Nokia to compete in high end smart phone market

Nokia World kicks off this week with the Finnish mobile giant laying out its plans to compete with the likes of Apple.

Nokia World, the company’s annual showcase event kicked off this week, with the mobile maker unveiling three new smartphone devices set for release before the end of the year.

The devices are set to compete in the highly competitive smartphone market that the likes of RIM, Apple and Google have captured.

The new phones all run an updated operating system called the Symbian^3 that brings a much desired change from the old Symbian versions that had not been updated in a long time and were beginning to feel outdated in comparison to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android Operating System.

Symbian^3 adds better multi touch controls on the handsets which sport new high resolution AMOLED displays that do not drain the battery while offering the same quality as traditional displays. Nokia is also hoping its revamped app store, the Nokia Ovi Store, too comes of age with this iteration of the operating system as more apps become available and more developers start developing for them.

There has been a lot of high-level shuffling going on at Nokia recently. Nokia announced on Friday it was hiring Stephen Elop, a Canadian Microsoft Executive with Silicon Valley credentials, an outsider in a company that does not stray far from its Finnish roots.

News broke on Monday that Anssi Vanjoki, the Nokia executive in charge of smartphones and services was resigning, probably in response to the hiring of Elop, and due to the fact that Nokia's market share in this market had slumped in this segment.

On Tuesday, former Palm Design VP Peter Skillman joined Nokia to head its user experience and services division for MeeGo, which is still in the early stages of its development.

And on Wednesday the Wall Street Journal reported that the company's chairman chairman Jorma Ollila would step down in 2012.

Executives at Nokia World are also confirming this strategic shift for the company. Colin Giles, senior vice president and head of global sales for Nokia, said to reporters on Tuesday that ‘We're not happy with our current situation in the US,’ one of the biggest markets that Nokia operates in.

Is this a step in the right direction for Nokia or not, only time will tell as the new devices start to roll out by the end of the year and into 2011.