Nokia is hoping new handsets, a better Ovi Store and new services will restore its fortunes, writes CIARA O'BRIEN

IT’S BEEN a tough few years for Nokia. Once synonymous with smartphones, the company has seen its rivals gradually gain ground in recent months, although Nokia claims it is still king.

It has some impressive statistics to back up its assertion. According to its figures, it currently ships some 260,000 smartphones every day across a range of handsets, although its rivals aren’t far behind.

“That’s more smartphone sales than any other company by far. Period,” said Nokia’s executive vice-president of marketing Niklas Savander.

Since it began making phones running its Symbian 60 operating system, more than 300 million devices have been shipped, Nokia said.

Against a backdrop of turmoil at the top, Nokia had much to prove at this week’s Nokia World exhibition, held in London. The event took place in the wake of a number of departures from the company’s top-level executive team, with chairman Jorma Ollila, smartness chief Anssi Vanjoki and chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo among those who will be leaving the company in the near future.

But this week it was business as usual for Nokia. It invited industry heavyweights such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Twitter’s Kevin Thau and games designer Jane McGonigal to address attendees in a series of keynote speeches and rentable talks on everything from the future of the web to gaming.

A few well-aimed digs at its competitors throughout the keynote speeches showed exactly where Nokia felt its main threat was. Stating that the company refused to apologise for not being Apple or Google, Savander said: “We’re Nokia and we’re unique.”

Amid the digs at Apple and Google, Savander made the company’s strategy clear.

“We will continue to expand the availability of smartening features because everyone – not just the well-off – should have easy access to the internet and modern mobile communications,” he said.

The mobile-maker is hoping that new handsets, an improved Ovi Store and new services will help boost its reputation in the mobile market.

“I recognise that we haven’t been as competitive as we want to be in smartphones,” said Savander. “That’s about to change. Today we shift into high gear in Nokia’s fightback to smartphone leadership.”

On Tuesday, Nokia unveiled the C6 and C7 handsets, as part of its bid to woo consumers. The phones feature large touchscreens and use Nokia’s latest version of its Symbian software.

A brief look back at the previous Nokia Communicator devices preceded the announcement of the new generation of business-focused devices – the E7.

The slide-out keyboard is attended to appeal to business users, while the large display – four inches to be exact – is designed to keep the multimedia junkies happy.

The company also talked up its N8 handset, which comes with a 12 megapixel camera. “We think the N8 is the start of something big,” said Vanjoki.

Meanwhile, the Symbian operating system is getting an update, to be faster, more intuitive and easier to use. “Despite all these new competitors, Symbian has continued to hold its own,” said Savander.

Nokia was strident in its defence of the new Symbian platform and critics’ dismissal of the new system based on screenshots of it.

“It’s like dismissing the performance of a new car with all new turbo-charged engine before getting in and driving it, just because the dashboard looks familiar,” Vanjoki told the conference.

He said the fragmentation of the old Symbian system would be eliminated, and Nokia’s Qt tools would help developers access more customers in its Ovi Store. This would allow mobile software developers to create an application that would be accessible to all Nokias Symbian smartphones.

The Ovi Store can’t be ignored. According to Nokia, the store has seen about two million downloads per day, in 30 different languages across more than 120 devices. Nokia has signed up 91 operators in 190 countries to support.

The Finnish manufacturer showed off Ovi Maps and its new pedestrian navigation options, with the company emphasising rival Google’s “data-hungry” service.

“Contrary to popular perception, Nokia – not Google – is the leader in mobile navigation,” Savander said. “Ovi Maps and navigation services lead the market in terms of functionality, quality and reach.”

Nokia is certainly pinning its hopes to GPS. It estimated that by 2013, more than 800 million people will be using GPS-enabled devices and related services.

“The internet is changing. Soon everything on the internet will have a location co-ordinate,” Savander said. “The potential of this area is huge and it will transcend the user experience as we know it today. And it’s a space that we intend to own.”

At Nokia World, the company showed off an indoor positioning system that is designed to be more accurate than GPS, which could be used, for example, in large shopping centres or exhibition centres to guide visitors by their mobile phones.

But while there was much talk of Ovi and Symbian, what was absent from the proceedings was any announcement of progress on its Meego platform, a collaboration with Intel announced at mobile world congress earlier this year.

The Linux-based system is intended to be a platform for mobile technology, taking in everything from mobile phones and netbooks to connected TVs.

Savander made it clear there would be no Meego announcements at Nokia World, but hinted that there could be something by the end of the year

At the exhibition, Nokia also showed off a number of “future technologies”, including a device that transforms screens into touch screens. The plug and touch uses the camera on the phone, connected via a cable to the TV, to recognise gesture inputs, including selecting items and scrolling.

There was also an emphasis on Nokia’s green credentials and emerging markets throughout the event, with Nokia showcasing its Life Tools applications and green lead technologies.

Of its new handsets, for example, the C7 contains biopaints, while the C6 handset contains recycled metals.

Life Tools, meanwhile, is a range of services covering agriculture, education and entertainment, delivering up-to-date, locally relevant information to your mobile phone.