Nokia Targets Emerging Markets With Android Phones

Nokia is targeting emerging markets with three low-cost smartphones that use Google's Android operating system rather than the Windows Phone software from Microsoft, which is about to take over Nokia's handset business.  Nokia will ditch many of the Google services that come with Android and use instead the Microsoft services such as Bing search, Skype communications and OneDrive file storage. Its home screen sports larger, resizable tiles resembling those on Windows phone.  "More and more people are buying smartphones for less that 100 euros," Stephen Elop, Nokia executive vice president, said Monday as he presented the new phones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. "That sub-100 range is a massive opportunity for us. According to analysts, it will grow four times as fast as rest of smartphone market."

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Nokia’s Still Strong in Emerging Markets

Nokia’s Lumia range is showing signs of promise across Europe and the US, but it is often thought that the Finnish firm is losing out on emerging market customers to cheap Android smartphones. A new survey from Jana suggests that this may not be the case, and posits the Nokia brand as (still) aspirational to many.Jana, which covers mobile rewards, marketing and research, regularly runs surveys among 2,500 selected phone owners in emerging markets in Asia. While that’s not a wide survey base, the quality of Jana’s reports is much respected.

http://tinyurl.com/nujruor

Nokia Debuts $99 Smartphone for Emerging Markets

Struggling Finnish handset giant Nokia unveiled on Thursday its next generation of lower-end mobile smartphones as it seeks to gain traction in a market expected to be worth $40 billion by 2015.

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Nokia Takes Aim at Emerging Markets

Nokia today took the wraps off the Asha 210, a colorful smart phone (see photo above for proof) with a QWERTY keyboard, and a dedicated WhatsApp button, which allows users to easily send and receive messages across an array of platforms. The Asha 210 is relatively low-powered – witness the 2-megapixel camera and 2.4-inch QVGA display – but Nokia is betting the social networking capability more than makes up for the lack of clout.

http://tinyurl.com/bduc4pg