Nokia says that 150 playlists “that are curated and kept up to date by an expert team of US based musicologists” are available, comprised of a wide variety of music genres, from classical to house dance music. Additionally, playlists created by Lana Del Rey, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, as well as other well-known performers, are available. But Nokia Music isn’t just made up of the service-provided playlists. Personalized playlists can be built using the “create” function, which access millions of songs in Nokia’s music library.

The free service should appeal to music lovers that own a Lumia device in the US. Nokia Music doesn’t contain any advertising, so music will be uninterrupted. And the playlists can be accessed offline, so tunes can be enjoyed without using up precious mobile broadband. A “gig finder” feature also offers information on local music events and the app ties in to Nokia’s digital music store where users can purchase MP3 songs or albums.

Nokia Music is likely the first of many new announcements coming from the company. Tomorrow, Nokia has a scheduled press event in New York City, where it is widely expected to debut handsets designed to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.

Nokia’s app will compete with Amazon’s Kindle and Kindle apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows in France, Italy, Spain and the UK.

The Reading app, first announced with the new Lumias at Mobile World Congress in February, will be available for the Lumia 900, 800, 710 and 610 this week. Nokia says, “While e-books are becoming a common sight in countries like the US and the UK, they are still in their infancy – or basically unavailable – in many parts of the world. And this is where the strength of Nokia Reading lies: in local language e-reading content.”

The company doesn’t specify how many titles are available but says there are “a wide range of local titles, as well as a large collection of English titles popular across the world.”

The company is also working closely with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), which is providing the software for its new top-end smartphones, to co-ordinate software details such as tile colours to match its hardware accessories, Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia’s head of design, told the Guardian.

New versions of the Lumia design, introduced to showcase Windows Phone in November, will also remove the flip-up plastic tab that presently covers the micro-USB charger for the phone – one of just two moving parts on the Lumia 800 phone.

“If you can take away a moving part and make it [the phone] more beautiful in the placement of the components, we’ll do it, so that’s something where we can certainly keep improving,” Ahtisaari told the Guardian. “Take it to the extreme, and why are there any connectors?”

Ahtisaari is extremely influential within Nokia (NYSE: NOK), having been appointed last week to its leadership team, reporting directly to chief executive Stephen Elop.The removal of the USB connector would imply the use of wireless charging – a system that has already been demonstrated by products such as HP’s TouchPad, which had a wireless charging system. A Nokia spokesman said the company declined to comment on future product features.

Speaking in Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland, earlier this month, Ahtisaari said that new elements will “ship with the product that we will ship in the future”. Nokia already has “open NFC” incorporated into a number of its smartphones to enable rapid, password-free setup of Bluetooth pairing between phones and accessories such as speakers and headsets.

Although current versions of Windows Phone do not include NFC elements, Microsoft has indicated that it could be included in versions shipping by October 2012. And Elop also said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that although the current Windows Phone Lumia models – the 800 and 900 – do not have NFC, “it is growing in importance, and I personally believe in it”.

NFC “open” allows Bluetooth pairing without the use of password by tapping the devices to be paired together: an exchange of electronic tokens takes place, so that Bluetooth connection – for a hi-fi, speakers or headset – can occur within seconds with virtually no other interaction. Current secure Bluetooth pairing otherwise requires the user to enter a password of up to eight digits.

Nokia has shipped more than a million Lumia phones since introducing them in November. The company decided to abandon its Symbian platform for high-end smartphones in January 2011 after Elop decided it could not compete against Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems.

He also suggested that touchscreen interaction is in its very early days, comparing it to the early days of the automobile: “In the 1880s in the car industry cars had tillers – it took 15 years to agree on the steering wheel controlling the front wheels. We’re in the middle of that part of the evolution of interaction.”

Charles Arthur’s trip to Finland was paid for by Finnfacts, an independent media service organisation that provides contacts between international media and Finnish business.

This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

Nokia currently has two models Windows Phone devices in the market, the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, both 3G models, and is planning to launch a new 4G version in the U.S. in March of this year.

