Nokia Corp. has launched its long-awaited first Windows cell phones, hoping to claw back market share it has lost in the tough, top-end smartphone race to chief rivals, Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Samsung and Google’s Android software.

But some analysts say it may be too little, too late, for the world’s top mobile phone maker.

With price tags of €420 and €270, the Lumia 800 and 710 are based on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 7 software and come eight months after Nokia and the computing giant said they were hitching up.

“Lumia is reasonably good ... but it’s not an iPhone killer or a Samsung killer,” Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics said. “But where Nokia does stand out is on their price — it looks like they are going to be very competitive.”

Lumia 800, with Carl Zeiss optics and 16GB of internal memory, will be available in selected European countries in November, including France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Britain. It will be sold in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the year-end.

Lumia 710, with a 1.4 GHz processor, navigational applications and Nokia Music — a free, mobile music-streaming app — will first be available in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year.

The company’s share price jumped almost three per cent to €4.96 in otherwise depressed market in Helsinki.