Nokia plans on launching 40 new handsets this year, including at least 12 smartphones. The news comes directly from the Vice President and Marketing Director of Nokia India. The VP said we can expect some big announcement after mid-April. The Windows Phone 7 device is also in the works and if we are lucky we might get it in the market before 2011 has ended.

Note that those 40 phones are the total count, which includes specific country or carrier-version of phones too (such as the recently announced Astound). 12 out of which are supposed to be smart phones – 30% of 40. So while Nokia and Microsoft partnership won’t bear fruit for quite some time to come there’s plenty to look forward to. Let’s hope there are lots of nice surprises on the way.