Nokia plans to open retail stores and offer high-end cellphones in the U.S.

Nokia announced its plans to open a line of retail stores in the United States. The first flagship store is expected to open on June 21 in Chicago and before the end of 2006 it will be followed by another one in New York. Nokia's stores will offer a wide variety of handsets that are not available from any iof the U.S. wireless carriers. Among the devices on offer there will be high-end models, including the N93 and N73 cameraphones, the N80 smartphone and the N91 music phone. The recently released N93 and N73 both feature 3.2 mega pixels camera with Carl Zeiss optics and 2.4-inch high-resolution screen. N93 is planned to be released in July and the price is expected to be about $682. N80, which will be available for $620, is a quad-band GSM/UMTS (1900 MHz) phone and also features 3.0 mega pixels camera. There's still no information what will be the price of the 4GB HDD drive N91, but it is mentioned that soon after its launch there will be a software upgrade, which will allow playback of DRM-protected content. It's not revealed when exactly it will be released, except that it will be “soon”.

Source: PC Magazine