The day before Nokia’s results, a trio of news items released by the company — combined with the “leak” that it would be offering its first 4G phone, the Lumia 900, at a massive discount to the rest of the 4G offerings out there — looked a little like padding for worse news to come today, and that’s more or less what we got:

Handset unit sales were down eight percent to 113.5 million.

Feature phones actually held up in their unit sales: 93.9 million for the quarter, down by only one percent.

Smartphones, however, did significantly worse: 19.6 million devices, down 31 percent.

Device revenues overall were €6 billion, down 29 percent. Again, the biggest weakness was in smartphones, which had sales of €2.74 billion, down 38 percent.

Not surprisingly, Nokia is very much trying to draw a line under last year, one of profound transformation for the company, and look ahead to what 2012 will hold.

It’s taking a very aggressive strategy to pick up much-needed market share for its devices in key markets like the U.S. and UK, offering its handsets at massive discounts — and in the case of the UK, even free under certain contracts. That tactic will come at a big price though: unless Nokia has worked out a way to make high-end devices for less money than its competitors, it will continue to see erosion of its margins and device average selling price. In other words, it might win business, but at what cost?

In the quarter just ended, those margins continued their decline. In this quarter Nokia reported gross margins of 23.7 percent on smart devices, compared to 30.8 percent for the same quarter a year ago. ASP for smartphones was down by only three percent to €140 — a figure that was helped by sales of more expensive models such as the N9 and the Lumia 800, according to Nokia. Feature phones saw a decline of 10 percent in ASP to €35, their lowest price yet.

Windows Phone sales. Nokia reached a milestone — or a “beachhead” as it calls it — by selling more than 1 million Lumia handsets. But this number is still a far, far cry from the 20.8 million smart devices that Nokia sold in Q4 of 2009, let alone the 37 million iPhones sold by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) sold in Q4 2011.

The Windows Phone platform, according to figures from Kantar out this week, accounted for less than two percent of sales in any of the nine countries it surveys as a barometer of smartphone demand. That points to a very long road ahead for both companies to bring those numbers into a more credibly competing realm.

Nokia says that it will introduce its first WP7 devices into China and Latin America in the first half of 2012. This is important for a number of reasons: Greater China is currently Nokia’s second-largest market after Europe (€5 billion in device sales for China compared to €7 billion for Europe), but it is declining, seeing an 18 percent drop in revenues over last year and 20 percent in volumes. Meanwhile, LatAm is Nokia’s second-smallest market after North America but it’s one of the only ones that is growing (Middle East being the other growth region.) In LatAm, Nokia had sales of €2.5 billion on volumes of 46 million units.

LatAm and China are also both markets where Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has yet to introduce Windows Phone, and where there is still a lot of room for smartphone growth — something that Apple, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and Android makers have not overlooked, either. Still, that means a population of consumers with less preconceptions about Android and iOS being “the” smartphone platforms of the future — getting through to those consumers is crucial if Microsoft truly hopes to makes its OS a truly global smartphone player.

Design front and center. In one more move to shore up confidence for the year ahead, Nokia today, separately, also announced that Marko Ahtisaari has been promoted to the position of EVP of design, and has also joined the company’s leadership team. Ahtisaari is a Nokia veteran who left the company and then returned after it acquired his social networking startup Dopplr. The emphasis on design is a significant one, considering that this is where Nokia will have to differentiate and excel in the years ahead as it makes phones on a platform — Windows Phone — that is also being used by its competitors.

During the earnings analyst call, Nokia executives gave a bit more color to the results:

CEO Stephen Elop acknowledged some of the big issues facing declining sales for the Symbian platform but still said the company would continue to remain committed to supporting the OS through 2016. Nokia earlier this year struck an outsourcing deal with Accenture to take over the management of the platform as part of its gradual winding down of operations. In the last year, Nokia has rolled out several new devices based on Symbian, and has a roadmap for updates to the software for the year ahead.

