Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumia smartphones in 'solid' Q4 2012

I've played with the Lumia at Best Buy a few times. It's a solid, attractive phone and I wouldn't be ashamed to carry one at all.

I'm an iOS guy but as far as Windows Phone goes, I have to say it doesn't suck. I'm not saying that Microsoft's phone and tablet businesses will become a resounding success in spite of all current evidence, but I will say it would be a mistake to dismiss them.

Last I read, Nokia accounts for 75% of all WP device sales, which means we can estimate around 6 million WP devices were shipped (not sold) during Q4 2012. Unlike Apple (which also calls shipments "sales" in their quarterly report), Nokia devices aren't in incredibly high demand (other than perhaps the 920).

I can't really see how this is good news for WP when Android and iOS activated 17.1 million devices on Christmas Day alone. I can't imagine Q1 2013 being any better for Nokia when they have no major devices going out, and no major WP upgrades upcoming either.

I don't know why manufacturers aren't using machined polycarbonate more the way Nokia and HTC do. It seems LG and Sony are just now trying to be where Apple was 2 years ago with the glass-back phones, which I think was a very poor material to use and a mistake on Apple's part.

I think they quickly realized that, but it took them a while to create an aluminum iPhone the right way, because as we know aluminum is not great for radio connections, so you'll have to arrange the radios in such a way that the body doesn't interfere with them, which is probably why it took them so long, and why they made the iPhone 4S identical to iPhone 4.

I won't even discuss Samsung, which seems to have a fetish for crappy plastic. If it were after me, phones would all have metallic bodies, because it feels the best in hand, but you won't get full metal bodies anyway, but a mixture of metal and plastic or glass (like iPhone 5).

The best compromise between being easy to make and also feeling solid in hand seems to be polycarbonate right now, and more manufacturers should be using it, along with more colors for their devices, as I'm getting really bored with the black and white "options". It's like most of them are afraid to even try other (bold) colors, and just want to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and in the same time complain about not being able to differentiate, other than changing the skin on Android, which I think it's just an easy way out for them, instead of actually doing interesting things with their hardware design.

The same thing applies to Nokia, which in the past have said that they wouldn't be able to differentiate with Android, but I think a Lumia-like device would've sold a lot more units with Android. Nokia's growth is being limited a lot by WP's own growth right now. They can only grow as fast as WP is growing, and if anything, it's Nokia pulling WP after them, rather than the other way around, which just goes to show how much better it would do with Android, which doesn't need to be "sold" to the public anymore.

I've only ever owned iOS devices, but when I see a Windows Phone, I kind of do a double take. Everything is so different, that I always want to play around with it, and try them out.

I really want Microsoft to succeed in Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8, for the simple reason that competition is good. We'll be much better off with 3 giant companies competing rather than two.

Also, the prospect of having a tablet computer with a full OS on it (Windows 8 Pro tablets) is pretty interesting to me. Loading up Steam, Visual Studio, a VM, while on the go (without the weight of a laptop) could be pretty neat.

Well, for once, there are a lot of markets where the 920 and 820 haven't been launched yet.

Here in Europe, it was launched in France, Germany and the UK, but only now is it launched in the Netherlands (where I live) and Belgium, and probably other smaller European countries.