Nokia: Hoping BIG with New Asha Phones

Nokia, the world leader in mobile market world has been struggling with combined loss of $606 million, in the second and third quarters of 2011. As a result, it has to trim down its work force globally by 18% to make the balance. But in India, the mobile giant is looking up. With its Asha range phones, the company is hoping BIG to capture the massive users.  

Asha series - mid-market phones is targeting at price-conscious Indian consumer, who wants to have seamless mobile Internet experience though. Nokia Global VP, Blanca Juti, who grew up in India launched the Asha range with great enthusiasm. She is very optimistic about launch of Asha range in India.

“Asha” is a Hindi word, which means “hope” - is truly a hope for the demanding teenagers looking for web-based phones at affordable price. The phones such as Asha 200, 201, 300, and 303 will be in the price range between Rs 4,100 to Rs 8,000. These phones are expected to attract young crowd by making them hooked to social networking, Internet, and information sharing.

Nokia browser, which uses Cloud to compress data by 90% is notable feature of Asha range. The compression of data cuts down download bandwidth significantly – which is a key consideration having a smooth Internet experience. The Asha series of phones will run on Nokia’s Symbian Series 40 OS.

Let us run through key features of the Asha phones:

Asha 200

Hot swappable Dual SIM

2.4” display

2MP camera, 4x digital zoom

FM radio, powerful speaker

32GB expandable memory

Asha 201 is a single SIM phone and rest of the features is same as Asha 200

Asha 300

2.4” display

Touchscreen phone with QWERTY keypad

1GHz processor

5MP camera, 4x digital zoom

FM radio, powerful speaker

32GB expandable memory

Dedicated message key for quick access to messages

Asha 303

2.4” display

Touchscreen phone with QWERTY keypad

1GHz processor

3.2MP camera

3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

FM radio, powerful speaker, dedicated music key, built-in Shazam app

32GB expandable memory