Nokia's high-low strategy to spread Series 60

Nokia is adopting a pincer movement in its attempt to get its Series 60 software onto various types of smart phone.

Series 60, which runs on top of the Symbian OS, currently has around 50 per cent of the smart phone market, according to Nokia, and is shipping close to one million of its own devices a month. But if all goes to plan, Series 60 could be verging on the ubiquitous.

Nokia is planning to spread the use of Series 60 in two directions, aiming to use the platform on both high-end devices and lower-end handsets.

With the launch of Nokia's newest smart phone, the 7710, Nokia is already expanding its use with 'widescreen' devices as well as touch-screen and pen input systems.

The platform is now to support resolutions of up to 640x320.

But, according to Antti Vasara, Nokia's VP of technology sales and marketing, Series 60 will also be heading down market too and featuring on more mid-range phones.

"The importance of Series 60 is that it is going into the mobile categories that matter. On one hand, it’s going into the mid-range… and hitting the price points that will drive mass market take-up," he said. "On the other hand, it’s going into PDA-type converged devices."

Nokia is also making Series 60's presence felt in the sphere of push-to-talk over cellular (PoC) – the walkie-talkie technology that has already proved popular in the US and which European operators are hoping will do the same this side of the Atlantic.

Nokia has today announced that it has released a PoC client for some devices, all based on Series 60, including the 6600 and 7610, which can either be downloaded from operators’ websites or stores.