With new (including non-smartphone) devices, Nokia takes first steps toward its future

As expected, Nokia let go a flurry of news at its Nokia Connection 2011 event in Singapore today. (CP: Elop to reveal plans for China at Singapore event.)

It made good on its promise to release a MeeGo device, introducing the trim and lovely N9 high-end smartphone; announced that 10 Symbian phones will debut over the next 12 months; pinpointed July as the delivery date for Symbian Anna — the updated, not-so-open-source incarnation of Symbian — and introduced three "affordable" Series 40 handsets, intended for Asian markets. Finally, Nokia also took time to emphasize its Qt platform (pronounced "cute"), which is particularly popular in Asia-Pacific and it plans to make "core to building applications that connect the next billion users to the Internet."

The N9, which will come in black, magenta or cyan, features a 3.9-inch AMOLED Gorilla Glass display, an 8-megapixel autofocus camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, three home views with multitasking, free maps and navigation apps, a Web browser that allows several sites to be open and supports HTML5, NFC technology, WiFi, GPS, and WLAN connectivity, and what Nokia is calling Swipe — a feature that lets users return to the home screen from any application with a swipe of their fingers from the edge of the screen.

"Smartphones clearly represent an important part of Nokia's business," Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said during his keynote address at the event, "but the reality is that 90 percent of the world does not have, or cannot afford a smartphone or a high-end device."

Which makes them, of course, key targets for Nokia and its peers, as evidenced by the show's location in the SEAP (South-East Asia Pacific) region — home to not only half the world's population, when India and China are included, but a number of critical tech statistics. According to Nokia:

• In Singapore, the mobile penetration has passed 145%;

• 40% of the population of Vietnam is accessing the Internet over mobile phones;

• Malaysians are the heaviest users of social networks in world, spending an average of 9 hours of week engaged in it; and

• Facebook's reach in the Philippines is the highest in the world, at 94%.

• Additionally, SEAP is the third fastest-growing market in the world by GDP (after China and India);

Elop continued, "Of the 3.7 billion people who don't have a smartphone, 1.2 billion have only SMS and they don't have a data plan, and 1.5 billion people don't use the Web. This gap creates the opportunity for our second strategy. With our global reach, our deep product portfolio and our global ecosystem, we can connect the next billion people to the Internet."

Enter the dual-SIM X1-01, selling for about 35 Euro and offering Nokia Life Tools and 16GB of memory for storing, for example, thousands of songs; the dual-SIM C2-00, with support for an up to 32GB card; and the dual-SIM C2-03 — the best combination of "fun and functionality at its price point," said Nokia Executive Vice President Mary McDowell during her presentation. The C2-03 has a touch-and-type interface, and an Easy Slot feature, which lets you swap out a SIM without powering down the phone. (Nokia will also offer a C2-02 — not confusing at all! — that's the C2-03 but in a single-SIM option.)

SEAP is a major component of Nokia's comeback plan, as it's found itself losing market share in recent quarters to the Apple iPhone and Android-running devices. Elop has said Nokia isn't focusing on one killer device to take on the iPhone, but a range of devices across a number of price points, as it made clear in Singapore today.

As for the high-end N9, sales of a device with an OS Nokia has expressed little interest in supporting — and the existence of which was essentially a goodwill gesture toward Intel — shouldn't give much a boost to Nokia's bottom line. But the company's efforts weren't in vain, Elop suggested.

"The real focus of the N9 was to uncover new ways to bring innovation into the marketplace," said Elop. "Many of the innovations that you see today in the N9 will live on in a variety of ways at Nokia. The industrial design, the user interface, and the focus on Qt. All of these innovations will be seen in future products."