Earlier this morning, Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia (NOK: sentiment, chart, options) announced the release of 2 new smart phones, and revealed that users downloaded 90 million applications in the past 2 years. Investors believe that this release is a signal that NOK is going to fight for a large portion of the high-end mobile-phone industry and the growing content-and-services market. According to research firm Gartner, the smart-phone market has increased 29% to 32.2 million units. NOK holds a 45% share of this market, outpacing both Research in Motion (RIMM: sentiment, chart, options) and Apple (AAPL: sentiment, chart, options) .

In order to continue outpacing its rivals, NOK introduced the N85 slider phone (with a 2.6-inch screen, 5-megapixel camera, 8 gig of memory, and turn-by-turn voice navigation) and the N79 (with a 4-gig microSD memory card, 5-megapixel camera, and 10 pre-loaded games). Along with these new phones slated for release in October NOK will add the N96 (with 16 gig of memory and a touch screen) to the smart-phone world in the coming months.

Will these new models help NOK continue to distance itself from AAPL and RIMM in the smart-phone market? We shall see, but investors are cheering the announcement, as NOK is nearly 2% higher.