Reference Auto

So, after Samsung bosses started giving sleepless nights to Nokia’s management, it seems to be payback time for the Finnish company, which has launched budget smartphones, the Asha series of handsets, to take on rivals and re-emerge as the top player in the market.

The name Asha is self-explanatory and these phones are aimed primarily at the Indian and other emerging markets.

The Nokia Asha 306.

Nokia announced that its Asha 305 handset would go on sale this month for $79, before subsidies and taxes. 

The Asha 306 and Asha 311 phones will be sold from the next quarter and the price tag would be around $90 and $110 respectively.

Nokia Asha 305 is a cheap and dual-SIM phone while Nokia Asha 306 is believed to be the cheapest Wi-Fi handset up to date. 

Both phones provide GPRS/Edge Internet capabilities, 2 megapixel camera, Nokia Maps as well as Nokia Life. Asha 306 offers support to video streaming through both GPRS and Wi-Fi.

The Nokia Asha 311 comes with a 3-inch, scratch-resistant capacitive glass screen with polarisation filters to improve visibility in the sunlight. Capacitive touchscreen will allow users to navigate with a stylus.

The 311 also has a 1 GHz processor which is very fast, considering it is a basic phone. The phone has 3.5 Internet capabilities along with a 3.2 megapixel camera. Nokia Asha 311 also provides 15 levels of Angry Birds that come pre-loaded onto the handset.

Nokia has been lagging far behind in comparison to Apple and Google in the smartphone category, with the Finnish giant losing the coveted number one position (in the overall cellphone market) in the recent past to Korea’s Samsung.

While bouncing back with a new series of budget smartphones that uses Microsoft software, Nokia is aiming to capture a huge chunk of the basic handset market with its full touchscreen phones.

This basic smartphone handset market saw sales (global) of over 100 million last year and the figure is set to go up manifold in the near to medium term, especially in emerging markets. So, Nokia may have to play the price game to reclaim its top position.

“Nokia needed these budget phones badly, especially in the emerging markets where rival Samsung has full-touch, low-cost devices like the Star since the last couple of years. Nokia will have to speedily make up lost ground with these new smartphones,” an expert tracking the global mobile phone market said.

Previously, Nokia did not have a budget smartphone and the Asha series will vie with cheaper Android phones from Samsung, Huawei, ZTE and home-grown players like Micromax.

The looks and features of Nokia’s Asha series of phones are impressive, and it is clear that with these new series of handsets, Nokia wishes to become a game changer in the mobile phone market in India and other emerging markets again.