Nokia chooses ST-Ericsson to power new Windows Phone handsets

With Nokia intending to bring its portfolio of smartphone devices to the ‘next billion’, the Finnish manufacturer has today announced a deal with ST-Ericsson to supply the chipsets for handsets it intends to deliver to the low, mid and high-end smartphone markets around the world.

Currently, the company continues to develop its Symbian platform, incorporating dual-SIM handsets that have seen significant growth in emerging markets, particularly Asia and Africa. With the adoption of Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, the company intends to roll out devices that can appeal to all budgets and consumers whilst delivering a consistent software experience and obtainable mobile technologies.

ST-Ericsson will tailor its NovaThor platform for Nokia, a platform that delivers an “optimal combination of mobile processing performance, powerful multimedia, mobile broadband and connectivity at extreme power efficiency” and is designed “to power a broad range of next generation smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices”.

Put simply, the announcement sees Microsoft’s push to embed Qualcomm processors come to an end, with ST-Ericsson’s dual-core, LTE chips ushering in higher-powered, more feature-rich Windows Phones.

The component manufacturer is amongst the leading suppliers to the top handset manufacturers and topped $2.3 billion in sales in 2010. The company boasts that it can deliver the “latest ARM-based multi-core CPUs optimized to deliver highest performance at lowest power consumption, industry-leading system-level power consumption, Full connectivity suites including WLAN, Bluetooth, FM, GPS, HDMI – devices that can cater specifically for consumers in emerging smartphone markets.