Nokia are aiming to release their first Windows smartphones later this year although it looks as if they won't hit the channel in volume until 2012.

Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO was speaking at the Nokia Connections event in Singapore and had a positive outlook on Nokia's change in stance. “We have a new strategy and we are focused on delivering results.” he said.

Nokia are facing tough competition in the last year and the company are falling short of expectations with sales figures said to be well below earlier analyst predictions.

Elop was keen to point out that Nokia are working hard on Windows Phone and that test versions of their smartphones are already running the next release version of the mobile Microsoft operating system.

Nokia made the move to Windows Phone earlier this year and that they would be focusing entirely on the platform going ahead. Symbian is still responsible for a huge portion of their sales, but market strategy shows that over time it will be entirely phased out.

At the event they highlighted their Symbian Anna software running on a Nokia N8 handset, this featured a few updates to the software with an improved browsing experience being one of the key talking points.

Over the next 12 months Nokia are due to release another 10 Symbian devices for the market, and they will support the platform until 2016. This includes software updates and bug fixes.

The N9 was also a focus point for Nokia at the event in Singapore. This is a touch screen smartphone based around the MeeGo platform, a mobile version of Linux which was once the planned future move for the company. Confusing their strategy even further, they said that they would maintain experimental development work on the platform and would be releasing a single MeeGo phone for consumers.

The N9 is an attractive looking phone, with a curved screen ideal for use with one hand. The N9 can also run applications designed for QT, an environment which has already shipped on over 100 million smartphones to date.

The N9 has an 9 megapixel camera onboard and also includes a tasty high definition video camera, said to work well in low light situations. The phone is created from a single piece of polycarbonate, which Nokia claim gives a very strong reception. As we would expect they also managed to have a pop at Apple saying “Unlike some competitor products you don't need to hold it a special way to make reliable phone calls.”

KitGuru says: No exact release date has been set for the N9, but Elop did say it would be available later this year.

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