Nokia also highlighted the platform support payments and licensing fees that Microsoft and Nokia are paying each other. It was described by the company’s CFO Timo Ihamuotila as a “competitive” structure that will run in the billions of dollars between the two companies — although no indication of which party benefits more financially from those. This last quarter, Nokia recorded a payment of $250 million from Microsoft as a result of this arrangement and did not specify whether it paid out money to Microsoft as well. Consider that without that quarter-billion dollar payment those bottom-line results would have been even more gloomy.

The company will be offering a dividend of 20 euro cents per share and has no plans for stock repurchases in the year ahead.

Elop also highlighted something we have heard many times already — from carriers and Nokia itself: “The third ecosystem” argument is “very strong” with carriers. One wonders what that might mean between the lines. More big discounts, subsidized by operators, in the pipeline? More large orders ahead? Preferential treatment for Nokia over other platforms and handset makers?

BGR first reported the pricing strategy, which was also confirmed by CNET. AT&T is eyeing a March 18th launch date for the Windows Phone Lumia 900, which joins the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile’s network as engine of Nokia’s comeback hopes for the U.S. market, where it has historically struggled.

AT&T offers three LTE Android phones at the moment: the HTC Vivid, the Samsung Galaxy S II, and the LG (SEO: 066570) Nitro, all of which cost $199 with a two-year contract (although the HTC Vivid is currently available for $99 online). Verizon’s LTE phones, which include the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Motorola (NYSE: MMI) Razr, are priced anywhere from $299 for the Galaxy Nexus to free for the HTC Thunderbolt.

So the Lumia 900 may not be the cheapest LTE phone on the market when it arrives in March but it will definitely fall into a competitive pricing band that includes Android phones that are starting to get a little old by the hyper-quick standards of this market. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) also seems determined to help its partner revive Microsoft’s mobile division, which is believed to make more money from Android licensing deals than it does from software.

One large reason for Nokia’s turnaround “fightback” plan this year, in which it has dropped Symbian in favor of Microsoft’s OS, has been to better tackle markets like the U.S. So in that sense seeing the first of those devices come to market in the country is significant.

The device, built using Windows Phone 7.5, will work on the company’s “4G” HSPA network and comes preloaded with different services including Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), T-Mobile TV, Bing Search with voice activation and Local Scout for local search results. It will also come with the Nokia Drive navigation system and feature sports content from ESPN.

T-Mobile will be selling the phone from January 11. It will cost $49.99 with a $50 mail-in-rebate card, and based on a two-year service agreement.

Without a contract, the 710 model retails for about $360, and is the cheaper of the two new devices launched by Nokia as part of its new smartphone strategy based around Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. The first of these, the Lumia 800, is selling for about $625 without contract.

By choosing to go with the cheaper of its first two devices, Nokia and T-Mobile are (probably wisely) looking to target the 150 million people in the U.S. who have yet to buy a smartphone and may be more price-conscious as a result.

But that doesn’t mean that Nokia is only going to push lower-end devices in the U.S.; there are also reports that it is testing LTE devices with AT&T .

The 710 device, which has many specs in common with its more expensive sibling save for display and exterior cover, is being offered in black and white varieties, although users have the option of buying different-colored covers. Apart from the T-Mobile branding on the front of the device, it looks much like the Lumia 710s being sold elsewhere, according to the specifications sheet.

The Lumia 710 started to ship last week; at the time Nokia had announced four developing markets as its first targets: Russia, India, Hong Kong and Singapore.

In a press release, Nokia notes that it will arrive in further markets in the “coming weeks.”

Nokia says that the Lumia will be selling at a registered retail price of €270 ($360) — not exactly inexpensive, and still well above the fabled “sub-$100″ smartphone barrier, but about half the cost of the higher-end Lumia 800, which is selling for about $625 without any contracts. If you buy the 710 via a carrier deal, the price will be significantly lower again.

