Nokia CEO: No Android Plans – Only Windows Phone and Asha

Today, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of the last year, and posted Lumia sales of 4.4 million units for the time frame, which helped it regain profitability.

Given that the Windows Phone OS and devices running under it are just starting to pick up pace on the market, the company claims that it remains committed to driving innovation together with Microsoft. Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, reiterated this during the company’s earnings call earlier today, suggesting that the vendor had no plans on trying its luck in the Android segment of the market. Moving forth, the company will continue to focus on the release of new Windows Phone devices, while also working on expanding the reach of its Asha lineup. “We are clearly innovating with Microsoft around Windows Phone, and are focused on taking that to lower and lower price points. You will see that over time compete with Android,” Elop said, according to TechCrunch.

“But at the same time we’ve said consistently — and we’re just beginning to see it in the Asha full-touch products — that we will continue to innovate around our Asha smartphone line in order to compete with the very lowest levels of Android.” The company will work on making Asha devices more competitive against Google’s Android devices through reducing the cost of ownership, Nokia also unveiled. “We are not in a situation where we are considering something other than Windows Phone combined with what we’re doing with Asha,” Elop continued.

Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone is expected to drive the platform to the third place on the smartphone OS market, while also helping the vendor regain a lot of the market share it has lost lately and prove that it can indeed be profitable while paying royalty fees to Microsoft. Nokia announced its plans to transition to Windows Phone in early 2011, when it also unveiled that the deal signed with Microsoft involved receiving a series of quarterly platform support payments from the Redmond-based giant.  However, as part of its Q4 2012 financial announcement, the company unveiled that the royalty payments it will make to Microsoft will be higher than the financial support received from the software company.

Nokia Lumia 620
Image credits to Nokia

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