The Nokia 5250, the latest instalment in the XpressMusic smart phone range, should soon be with us — a picture of it was accidently leaked on the Finnish firm’s Web site.
The Nokia 5250 was offered as a prize for answering a question about Ovi apps, despite the phone having not been officially released. It was quickly withdrawn from the prize pool, but a photo of the 5250 can still be seen on the competition page, alongside the name of a lucky winner.
This means we should expect delivery of the phone — rumoured to be the Nokia 5230‘s replacement — fairly soon. Interestingly, the latest addition to Nokia’s XpressMusic range bears little resemblance to the 5230, and looks more like the X6.
The lack of release information means it’s difficult to gauge what technical specifications it will have, but the model name suggests it’s a Symbian device closer to the wallet-friendly 5230 than the more upmarket X6.
In any case, much of Nokia’s focus is now going to be on the new N8 smart phone, which runs on the latest Symbian 3 OS.
Nokia is fighting a battle to win back ground lost to other phone manufacturers, as the smart phone market continues to grow exponentially. It still does pretty well for itself in the cheap end of the mobile market, but the profit margins are nowhere near as generous as those in the higher end — where Nokia has been fairly hopeless since the glory days of the N95.
It seems Nokia simply can’t compete with the touchscreen chic of the iPhone and Android devices, and the business-savvy design of the BlackBerry. These handsets have taken a massive slice out of Nokia’s pie, especially when it comes to making phones with Qwerty keyboards.
That said, the XpressMusic phones have been good sellers for Nokia, so we’ll reserve judgement until after we’ve had a good look at its new devices.