Nokia admitted it is taking a risk with its move to the Windows Phone platform, reiterating short-term support for its Symbian platform and detailing plans to develop its feature phone product line.

The company’s annual report filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission said the success of its move to Windows Phone for its smartphone portfolio requires it to bring “quantities of attractive, competitively priced Nokia products with Windows Phone that are positively differentiated from our competitors’ products” and to “receive broad market acceptance.”

The company also acknowledged that the momentum of Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android is “continuing apace”, and is presenting a challenge to Nokia’s plans to grow the Windows Phone platform. “In choosing to adopt Windows Phone as our primary smartphone platform, we may forgo more competitive alternatives achieving greater and faster acceptance in the smartphone market,” the company said in the filing.
 
Nokia added that if its smartphone strategy fails to pay off it will become dependent on its feature phone portfolio, in a sector that is “an increasingly commoditised and intensely competitive market, with substantially lower growth potential, prices and profitability compared to the smartphone market.”

The company said it will “maximise the value of our Symbian asset” and expects to continue to ship Symbian devices and provide software support to Symbian customers until 2016. However, it warned that the increased focus on Windows Phone and changing market conditions – in which demand for Symbian has declined – is likely to lead to the company selling fewer Symbian devices than first thought.

The company also said it will make significant investments in its feature phone business in response to lower-priced smartphones putting pressure on its devices. “We are addressing this with our planned introductions in 2012 of smarter, competitively priced feature phones with more modern user experiences, including software, services and application experiences,” Nokia said