Nokia's first Windows phone, code-named Sea Ray, which CEO Stephen Elop showcased to staff last month, has now appeared in a short video preview on a Windows forum in Asia.

The video confirms that Sea Ray conforms to hardware shortcut buttons common in WP phones. The smartphone is expected to have a second-generation Snapdragon processor. It is also seen as running on Windows Phone Mango Build 7710. Sea Ray is expected to be in markets by the end of 2011.

Sea Ray has a form factor similar of the already unveiled, but yet to be released Nokia N9. The Nokia N9 is touted as one of Nokia's finest works to date, based on design. The Nokia N9 is a button-less touch screen smartphone comes with a curved design and a 3.9-inch AMOLED display. A backlash though is that the smartphone is running on the Meego operating system, which many say is the first and last Meego offering from Nokia. Nokia is said to be ditching Meego in favor of Windows. Nokia has confirmed it will release the Meego-based N9 later this year.

Nokia hopes that the Windows-based phones will help it regain its market dominance. Nokia outsold competitors in the past decade and continues to be the no. 1 vendor of smartphones. But in the past two years, it has lost market share to Apple Inc.'s iPhone and rivals using Google Inc.'s Android operating system. Nokia has changed its strategy by retiring the Symbian OS for its smartphones and putting its resources into releasing Windows phones starting at the end of the year.

See the video: