inc.'s fast-selling Razr with sleeker devices equipped with music players and powerful cameras in what it sees as the fastest-growing cell phone market segment.
Nokia unveiled the N95, a high powered camera phone, and a slimmer model called the N75, which has dedicated music player buttons and is aimed at U.S. consumers. It also plans to boost demand with a service for sampling new music.
"We have left nothing out," said Nokia general manager of multimedia Anssi Vanjoki at a launch in New York.
Nokia said the N95, its first phone with location mapping and a 5 megapixel camera, will sell in volume in the first quarter via a number of European and Asian providers. It is priced at about 550 euros ($700), before subsidies and taxes.
It expects the N75, a folding model slimmer than most of its N-Series phone line, to be "widely available" in the United States in the fourth quarter of this year, Vanjoki said.
Nokia did not reveal deals with U.S. carriers Tuesday, but the phone is based on a high-speed wireless technology only used in the United States by market leader Cingular Wireless, a venture of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp.
"This phone could sell well. Nokia users have been looking for a slimmer model," said eQ analyst Jari Honko.
Nokia's N-series, which it first launched last year, represented a push toward more stylish and lighter phone models. Critics have said previous phones in the lineup fell short of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd's and Motorola's thin models.
The company has since reshaped its design operations and crafted the N95 with a cover that slides open.
The N95 shows "Nokia is trying to innovate around the design of its products -- something that has been lacking for too long," said Ben Wood, director at UK research firm Collins Consulting.
Music push
Phone makers such as Nokia hope service provider offerings like music and video downloads will boost demand for advanced cell phones. Nokia hopes to sell 80 million music phones this year and said it has sold 10 million N-Series phones so far.
But it acknowledged Tuesday that multimedia phones and services still mostly appeal to tech-savvy consumers, of which there are about 200 million, or 10 percent of the global market.
"The N-Series is not a device for the mass market," Nokia vice president Ralph Kunz told Reuters. "The experiences you find in these services are going to trickle down to the low end devices."
Nokia is working with 40 music experts, including rocker David Bowie, to form a free Web service Music Recommenders at http://www.musicrecommenders.com, where fans can learn about new artists and songs from around the world.
It will be available in Britain in October and in Australia in November, followed by a broader global service in 2007.
The N95 will also offer consumers free maps from Tele Atlas NV and GPS location data in more than 100 countries. Tele Atlas shares jumped 5 percent, while Nokia's U.S. shares closed down 10 cents at $19.55 in New York.
