Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NOK): Press Event to Launch Latest Lumia

The Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) Lumia line of handsets has been growing all year long since the company latched onto the Windows Phone 8 operating system last fall. The new handsets have done modestly well  considering the reported sales numbers, though the Nokia stock  is continuing to get some negative assessments from analysts (Canaccord Genuity is the latest to reaffirm its “sell” rating, doing so Thursday morning) in the wake of the company’s decision to pay about $2 billion to take over 100-percent control of Nokia Siemens Networks. But do you think investors like fund manger Jim Simons (see his full equity portfolio) would agree with analysts’ sentiments?

And with much of the concern focusing on the cash available for Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) after the Nokia Siemens buyout of Siemens AG (NYSE:SI), there may certainly be more concern about cash on hand with the expected cost of the latest Lumia handset, which is expected to be launched at a special press event Thursday night in New York. With some of the specs being revealed a little bit early, there may be more concern that this phone will be expensive to produce for Nokia, and it will likely need to see big sales numbers or at least a large margin on each handset sold for the company to be able to retrieve some cash that it has been steadily losing over the last several years since  the heyday of being the dominant mobile phone handset maker in the world.

In advance of the Thursday evening launch, some press photos and a few specs have leaked regarding the Lumia 1020 handet, which has long been expected to be the focus of the launch event, previously titled, “Zoom, Reinvented.” It is expected that this latest Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) flagship handset would be one that trumps many of the others, including the highly touted 920. This new smartphone has been rumored to have a massive 41-megapixel camera  sensor on the back, which would be the “official” incorporation of the PureView technology that Nokia introduced with its old 808 handset that ran on the native Symbian operating system with the Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone platform.

The Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) Lumia 1020 is expected to boast a 4.5-inch AMOLED display screen, 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage, according to the latest information revealed. If this holds true, then it would be the largest  of the Nokia Lumia handsets in terms of display size and would be on pare in terms of memory and storage with other Lumia predecessors.  Nokia certainly believes that the camera is a factor in smartphones now and is banking on that. Reasonable?

What are your thoughts? Would you be interested in a Nokia handset with such a large screen and camera? Might this be the “hero device” that Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) CEO Stephen Elop has been chirping about for months? Do you agree with the general sentiment that camera quality is becoming a key factor in consumer decision-making when it comes to smartphones? Give us your feedback in the comments section below.