At this very moment, Nokia has factories that produce mobile devices in 9 countries around the world: Finland, Brazil, China, the UK, Hungary, India, Romania, Mexico and South Korea. Even so, it looks like the Finnish giant has contracted a Taiwanese ODM to manufacture Windows Phone handsets for it.
According to DigiTimes and unnamed "industry sources", Compal (one of the biggest Taiwanese ODMs) has already landed orders for some Nokia Windows Phone devices, which should be shipped starting the fourth quarter of the year - I do not expect Nokia's first WP smartphone to arrive earlier anyway.
So, that Nokia Sea Ray we have seen yesterday (pictured below) running Windows Phone Mango will probably be mass manufactured in Compal's factories.
Nokia has worked with Compal in the past, also for a Windows product: the Booklet 3G - which may not be a great commercial success, but is (or at least it was for the 2009-2010 standards) a pretty good 10-inch netbook.
Compal expects to ship a total of 4.5 million smartphones by the end of 2011, and I am really curious to see how many of those will be Nokia-branded. Of course, we would not know this until early 2012, when Nokia should publish its Q4 2011 and full year financial results.
Its said that Compal will also make Windows Phone handsets for Acer (Which, just like Nokia, is new in the Windows Phone game). One of the first Acer WP devices may be the W4 - not a high-end device, but that's why it could be sold for a really attractive price.
According to DigiTimes and unnamed "industry sources", Compal (one of the biggest Taiwanese ODMs) has already landed orders for some Nokia Windows Phone devices, which should be shipped starting the fourth quarter of the year - I do not expect Nokia's first WP smartphone to arrive earlier anyway.
So, that Nokia Sea Ray we have seen yesterday (pictured below) running Windows Phone Mango will probably be mass manufactured in Compal's factories.
Nokia has worked with Compal in the past, also for a Windows product: the Booklet 3G - which may not be a great commercial success, but is (or at least it was for the 2009-2010 standards) a pretty good 10-inch netbook.
Compal expects to ship a total of 4.5 million smartphones by the end of 2011, and I am really curious to see how many of those will be Nokia-branded. Of course, we would not know this until early 2012, when Nokia should publish its Q4 2011 and full year financial results.
Its said that Compal will also make Windows Phone handsets for Acer (Which, just like Nokia, is new in the Windows Phone game). One of the first Acer WP devices may be the W4 - not a high-end device, but that's why it could be sold for a really attractive price.
