Nokia fires off some low-priced phones for China, pushing for the next 1 billion new users

Nokia recently announced three new phones for China, with price ranges from 45-65 €. Not as inexpensive as some others I have seen, but definitely in a significant price range to sell in huge numbers.

Link: Nokia – Performance, quality and ease of use – the hallmarks of Nokia’s newest range of iconic affordable phones – Press Releases – Press – About Nokia.

The Nokia 1112, Nokia 2310 and Nokia 2610 expand Nokia’s portfolio of easy-to-use, reliable and affordable mobile phones. All three models are expected to begin shipping during the second quarter of 2006.

Nokia also had other related items yesterday. For example, they once more stated that their Nokia 1100 series phones have sold over 100 million worldwide. Yes, folks mostly want a phone to talk and SMS with.

Another interesting tid-bit is that Nokia is rolling out a network feature, called the Nokia Prepaid Tracker, that allows folks to see their pre-paid account balance right after a call, right from the phone. That gives folks better control of their calling costs. The press release says that "over 70% of all mobile phone users in new growth markets are prepaid customers". Wow.

Nokia will be licensing the Nokia Prepaid Tracker, obviously to get everyone to use something their phones already have. Very clever.

And finally, I’ve been watching as Nokia has been trying to lower the infrastructure costs per user via inexpensive to buy and run base stations and with inexpensive phones. Now they are rolling out what they call the Nokia Connect Market Expansion kit. This kit helps operators expand and operate their network services to low-spending customers without affecting the cost structure of the rest of their network. Interesting.

Yes, Nokia is aggressively trying to help operators grow in emerging markets.

And here’s one last quote:

Nokia estimates the number of mobile subscribers to grow to three
billion in 2008. As around 80 percent of this growth [emphasis, mine – CS] will come from new
growth markets, the importance of these markets will continue to
increase. Nokia expects that Asia-Pacific and China will account for 50
percent of the next billion subscribers.

There are other interesting stats peppered throughout the press releases.

I usually don’t cover stuff like this, but if you’ve been reading this site for any time, you know how I keep pointing out things related to mobile and emerging markets. 🙂