Nokia's Lumia 710 Windows Phone to see daylight in February via Rogers

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

This is the most significant Windows Phone news in a while. Rogers will be offering the Nokia Lumia 710 next month for $254 outright with various pricing options for monthly plans, this is the first of three new Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone. The Lumia 800 and the LTE enabled Lumia 900 have not yet been earmarked for release in Canada.

Nokia has reportedly sold over 1 million Lumia smartphones since these were released in Europe late last year. Nokia recently said that it sold “well over” 1 million Lumia devices to date  and that it will do its best to bring the Lumia series to additional markets – including China and Latin America – in the first half of 2012. 

Nokia finds itself in a transitional period. While it is still the world's leading handset maker, it is betting its smartphone future on Windows Phone. A report from TechCrunch states, "The Finnish phone maker, still the largest in the world by volume, reported a Q4 net loss of 1.07 billion euro (for Q4 2011), down from a 745 million euro profit in the fourth quarter of 2010."

 Nokia had good incentive from Microsoft to buy into the Windows Phone OS as Microsoft paid them US $250 million in Q4 2011 as platform support payment. This is supposedly the first in a series of quarterly payouts to help ease Nokia into the new platform. This amounts to 1 billion a year which helps ease the sting of the Finnish giant's latest quarterly net loss.

This really looks like a make or break product line for Nokia. We got a chance to see the Lumia 710 and the more impressive Lumia 800 last year (see above video). The Lumia 710 is reminiscent of Nokia's entry level smartphones with plastic casing and interchangeable covers although the specs match up with the more robust Lumia 800. Nokia wants to offer something for every type of user.

Despite its lower price, the Lumia 710 still beats most other Windows Phones released last year in various areas although we still think that the best Windows Phone released to date was the Samsung Focus and it feels like ages since that one came out.