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With the phone expected to be cheaper than Apple's iPhone, Nokia is looking to take advantage of countries where price is a bigger factor.

The Spanish and the Russians will be able to find a Nokia iPhone rival in their stockings on Christmas morning, as will consumers Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. But Nokia will not be ready to roll out the phone

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in mature markets until the beginning of next year.

"The phone is competitively priced and Nokia's competitive advantage is in emerging markets," explained Neil Mawston, analyst at Strategy Analytics. "When putting two and two together it's logical they start the roll-out from emerging markets."

The research firm expects Nokia to ship more than 10 million touch-screen phones worldwide next year.

Even investment bank JP Morgan had pinned its hopes on Nokia's 5800 battling it out with the iPhone 3G over Christmas.

"This is disappointing as we had expected the device to be shipping in the critical holiday season for most developed countries," said Ehud Gelblum, analyst at the investment bank.

LG and Samsung have already rolled out touch-screen phones in developed markets, but Nokia insisted its schedule was similar to that for many other phones. It argued that customising a phone's software for operators in other countries takes time.