By Sam Schechner, Leos Rousek and Sven Grundberg
STOCKHOLM--Nokia Corp.'s (NOK) new flagship smartphone will be
on sale in France in two months' time, a person familiar with the
situation said Friday.
Vivendi SA's (VIV.FR) SFR, the second-largest mobile operator in
the country, will offer the Lumia 920 in November, according to a
person close to the company.
Telecom Italia said it would sell the new Nokia phone in Italy
but couldn't specify when. Other large European mobile operators
declined to comment.
Nokia's launch of the new phones in New York on Wednesday was
highly anticipated, but a lack of detailed information about the
sales and marketing plan disappointed investors. A person familiar
with Nokia's plans said that the Finnish company will start to make
announcements regarding pricing and availability next week.
Some smaller European countries said they are not expecting the
phone until early next year.
A spokesperson for the Czech Republic's biggest operator
Telefonica Czech AS (BAATELEC.CZ) said that due to Nokia's shipment
availability for the Czech market, it won't be able to offer the
new smartphones until the first quarter of next year.
T-Mobile Czech Republic, the country's number two mobile
operator said the launch of Nokia's new Lumia smart phones remained
an open question partly due to pricing concerns and
availability.
"Both new Lumias are in fact very expensive," T-Mobile Czech
spokeswoman Martina Kemrova said "For now it's still an open
question whether we begin selling Lumia 820 or 830 in the first
quarter of 2013, and we'll decide based on the overall success of
the Windows Phone 8 platform."
Nokia's two new devices, the Lumia 920 and the mid-tier Lumia
820, both run an upgraded version of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT)
Windows Phone 8 smartphone operating system.
At 1454 GMT the shares were trading up 6.5% at EUR2.06. The
stock is down 8.5% over the last week.
Write to Sven Grundberg at sven.grundberg@dowjones.com
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