Tomorrow Thursday, I will be blogging from Nokia’s heavyweight press event on the shores of the Dead Sea. Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Markets, Anssi Vanjoki is the key name of this event, alongside Chris Braam Vice President for Sales at Nokia MENA. They will be presenting Nokia’s global and regional strategy and showing off Nokia’s latest innovations and services, among which, I presume, will be their 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen phone.

Hmm..

Vanjoki, who has been called by Newsweek as one of the 25 most influential people on the web, is a member of Nokia’s top management team. He has been the driving force behind moving Nokia aggressively onto the web by advocating web-centric devices and services. It would be very interesting to see what Nokia has in store for its event in Jordan, which, incidentally, I have not seen publicized in the media.

As for Braam, it was his name that was on the press releases about the December launch of Nokia’s music store in the Middle East.

As we’re still holding our breath for Apple and its operator friends (like Orange in Jordan) to bring the iPhone to this region (and spare people the trouble of creating work-around accounts on the US iTunes music store to get access the the App Store), here is Nokia making some real noise in the Middle East.

It has been widely reported that the 5800 XpressMusic phone will miss the Christmas season in Europe and the US but instead would be released first in the Middle East and India.

I will definitely be looking for a confirmation of this as the event gets underway. I also hope that I’ll get the chance of a hands-on experience with the 5800.

Another burning question would be, when will OVI, Nokia’s portal of online sharing services be accessible in the Middle East.

Also: what comes after the 5800? Will there be a real iPhone killer soon from Nokia?

We’ll see.

Full disclosure: I am a co-founder of Ikbis.com which has a cooperation agreement by which Nokia’s Nseries and Eseries devices in the Middle East come factory-equipped with the ability to share photos and videos directly on Ikbis.