Nokia's sales chief Chris Weber has taken to Twitter directly
calling out Samsung. Of its upcoming Windows Phone 8 handsets due to be unveiled on September 5, Weber tweeted, "Samsung take note, next generation Lumia coming soon." With the Finnish handset maker struggling to gain traction with its current Windows Phone 7 line up, Weber could either be trying to build hype, or could be very confident that Nokia has got it right with its latest smartphones.
While some have speculated on Weber's use of the word 'note,' as suggesting that Nokia might be prepping a Galaxy Note-like device, it seems more likely a reference to the high-stakes court case between Apple and Samsung currently in its latter stages in California. Apple of course has accused Samsung of 'slavishly copying' its iPhone from the design of the device, through to its user interface and even in its packaging.
During proceedings, Apple produced
a 132-page internal Samsung document that showed Samsung closely analyzing numerous screenshots from the iPhone and instructing its designers to copy the look and feel of Apple's design touches - clearly, it had taken close 'note' of what Apple had done with its iPhone and has sought to replicate that. It also emerged that Samsung has closely imitated the look and feel of various market-leading devices before the iPhone arrived, and before it achieved its current market dominance overtaking Nokia as the number one handset maker in the world. This included previous market leading devices made by RIM and by Nokia.
It seems that Weber believes that Samsung should now turn its attention back to Nokia and closely study its latest Lumia handsets.
Windows Phone 8 is a complete revamp of Microsoft's mobile operating system, with a different software architecture to its Windows Phone 7 predecessor, even if it carries over most of the 'Metro' UI look. Windows Phone 8 is so different from Windows Phone 7 that it won't run on current Windows Phone 7 handsets, with a stop gap update to
Windows Phone 7.8 for those users giving them much of the look of the enhanced Windows Phone 8 interface.
Most importantly, it will finally unshackle Nokia and other Windows Phone makers, including Samsung, to upgrade their hardware to include multi-core processors - something that was not possible with Windows Phone 7, which was limited to single-core designs. Windows Phone 8 should now be able to compete in all aspects of performance, importantly including what is arguably the most important specification it today's smartphones, the system's CPU. With Nokia's new Lumia handsets due to be revealed shortly, we will soon be able to determine the veracity of Weber's view.
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