Nokia, unsurprisingly, claims that the 710 will be the best Windows Phone device available for the price. But it remains to be seen whether the public really has an appetite for Windows Phones, expensive or not. So far, the various devices that have been spun out by Samsung, HTC and others have failed to break the stronghold held by Android makers and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in the smartphone stakes.

While the 800, which started to sell about a month ago, was definitely an important first step for Nokia to compete against the heft and weight of Apple and the top devices from Samsung and HTC, it will be the 710 that will be the real test of whether Nokia will be able to move ahead under its traditional business model selling mass-market devices at lower price points.

And the other big question is, will this be the first Nokia Windows Phone device to hit the U.S. market?

Some have speculated that a joint announcement set for next week from Nokia and T-Mobile USA will be to announce the availability of Nokia’s first Windows Phone handsets. The blog wpcentral went one step further and found a document listing at the FCC that seemed to confirm as much. There could well be more devices lined up for launching on the same day.

So far, there have been very conflicting reports over how well the 800 has sold, with some claiming sell-outs and others noting that, given its limited release, even a sell-out would not have had as big an impact as you would think.

Among the differences between the two devices are less on-device storage (8GB compared to 16GB on the 800); changes in camera and screen quality; and a rather different exterior.

While the 800 has the much-touted polycarbonate shell, the 710 has a plastic cover that can be removed and swapped out for covers of different colors. That’s a throwback to the Nokia phones of old that spawned a device fascia/back industry in its own right — and was perhaps, even before annoying ringtones, the first example of phone personalization.

According to an interview with the head of Nokia France, Paul Amsellem, in the French financial paper Les Echos (in French; translation here), Nokia will be launching a tablet in the summer of 2012 that will run on the newest iteration of Microsoft’s PC operating system, Windows 8.

He even named the target month for the release, according: “In June 2012, we will have a tablet that runs on Windows 8,” he said to the paper.

This is not the first time that Nokia has referenced making a tablet. Amsellem’s boss, CEO Stephen Elop, has made a number of references to a device but never given details on when one might emerge.

Nor is it the first time that Nokia has talked tablets. At one point, the company had been touting MeeGo, the Linux-based OS that is no longer being developed by creators Nokia and Intel (NSDQ: INTC), as the OS it would use in a future tablet portfolio.

Like Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform, which Nokia is now using to make smartphones, Windows 8 will be used by a number of tablet makers. That means that Nokia will be competing not only against Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), the Android pack and RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), but also against the many OEMs developing on the same platform as itself.

(One is illustrated here, shown off during a Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) event debuting Windows 8. HP (NYSE: HPQ) has also said it would be making Windows 8 tablets.)

Nokia is launching its first WP7 device, the Lumia 800, this week in France. And while it touts services like Nokia Maps, it will also be tackling the market with bargain prices. One operator, Bouguyes Telecom, is selling the Lumia 800 for €99 ($133) on a two-year contract, representing a significant discount compared to €129 for Samsung’s Galaxy S2 or €199 for the iPhone 4S under the same contract terms.

Although France has had healthy take-up of mobile data and advanced devices, there is still a lot to play for in the country. Amsellem noted in the interview that more than 60 percent of consumers in France still do not own smartphones.

Tablets have even lower penetration but they are forecast to grow five-fold in the next five years, to 253 million shipments in 2016 from 55 million today, according to research from Juniper Research.

Numbers like that make Nokia’s relatively late entry into that market — the rest of its rivals have spent the better part of the last year, and some longer, trying to make products that will compete head-on with the best-selling iPad tablet from Apple — appear not too late after all.

WinRumors reported Tuesday that Nokia is gearing up to launch two phones with the Lumia brand on Wednesday, the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710. If this is accurate, we’ve seen the Lumia 810 before in a video released by Nokia promoting a device code-named “Sea Ray,” a phone that looks quite a bit like the MeeGo-based N9.

As expected, WinRumors said the two phones will launch in Europe before the holiday season crowd and come to the U.S. at a later date. This is an important launch for Nokia, which hasn’t had a product that has made the mobile world sit up and take notice in years. Will that change tomorrow?