The world’s biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia, presented its newest release, the company’s first ever touch-screen device. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is expected to provide a true competition to Apple’s iPhone and also its iTunes service.

The market for touchscreen devices is hotting up with leading handset manufacturer Nokia planning to launch its first touchscreen handset priced below Rs 20,000 in India by the end of this year.

Though the pricing model has not yet been decided for, in India the company would price it below Rs 20,000. Along with the handset the company is planning to launch its music services called the Music store in India, by the end of 2008. Presently, Nokia music store is live in 11 countries across the globe. 

Samsung announcing the launch of their touchscreen device --Omnia in India last month, priced over Rs 39,000. Analysts tracking the sector feels with Apple launching its iconic brand iPhone in India, all the major handset manufacturers are trying to cash in on the hype created by the touchscreen devices. 

A classy music phone, the Nokia 5800 Express comes with some top of the class features. It sports a large 3.2” touch screen, 8GB memory, a 3.2 megapixel camera and nice built-in surround speakers. The phone gives you direct access to Nokia’s Music Store via Nokia’s Come With Music service. So all you music loving souls enjoy a 1 year unlimited access to Nokia’s catalogue. Other than being a great music phone, the Nokia 5800 Express phone is packed with GPS and bluetooth along with a support for 60 languages. The highlight of the phone is much better texting and emailing capabilities with a full QWERTY keyboard.

The device offers 8 Giga Bytes of memory, which will come in handy combined with the unlimited music downloads offered by the company’s Comes With Music program. Its users will be able to download music from the archives offered by Warner Music Group, Sony BGM Music, Universal Music and EMI Group.

The company’s focus was set on developing a media phone, leaving the Internet functionality second. It features the 5th edition of the Symbian Series 60 operating system and it is equipped with maps and satellite navigation, 3G and Wi-Fi. It offers a 640x360 screen, which is significantly better than the iPhone’s 480x320, vibrating feedback when pressing the screen, removable storage and also a 3.2 megapixels camera with a video recording function and flash. Users can bring up the menu bar anytime for quick access to all of the phone’s features, such as music, favorite tracks, videos, photos and web. It allows users to place four of their contacts on the home screen in order to have quick access to all of their history, including phone logs, recent SMS messages, but also photos and blog updates. 

The retail price for the mobile phone is expected to be around $400, without any subsidies or taxes, so depending on the preferred carrier, the price might have a wide range. "That means this device is about half the price of competitive touch devices in the market today, and it certainly means that it is the best touch value proposition on the market,"