With the dual-SIM card mobile companies facing rough weather after the Madurai-based independent patent owner Somasundaram Ramkumar filed for patent infringement, Finnish handset maker, Nokia is eyeing an entry into this category.
The Madras High Court has deferred the hearing of the petition on the patent issue to April 27.
Vineet Taneja, head-marketing, Nokia India, told Financial Chronicle that dual-SIM card was a category the handset vendor was working on. “We are not in this space, but we want to fill this segment,” he said.
Betting high on the Indian market, the company is planning to launch N97 in India with the Ovi Store pre-loaded on the mobile. Ovi is Nokia’s concept of internet services. It is a store of applications, games, maps, music, mail and access to third party services.
The company is schedule to launch N97 by June. Taneja said that the company had lined up some of the mobile phones to be launched in the Indian market soon. It plans to launch handset models 6700 and 6303 in the coming months.
Nokia on Wednesday launched its Eseries range, Nokia E75, with the Nokia messaging service. It also announced the launch of its email solutions for Nokia devices. Financial Chronicle, in August last year, first reported that Nokia was planning to launch its email services, competing with the BlackBerry mail solutions offered by Research In Motion (RIM).
The Nokia E75 will support all features of Nokia Messaging Service — an array of third party email solutions, such as Gmail, Yahoo, Rediffmail, Sify, Indiatimes, Net4, Hotmail and In.com amongst others, thereby providing direct access to over 90 per cent of the world’s corporate inboxes as well.
According to industry experts, there are around five million mobile subscribers using email on mobile. Taneja said that Nokia would target these customers to offer its email solutions.
