Nokia welcomes the iPhone

Apple's new iPhone was given a warm welcome today by one of the companies likely to be providing its strongest competition.

"It is great publicity for this device category," said Ari Virtanen, vice-president of multimedia convergence products at Nokia.

"The iPhone has some very nice design touches, as you'd expect from Apple. It has become a player in the smartphone arena, and that will bring a lot of attention to this kind of device."

He was in London to promote Nokia's new N800 internet tablet , which shares some functionality with the iPhone in that both can act as a video and audio player and internet radio. Its 91mm x 57mm screen is much the same size but has a full 800 x 480 VGA resolution compared with the iPhone's 320 x 480.

But the N800's primary function is as a handheld web-access device and VoIP phone and videophone. It cannot make standard phone calls directly but can link to the web via mobile phone and Bluetooth.

Virtanen said Nokia's N95 multimedia smartphone , which is set to ship in quantity early this year, provides a more direct comparison with the iPhone. The N95 has a smaller screen – 2.6in and 240 x 480 pixels compared with 3.5in 320 x 480 – but is also physically smaller and lighter.

It packs satellite navigation, which is not on the iPhone, and a 5megapixel camera, compared with the 2 megapixel one on the Apple device. And it supports 3G/HSDPA, whereas the iPhone supports only relatively slow Edge cellular links.

The N95 was of course designed before the iPhone was unveiled. Virtanen said: "There has been a lot of talk about Apple bring out a device like this. It is great that it has come out and we can see what Apple is doing."

From which, presumably, we can infer that the iPhone is likely to influence future Nokia designs.

Comment: Why N800 is more interesting than the smartphones

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