A â€œperson with knowledge of the matterâ€ has told Bloomberg that Nokia plans to announce Windows Phone 8-based handsets as early as next month at its Nokia World event — ahead of an expected Sept. 12 unveiling of the next version of the iPhone — and have them for sale before the year-end holiday shopping season. The person asked not to be identified because the plan were not public yet.

An Windows Phone 8 announcement at Nokia World has been widely expected, but Nokia has been trying to pour cold water in this rumour in at attempt to keep the market concentrated on their current handset range.

Nokia surprised analysts with better than expected sales of their Windows Phones, at around 4 million Lumias sold in Q2 2012, but Q3 is expected to be more challenging, before the arrival of a new range of Windows Phone 8 handsets.

Read the report at Bloomberg here.