By
Telecomlead Team: In a bid to get back its lost
crown and revitalize its market share, Nokia has expanded its Asha portfolio
with the introduction of three new Asha feature phone models — the
Nokia Asha 202, Asha 203 and Asha 302 – along two new Windows smartphones in
its flagship Lumia range at Mobile World Congress.
The new Asha Asha 302 offers support for Mail for
Exchange whilst Nokia Asha 202 and Asha 203 offer free EA games and a
cloud-based browser that reduces internet access costs.
“Since outlining a new strategy a year ago, we’ve
taken significant actions to deliver against it. We’ve been connecting the next
billion people to the mobile world and its benefits through
contemporary feature phones and internet services,” said Mary T.
McDowell, executive vice president for mobile phones at Nokia.
Surprisingly, Nokia has also unveiled a new phone, Nokia
808 PureView, based on its old operating system, Symbian with a powerful 41
mega pixel camera. A Nokia spokesman said it took five years to build the
technology in this phone, which incorporates a camera featuring a powerful
sensor with a 41 megapixel capacity.
The newly launched lower-end Windows Phone device, called
the 610, is aimed at the entry-level smartphone market. Featuring an 800 MHz
processor with 256Mb RAM, it will be very competitively priced at around
EUR189.
Furthermore, Nokia also announced an evolution of Nokia
Life Tools, Nokia Life, which provides life-enhancing information across the
range of Nokia Series 30 and Series 40 products that are now available first on
the Nokia Asha 202 and 203 phones.
Since its 2009 launch in India, the SMS-based service has
expanded to China, Indonesia and Nigeria. To date, more than 50 million people
have experienced its benefits.
“Nokia Life services provide an entry to the world
of digital content and an internet-like experience for many people who don’t
yet have access to data plans” said Dieter May, senior vice president of
mobile phone services of Nokia.
Nokia’s Asha 202 and 203 phones have traditional keypad
with a 2.4- inch touch screen.The Asha 202 features Dual SIM Easy Swap
technology with dedicated SIM manager to personalize the phone and save up to
five SIM cards with unique information. Both devices come with a 2-megapixel
camera, music player, FM radio, Nokia Browser, and Bluetooth connectivity, and
can handle memory cards up to 32GB.
Estimated retail price for each is about EUR 60,
excluding taxes and subsidies, and both are expected to start shipping in the
second quarter of
2012.
Nokia and EA have teamed on innovative ways to bring
games to the next billion. The Nokia Asha 202 and 203 will be the first Series
40 devices to offer EA games.
The Nokia Asha 302 is powered by a 1-GHz processor and
supports 3.5G data speeds and has a QWERTY keyboard and it is available now for
about EUR 95.
A few days back, Nokia
announced the availability of Nokia Belle update for the latest Symbian Nokia
smartphones users.
Please see the complete coverage of Mobile World
Congress here
