With the iPhone looking increasingly like a runaway success (it has grabbed a large chunk of the market for smartphones since its launch), other phone manafacturers have had to play catch-up really fast. With the BlackBerry Storm heading out of RIM's door, it was only a matter of time before Finnish phone giant Nokia would add a touchscreen to its N-Series of smartphones.

Well that's according to Devinder Kishore, marketing director at Nokia India. He told an audience at an event in New Delhi that such an official announcement would be made shortly, even though the company is also jumping on the touchscreen bandwagon with is Xpressmusic 5800 "Tube" phone.

The news was broken by mobile news website Cellpassion, with Kishore saying that "we [Nokia] will have lot of touchscreen phones coming up, including an N-series device very soon."

There wasn't much more detail than that. No news on features, but it is hoped that as with the rest of the N-Series, the new touchscreen phone will incorporate music and video players, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Kishore also told Cellpassion that the phone would launched before the end of 2008 and that customers can expect the company to release a load of touchscreen models next year.