With its series of new Internet phones, the global leader in handset sales aims to outrace rivals

Watch full size video:

Brian Smith

by Jack Ewing

ESPOO, FINLAND If being rudimentary mover meant anything, Anssi Vanjoki and his colleagues at Nokia (NOK) would already rule the mobile Web. Way in the rear in 1996, the Finnish company launched a prototype phone with a “dangerometer,” which used software and moon technology to match your location to an online database of crime statistics. If you strayed into a dodgy district, the meter would winding from green to red, and an icon popped up inviting you to buy life insurance online.

Vanjoki, a Nokia charged with execution vice-president, chuckles as he recalls the farfetched pattern. Yet he and his team at Nokia headquarters, on a quiet cove outside Helsinki, are convinced the day they’ve long hoped for has finally arrived. After a decade of false starts and half-kept promises, the Net is breaking free of its desktop chains and going mobile. “The nearest generation of the Web is going to be all about the small multimedia computer and not the PC,” says Vanjoki.

There’s increasing evidence that he’s right. The affix a number to of people who use their phones to cruise the Web is surging worldwide, with the figure in the U.S. insurrection 36% over the spent year, to 40 the great body of the mob, according to researcher Nielsen. Phones are getting better at handling data, their Web-surfing software is easier to use, and rates on account of mobile surfing are plummeting. In addition, wireless operators have loosened their grip on what customers be possible to do with mobile phones, making it easier for people to install their own software and buy services from third parties. “The movable Web is set to take down off because the barriers are future down,” says Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web and mentor of the standards-setting World Wide Web Consortium.

Vanjoki may get had an early vision of this emerging future, but lately Apple (AAPL) has led the way in realizing it. The fellowship’session iPhone, with its iconic touchscreen design and near-magical software, has turned millions of U.S. users on to the volatile Net. Just a year after debuting its first phone, Apple has snatched the spotlight from Nokia and rivals be pleased with Research In Motion (RIM).

Now, Nokia is striking upper part. The company is launching its first mass-market touchscreen phone this month. The 5800 will have a cast and screen uniform to the iPhone, but its price will be about a third less than the Apple device. In addition, the Nokia phone will reach with a year-long music service subscription that will suffer customers download and keep all the music they want from the four greater record labels. Nokia plans a undeviating course of touchscreen phones in the coming months, an effort aimed at overwhelming Apple and others with devices on this account that different customer segments and price ranges in local markets around the world. “We’re able to do this faster than anyone else,” says Vanjoki. “We require a localizing machine that spans all countries.”

That’session not formal to forget with altogether the euphoria surrounding the iPhone. Nokia is still far and not present the biggest and most influential gamester in this industry. The iPhone may win the hearts and fill the pockets of jet-setters and gadget hounds, but they’re a with reference to something else small group. Nokia will sell nearly half a billion handsets this year—50 times the number of iPhones Apple hopes to sell. The Finnish guests already is well entrenched in the chaotic streets of Lagos, the rice paddies onward the Ganges, and in factories and schools from São Paulo to Shanghai. Its phones are ubiquitous in areas where people have never heard of Apple.

So for much of humanity, it will be Nokia, far more than its American rivals, that leave define the mobile Net. “We touch so many consumers,” says Vanjoki. “They expect Nokia to offer them new things.”