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LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Nokia Corp., the world's largest maker of mobile phones, on Wednesday announced a partnership with social-networking giant Facebook and launched several new handsets at its annual conference.

Nokia /quotes/comstock/13*!nok/quotes/nls/nok (NOK 15.20, -0.47, -3.00%) /quotes/comstock/22u!noki-sek (FI:NOK1V 10.69, +0.03, +0.28%) said the new Ovi-related service, called "lifecasting," would allow users to publish their location and status updates directly to their Facebook account from the home screen of their phone.

"Nokia aims at reaching the many, not the few, with our rich portfolio of services. We are doing this through an increasing number of open partnerships with world leaders in the field," Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in a presentation at the Nokia World event in Stuttgart.


Nokia N97 mini

Analysts at U.K. telecoms consultancy CCS Insight said that Nokia's cooperation with Facebook may mark the beginning of more deals.

"The Facebook agreement reflects Nokia's decision to embrace more third-party solutions. We expect further deals. The upside for Nokia is that Ovi maps and brand will feature on Facebook updates," they said.

Carolina Milanesi, of research firm Gartner, said that leveraging the Facebook brand was a "very clever" move and may function as a hook to get more users to explore the services available on Ovi.

New phones: the mini N97, the X3 and X6
Lifecasting will debut on the new Nokia N97 mini, a smaller version of the N97 featuring a 3.2-inch touch display, a qwerty keyboard and a customizable home screen. The device will be powered by new software that allows flick scrolling and widgets.

The software will also be available as a free update on the classic N97 in October. Nokia said it's on the verge of selling 2 million units of that device.

The mini, meanwhile, is expected to begin shipping in October and will cost 450 euros ($640) excluding taxes and subsidies.

The customization enabled by the new software shows that Nokia understands the importance of letting customers decide which application and widgets to install on their home screen.

While consumers have long personalized the external appearance of their phones through colorful plastic cases and stickers, they increasingly want to customize them from the inside as well. In response, several phone makers, including Apple /quotes/comstock/15*!aapl/quotes/nls/aapl (AAPL 184.64, -0.86, -0.47%) and Taiwan's HTC have developed user interfaces that can be tailored to feature the owner's favorite applications.

Nokia also unveiled two music phones on Wednesday, the X6 and the X3, which will retail for a respective 450 euros and 115 euros excluding taxes and subsidies.

In addition, it revealed that the Booklet 3G will cost 575 euros and the N900 500 euros. Both devices were announced last week.

Milanesi said the consensus on the Booklet 3G is that it's expensive for what you get and it isn't differentiated enough in a highly competitive market. A slew of new netbooks are set for release by the end of the year by companies including Lenovo /quotes/comstock/22h!e:992 (HK:992 3.49, +0.05, +1.45%) , Dell /quotes/comstock/15*!dell/quotes/nls/dell (DELL 15.92, -0.04, -0.22%) , HP /quotes/comstock/13*!hpq/quotes/nls/hpq (HPQ 46.84, -0.09, -0.19%) , Acer and Asus.

Nokia shares have risen nearly 7% since the announcement of the Booklet on Aug. 24. Read more about the Booket 3G.

Regarding the N900, Tero Kuittinen, analyst at MKM Partners, expressed concern that, at 181 grams, it may be too "hefty" and suffer from the same sluggish sales witnessed by its nearest mass-market rival, HTC's Touch Pro 2.

He also noted that the launch dates of the N900 and the N97 may be too close together but said Nokia may have decided to release the N900 anyway to convince application developers and operator partners about a clear, new-software-development direction "at a time of escalating criticism toward the older Symbian operating system."