Nokia Denies New N8 Delays

Nokia has denied any significant delays to its flagship N8 smartphone despite sending an email to journalists, saying that it needs to tweak the much-coveted device a little more before releasing it.

The N8 was scheduled to arrive on Nokia’s online shop at the end of September, after several delays. Vendors including Tesco were already competing to sell it with various deals, but the firm has said in an email statement that it won’t now arrive until later in October.

Making final changes

“In some markets, we had planned to start delivering the Nokia N8s to our pre-order customers by the end of September,” the phone giant said in an emailed statement published in places including the Wall Street Journal. “To ensure a great user experience, we have decided to hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends.”

Today, a blog post has clarified that the end-of-September date still stands, meeting a previous promise to deliver the phone by the end of the third quarter. However, shipments may be delayed because of demand, the post says. “There have been a few stories this morning about the N8 availability which we feel need clarification.”

“As with every global launch, when the device reaches the hand of the customer will vary by market and operator.” The phone has had a record number of pre-orders and has been taken up by 100 operators around the world, says the blog.  “We had targeted our online pre-order customers to receive their N8s by the end of September. As it can take time from the beginning of shipment to arriving at their doorstep, in full transparency, we have advised our pre-order customers that they should expect their new Nokia N8 in October.”

Game-changer?

The N8 carries a heavy weight of responsibility: after last year’s N97 was a let-down. Nokia has a big lead in the smartphone world, but needs to come up with a device that can halt the erosion by iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

The much-anticipated phone – and the look-alike E7 device, which has a keyboard – was the centre of attention at the Nokia World event last week. It has very strong multimedia abilitiers, including a 12 Megapixel camera, the ability to shoot high-definition video, and an HDMI-out socket (all of which are used to advantage in viral videos such as the animated “Dot” by Aardman studio  – see below) .

It is also the first Nokia phone to use Symbian^3, the latest version of the open source phone OS championed by Nokia, which has been criticised for not having as good a “user experience” as Android or the iPhone, and  compared to the Titanic by Gartner analyst Nick Jones.

Meanwhile. Nokia itself has seen a shakeup with Stephen Elop hired from Microsoft to replace the former chief executive Ol-Pekka Kallasvuo, who stood down suddenly, and two other senior executives announcing their departure.

Tesco is selling the N8 for £329.97, but currently says it has no stock, and does not show a delivery date.