Nokia banking on affordable Asha smartphones to capture emerging markets

Nokia has reportedly refreshed its range of Asha smartphones in a bid to target the emerging markets where affordability is a deciding factor for consumers to switch to smartphones.

Nokia's head of Product for South and East Africa, Patrick Henchie, said that every month, people are replacing a feature phone for a smartphone and that is where Asha comes in.

According to News24, the company has refreshed its Asha range with the 500, 502, 503 smartphones with the retail prices starting 81 dollars to 108 dollars.

A recent research by Gartner pointed that in developing markets cheaper smartphones were outpacing premium devices in terms of sales.

Analyst at the firm, Anshul Gupta, said that mature markets face limited growth potential as the markets are saturated with smartphone sales, leaving little room for growth with declining feature phone market and a longer replacement cycle, the report added.