Nokia will be launching the Lumia 800 in a bid to reclaim its place in the competitive Australian smartphone market.

March this year will see the release of the Lumia 800, a Nokia smartphone operating on Microsoft software. The Nokia Lumia 800 will be released in Australia on Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone, and may be the phone to get Nokia back in its dominant place in the mobile market.

The Nokia/Microsoft partnership with the Lumia phones has been an attempt to steal back some of the market from the overwhelming popularity of Apple iPhones and Google Androids.

They have made a strong start. The new Lumia 900 was considered one of the best new products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, and Lumia handsets have been very popular in Europe, with about 1.3 million phones sold since they launched late last year.

The Nokia Lumia will be competing for attention against other handsets who use Microsoft software, such as LG and Samsung. Nokia Australia's managing director Chris Carr hinted that it would manage this admirably, "bringing together the very best of Nokia's handset design and services with the latest Windows Phone software."

The Nokia Lumia handset is very similar to Nokia's N9, but will be running on the latest Microsoft software, with a 1.4GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. It will be available in white, black, magenta, and cyan.