Microsoft: Nokia Lumia is “first” Windows Phone

Microsoft has said Nokia’s claim that its newly launched Lumia 800 is the “first” Windows Phone is “fair”.

Nokia yesterday unveiled its first phones to run Windows Phone, after cutting a deal with Microsoft to use its mobile OS earlier this year.

At the launch, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop described the Lumia 800 as “first real Windows Phone”.

That comment raised eyebrows, as HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell developed phones for the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year.

When he said it I was very enthusiastic; it made me feel positive

Despite that, Microsoft said Elop’s comments were “fair”.

“When he said it I was very enthusiastic; it made me feel positive,” Microsoft’s head of Windows Phone, Joe Belfiore, told The Telegraph.

“There’s lots of good pieces of hardware but what [Elop] meant, and what I thought of when he said it, was that this is about everything that supports the phones – the ad campaign, the connection to customer, a brand being really behind it,” Belfiore said. “I think what Nokia’s going to do is going to be quite different from what other manufacturers have done with Windows Phone.”

“So from that perspective I think it’s fair,” he said. “And I think it will capture for us and for customers a really different feel about the whole proposition.”