Nokia dubs iPhone 'interesting'

A senior figure at Finnish mobile giant, Nokia, has dubbed Apple’s iPhone “interesting” but with limited sales potential.

In an interview with Finnish business daily Taloussanomat, Nokia’s head of multimedia, Anssi Vanjoki is quoted as saying: “It is quite an interesting product but it is lacking a few essential features, such as 3G, which would enable fast data connections.” He went on to say that Apple’s objective with the iPhone “is not at a very high level”, the paper said.

According to several interviews conducted Wednesday by Telecoms.com, Apple may well have positioned the iPhone beyond the reach of the mass market deliberately, at least in the short term. According to one source at a European operator who requested anonymity, “Apple only needs a tiny fraction of the billion phones expected to be sold in 2007 to put a smile on [Steve] Jobs’ face.”

The source added that although the first iteration of the phone is an EDGE model, “a 3G version won’t be far behind”.