Nokia pits new phone against iPod

The N91 multimedia phone, which will launch by the end of the year, features a 4-gigabyte hard drive that can store up to 3,000 “CD-quality” songs.

The world's top handset maker said the N91 will run on high-speed 3G and wireless LAN networks.

The Finnish firm also unveiled two camera phones, the N90 and the N70, which will have two-megapixel cameras with high-quality Carl Zeiss lenses.

Nokia said it expects to sell 25 million “smartphones” in 2005, handsets offering limited PC-type functions like e-mail, more than doubling the 12 million it sold last year.

Jorma Ollila, Nokia CEO, added that he expects the firm to ship 100 million camera phones in 2005, and sell 40 million phones with MP3 digital music players this year, compared with 10 million in 2004.

According to research firm IDC, Apple said it sold 5.3 million iPods in the first three months of 2005.