Nokia Says Brazil Factory Will Produce Lumia 710 Smartphone

Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) will produce the Lumia 710 smartphone in its factory in Manaus, Brazil as it bolsters its position in South America’s biggest handset market, Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop said.

The Lumia smartphones will be available in Brazil in the first quarter, Nokia said. The Manaus factory will also produce the new Asha series of feature phones, Elop said yesterday at a press conference in Sao Paulo.

Nokia started selling the 420-euro Lumia 800, its first device running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone software, in November in Europe, and aims to start shipping the 270-euro Lumia 710 in Asia this year. The world’s largest handset maker teamed up with Microsoft to compete with advanced touchscreens from Apple Inc. and vendors of Google Inc. Android handsets. Nokia said last month it expects Brazil, now its sixth-biggest market, to become even bigger this year.

“The market changed and Nokia wasn’t as fast as it needed, but now we are moving in the right direction,” Elop said in Sao Paulo. “Brazil is a rich source of innovation for Nokia.”

Nokia’s share of the Brazilian smartphone market declined to 38.5 percent in the second quarter from 54.4 percent a year earlier, Tuong Nguyen, an Arlington, Virginia-based analyst with Gartner Inc., said last month. The Finnish company still led Research in Motion Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co., and Apple Inc. which had “mid-teens percentage market share” in the country, Nguyen said.

Early Lumia Batches

Nokia used Taiwan’s Compal Electronics Inc. to manufacture early batches of Lumia smartphones. The Finnish company produces “advanced mobile devices” at its plants in Beijing, South Korea, Hungary, Mexico, and Finland, with low-end phones being made in India and in Dongguan, China, according to a filing.

The Manaus plant produces both smartphones and low-end phones, the filing said. The Finnish company began manufacturing mobile phones in Brazil with Gradiente Eletronica SA in the 1990s.

To contact the reporters on this story: Taís Fuoco in Sao Paulo at tfuoco1@bloomberg.net; Diana ben-Aaron in Helsinki at dbenaaron1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net