Nokia is betting that mobile customers in developing nations will want smartphone-like devices and not the real thing.

Ferd Capital last week revealed that it sold Oslo, Norway-based Smarterphone AS to Nokia Corp. in November. Smarterphone delivers an operating system for feature phones that provides a similar look and some of the capabilities of smartphones.

?It is a bit of a puzzle because the Smarterphone company is about putting smartphone-like features into features phones,? said Carl Howe, research director at Yankee Group, Boston.

?Feature phones as we define them don?t have one of the six big operating systems on them,? he said. ?As such, I don? t see this deal significantly advancing Nokia?s prospects except in the developing nations and, even then, I think it will be a little more muted than they think.

?They are betting on people in developing counties wanting smartphone capabilities but they want the same smartphone apps that people in developed countries have. That is not what they are going to get with this technology - they are going to get a different ecosystem and a different set of apps.?

Smarter feature phones
The Smarterphone 3.0 software for feature phones provides all of the layers from the hardware up to the end-user applications and what they need to interact with each other, according to Smarterphone. 

Feature phones still sell approximately a billion units a year for all manufacturers, per Mr. Howe.

However, the biggest growth is in smartphones, where Nokia has been struggling as it faces stiff competition with Apple?s iPhone and the growth in Android devices from a variety of manufacturers. Once a leading handset manufacturer in the United States, the company has been losing market share in this segment and is betting that new phones on the Windows Phone operating system can turn things around for it.

The new Lumia handsets, as well as other new Nokia products are expected to be available in the U.S. market early this year and are already available in Europe.

With significant marketing and support being put behind some of the leading smartphones, consumers are embracing them and not just at the high-end but lower income consumers as well.

It is the strong consumer appeal of smartphones ? and the apps and other capabilities that come with them ? that makes Nokia?s acquisition of Smarterphone seem questionable.

?The best example to show this dichotomy is China, where there is a really low average income among the populous but the best-selling phone is the iPhone,? Mr. Howe said. ?People are spending a significant portion of their year?s salary to buy these phones.

?This illustrates that people in developing markets want the same things that everyone else does and to suggest otherwise is not going to work as well as Nokia thinks,? he said.

While some of the more popular apps might actually make it onto the Smarterphone operating system now that Nokia is behind it, there is still a large ecosystem of apps that likely would not be available. 

?It is possible that Nokia is trying to blur the lines,? Mr. Howe said. ?The majors like Samsung and Apple are not going to let that happen.

?Smartphones are devices that everybody is going to want, not a dumbed down version for developing markets only,? he said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York