Nokia is seeing large interest towards its new top-of-the-range model N900, a key product for the world's top phone maker, a senior company official said on Wednesday.

Since we started to show it to larger audience two weeks ago, there has been tremendous buzz and interest. A lot of interest, Ari Jaaksi, vice president for Maemo devices at Nokia, told Reuters on sidelines of a mobile software conference in Amsterdam.

Now we are finalising the package, software, hardware, marketing campaign. The goal is to get it out in October, Jaaksi said.

The new N900 model is Nokia's first phone running Linux Maemo operating system.

Analysts see N900 and following Linux devices as key for Nokia to gain back ground in the coming years.

Nokia has kept its overall market share stable, close to 40 percent, but it has lost share among more expensive models to the likes of Apple.

High-end products are important for Nokia because the company has not only lost market share there, but its average selling prices have declined faster than the industry average.

Goldman Sachs has said it expects Nokia's value share -- a measure reflecting average prices and underlying market share -- for phones costing more than $350 to decline to 13 percent this year from 33 percent just two years before.

(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde, Writing by Tarmo Virki; editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

Electronics