Mobile phone giant Nokia upped the ante on the world's nascent fashion handset market segment, with the launch of a range of intricately designed and high-performance camera phones last week.
The tri-band GSM handset models, simultaneously unveiled in Hong Kong, Florence and New York City on Wednesday, include the candy bar-shaped 7360, the swivel-format 7370 and the sleek 7380 with a keyless dial.
The phones are expected to cost between Euro200 ($1,864) and Euro500 before subsidies.
Packaged as the L'Amour Collection, the new 2-megapixel camera phones offer both style and function upgrades from Nokia's art deco-inspired 7260, 7270 and 7280 fashion handsets introduced in Shanghai in September last year.
London-based research and consulting firm ARCchart has defined a fashion handset as any mobile phone purchased by a consumer based primarily on the aesthetics of the device.
The aesthetics include its style and the brand associated with it.
Bruce Lam Kwok-shing, Nokia Hong Kong's general manager for mobile phone customer and market operations, said the city's fashion phone market segment had been growing steadily in recent years.