2014's Lumia 1820 and 2020: Is This A Big Come Back For Nokia?

Nokia managed to increase their sales of their Lumia line of smartphones during the third quarter of 2013 as the Finnish company was able to sell 8.8 million units in the third quarter from just 2.9 million in the same quarter in the previous year according to The Verge. With the new year, the company will again roll out a new batch of Lumia phones and two models, the Lumia 1820 and the 2020, are rumoured to be the next flagship phones of Nokia for 2014.

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Phone Arena discussed the leaked features of the phones and the Lumia 1820 is rumoured to have a 5.2 inch 2K display powered by a Snapdragon 805 processor backed by 3 GB of RAM. It comes with 32 GB of internal memory and has a large capacity 3400 mAh battery. It is also said to feature Lytro-style camera technology coupled with a Xenon flash. Like most smartphones these days, the Lumia 1820 will have a unibody construction.

In another article, Phone Arena also covered the rumours surrounding the Nokia Lumia 2020. The device is said to be an 8-inch tablet that runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. The tablet will have a higher pixel density than the 2.2 GHz quad-core backed Nokia Lumia 2520 and have better performance. Nokia is said to be planning to showcase these two models at this month’s MWC 2014. Other sources say that the Nokia Lumia 2020 tablet will include stylus support.

What is intriguing about the rumoured specs of the Lumia 1820 is the Lytro-style camera technology that could set it apart from other phones on the market. Last November, Nokia unveiled its Refocus app that brings Lytro-like features to their PureView Windows Phones. What the app does is it takes two to eight photos to allow photos to be refocused after being shot and does not use a unique hardware to enable this function unlike a real Lytro camera. Those who want this feature on their Nokia phone might want to check out the Refocus app to add this functionality to their phone.

If the Nokia Lumia 2020 will be an upgraded version of the Lumia 2520, then we can expect it to share some features with the previous version. The Lumia 2520 has a 10.1” full HD display and 4G LTE connectivity. It can also work in tandem with the Nokia Power Keyboard so that it can function like a laptop. If the Lumia 2020 has a smaller screen, then Nokia seems to be aiming at the market that the Apple iPad Mini is trying to capture.
Nokia’s Uphill Battle To Regain Its Dominant Position in the Smartphone Market

There was a time when Nokia dominated the smartphone market. It all went downhill for Nokia after Apple introduced the iPhone in 2005 and after Samsung came out with their own line of smartphones that carried Google’s Android OS.

The International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker shows that worldwide smartphone shipment has topped one billion units in 2013. This was an increase of 38.4% of the 725.3 million units shipped in 2012.

That’s tremendous growth in the smartphone market in just one year. Despite this growth, Nokia was unable to reach the top 5 in shipment volume for the year. 2013 saw Samsung dominate the field with 313 million smartphone units sold followed far behind by Apple with 153.4 million unit. Huawei (48.8 million), LG (47.7 million), and Lenovo (45.5 million) rounded out the top 5 spots for 2013.

If Nokia is not doing so well in the smartphone market, it’s doing much better in the greater mobile phone space which includes the smaller smartphone market. The same study showed that Samsung topped the list in terms of mobile phone shipment volume for 2013 with 446.7 million mobile phones shipped. Nokia was second with 251 million mobile phone units shipped. Apple’s 153.4 million shipments of iPhones was at third while LG and Huawei rounded out the top 5 spots.

Nokia definitely needs a game changing product in order to catch up on their smartphone rivals. We have yet to see if the market will judge the rumoured Lytro-like features of the Lumia 1820 to be attractive enough to sway the people away from buying iPhones and Google Android powered Samsung smartphones.