Nokia (NOK) Says No to Symbian CDMA Phones

One of the major transitions that Nokia (NYSE:NOK) will make as it changes under new CEO Stephen Elop is an embrace of the wireless technology CDMA, which Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) and Sprint (NYSE:S) use. For years, Nokia has only released devices that work on another — more widespread — wireless technology called GSM. In the U.S., that limited the introduction of Nokia phones to AT&T (NYSE:T) and T-Mobile USA. In a strategy to widen its addressable audience, however, Nokia will eventually issue CDMA handsets, Elop revealed at the February Mobile World Congress trade show.

Those Nokia CDMA handsets, though, are still off in the future. In an interview at the CTIA Wireless conference, Nokia USA Vice President and General Manager Mark Slater told Forbes that the Finnish company is unlikely to make any CDMA phones that run on Symbian, Nokia’s longtime mobile operating system. Instead, Nokia will wait until it has devices on Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone platform. “Our go-forward smartphone platform for CDMA will be Windows,” said Slater.

That means no CDMA Nokia phones until 2012 or even later, potentially. Nokia has been understandably vague about the timing of its Windows Phone handsets, hinting that the first device may arrive before the end of the year. The bulk of Nokia Windows Phones will come later. In a recent regulatory filing, Nokia indicated that its transition to Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform would take two years.

For now, Nokia’s focus in the U.S. remains on affordable, Symbian, GSM-based smartphones. On Sunday night, the day before the CTIA show officially kicked off, Nokia unveiled its latest entry, the T-Mobile Astound. The device is a slim touch-screen powered by the latest version of Symbian. It will go on sale exclusively at T-Mobile USA in April for $79.99.

Nokia was trading at $8.39, down $0.01, or 0.12 percent, as of 1:56 PM EDT.



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