Nokia Windows Phone Handsets Won?t Be Available Until 2012

A stylish, colorful Nokia Windows Phone concept

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Windows-powered Nokia.

According to the managing director of Nokia India, D. Shivakumar, Nokia is working on a 12 month timeline to release its first set of Windows Phone smartphones.

A 2012 release date likely means that the handsets would run the next version of Windows Phone 7, aka Mango, which is supposed to be made available to manufacturers in late 2011.

According to Shivakumar, the Nokia-Microsoft partnership should bring new life to the fledgling smartphone OS, which made up only 3% of total wordwide smartphone sales at the end of 2010. Nokia’s flailing Symbian smartphones held a strong 31% of the global market that same quarter.

?Microsoft has been looking for a strong hardware partner, but they have been on phones [platforms] which have not given them that strength. With Nokia, suddenly the scales are huge.?

In February, Nokia announced it would be teaming up with Microsoft to “transform the company.” The move meant that Nokia would be abandoning Symbian in favor of Windows Phone 7 and future Windows Phone installments, much to the chagrin of its developers.

Nokia still plans to release about 20 Symbian smartphones in 2011 out of the 40-50 total new models it’ll be launching.

The Finnish company plans to follow a two-year time frame to complete the transition to Windows Phone-only handsets.

In the mean time, Nokia has redirected its primary business strategy to reach the 3.2 billion people who don?t currently own mobile phones, and the other nearly 3 million who can?t or don?t access the Internet on their devices, while Apple and other smartphone manufacturers vie for the high-end spectrum of tech power users.

Nokia’s First Windows Phone to be Released in a Year [DNA via Slashgear]

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