San Francisco — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled rollout plans for the Windows Phone 8 OS, with phones coming available this weekend in Europe and by U.S. carriers starting in November.
Of the four national carriers, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon will offer Windows Phone 8 phones beginning in November, Ballmer said. Sales through Sprint, which has just begun to roll out 4G LTE service in a handful of markets, weren’t announced.
Verizon plans to offer HTC’s Windows Phone 8X and Nokia’s Lumia 822 in stores by Thanksgiving and exclusively offer Samsung’s Ativ Odyssey in December. All feature 4G LTE.
For its part, AT&T plans November availability of the Nokia Lumia 920 on an exclusive basis as well as November availability of the Nokia Lumia 820 and HTC’s Windows Phone 8X. All feature 4G LTE.
T-Mobile plans availability of the HTC Windows Phone 8X and Nokia Lumia 810 by Nov. 14, Ballmer said. They feature HSPA+42 4G technology.
Pricing and additional details on availability dates weren’t released by Ballmer.
Specifications of all the phones except for the newly announced Ativ Odyssey had previously been announced. See this story about HTC’s phone as well as this story and this story about the Lumia phones.
For its part, Verizon today announced that it is positioning the Lumia 822, which will be available exclusively through Verizon Wireless, as a smartphone for first-time smartphone buyers. It will be the first U.S.-market CDMA/LTE Lumia phone announced to date by Nokia.
