For Nokia, 4 Apps Mean A Lot More than 41 Million Pixels

Yesterday Nokia launched the Lumia 1020, a phone that features a 41-megapixel camera and that is rivaled only by Nigel Tufnel’s famed amps—the ones that go up to 11. But it’s the news about apps that’s exponentially more important.

(click here to see more photos and click through to larger versions)

And the number 41,000,000 certainly made the rounds in both the mainstream and tech/VC press.

Today’s news that Vine, Flipboard, Path and Hipstamatic are soon to have native Windows 8 apps is what’s really got the potential to pull Nokia back from the abyss.

Photo quality doesn’t drive phone sales—apps and interfaces do. The iOS interface has long been the leader in user experience, but have you tried Windows 8? It’s pretty smooth.

And app developers are increasingly taking Windows 8 seriously.

It’s all a nice emerging validation of Nokia’s bet-the-company focus on Windows 8 rather than Android—especially since it means that Microsoft will be marketing Nokia almost as much as Nokia will (to wit: the first 3 phone pictured on Microsoft’s mobile phone website today are Nokia models).

So kudos to Nokia on the quick hit they’ll get for announcing the 41-million number. But let’s hope they don’t lose sight of the fact that in smartphones—and in technology in general—features are a differentiator, but not a value proposition.

Which means there’s only one question that the recent announcements fail to answer—does the Lumia’s volume go up to 11?