New Nokia X Smartphones to Address Affordable Market

Two companies that were leaders in their field, Blackberry and Nokia, basically fell asleep at the wheel during the smartphone revolution. Now both companies are trying to reinvent themselves by trying to introduce products and services that will hopefully bring back to their former glory. Nokia is hoping to get into the market by introducing an affordable and reliable line of smartphones for the hundreds of millions of people around the world that want to ditch their regular mobile phones. While the battle between Apple and Samsung continuous to brew for the higher end smartphone market, there's clearly a great opportunity for Nokia.

The company has introduced a full line of affordable smartphones under its Nokia X line at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This includes the Nokia X, Nokia X+ and Nokia XL, which according to the company will bring Internet and cloud services to the next billion customers with five new handsets that will run Android applications, Microsoft services and signature Nokia solutions.

All of the Nokia X family of phones comes with an interface that is based on its high end Lumia line as well as Fastlane, free HERE Maps, Nokia MixRadio and several third-party apps and games. It also includes affordable Microsoft services with free cloud storage on OneDrive and one month of Skype's Unlimited World Subscription for a limited time for select markets. The phones will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor supporting Dual SIM.

"Nokia has connected billions of people around the world, and today we demonstrated how our portfolio is designed to connect the next billion people to great experiences. Our deliberate approach is to offer four tiers of products including our affordable entry-level devices," said Stephen Elop, executive vice president of Nokia's Devices & Services.

The first phone is the Nokia X, which comes with a 4" IPS capacitive display and a 3MP camera, It is available now for EUR 89 or $122 in Asia-Pacific, Europe, India, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. The X+ is designed to provide more multimedia applications with more memory and storage for more games, music and photos. The XL has a 5" display with a 2MP front-facing camera and 5MP rear-facing autofocus camera with flash. They will be available in the same markets this year starting early second quarter, priced at EUR 99 ($136) and EUR 109 ($149), respectively.

The company also has two additional phones with very low price points. The Nokia Asha 230, which is a full-touch mobile phone available for onle EUR 45 ($61) and it comes with 7GB of free cloud storage on Microsoft OneDrive and single or dual SIM options. The Asha 220 is the lowest data-enabled phone, and it is available immediately for EUR 29 or $39.