Nokia Asha: For the young and hopeful

MANILA, Philippines - If you are 25 years old or still feel like you’re this young, then the new family of Nokia Asha mobile phones should appeal to you.

Thoughtfully developed for consumers in their mid-20s, the four new Asha mobile phones are loaded with features deemed most important to this age group.

By aiming for the 25-year-olds, Nokia believes it can reach the broadest commercial target that will help it get closer to its ongoing goal to bring mobile technology to the next billion users in the world.

Majority of these young adults who are yet to own their first mobile phone will be from the emerging and underdeveloped countries and they see mobile technology as a way to upgrade their lives, said Stephen Elop, Nokia president and CEO, during the recent Nokia World in London.

“Our focus in the emerging markets is to help the people there to connect through their mobile phones. The next billion users are really the young crowd from these countries,” added Elop.

The new mobile phones from the line of Asha, a word that means hope, offer all sorts of connectivity in the hands of this particular type of users.

“We can bring data (connectivity) to people who never had it before,” said Blanca Jutish, Nokia’s vice president for mobile marketing. “The 25-year-olds want that and more in products that are both affordable and irresistible like the new Ashas.”

They also want touch and speed. Jutish said the new Asha 303 and 300 make use of the Nokia Browser that can compress data up to 90 percent so Internet connection and loading of webpages can happen fast. Both models also run on 1GHz processor and are fitted with touch screens and keypads.

Entertainment and applications are also a core part of the Nokia Asha 303 and Nokia Asha 300. Social networks, e-mail, chat, messaging, and other popular applications, including the game Angry Bird, come pre-installed and are easily accessible from the home screens of these devices.

The estimated retail price for the Nokia Asha 303 and Nokia Asha 300 will be approximately 115 euros or about P6,800 and 85 euros or about P5,000, respectively, excluding taxes and subsidies.

For those who want a dual-SIM phone, the Nokia Asha 200 gives that functionality plus support for social networking, e-mail and messaging, among others. This model is big on music; it can hold and play thousands of songs using a 32GB memory card for 52 hours.

Another punchy new Nokia handset, Jutish said, is the Asha 201. It is very much like the Asha 200 in terms of features and application support, but uses only a single SIM. The estimated retail price for the Asha 201 and Asha 200 will be approximately 60 euros or about P3,500.

Now, the thing about the 25-year-olds is the fact that at their age it’s nearly hopeless to expect them to become brand loyal. Nokia executives admitted as much that this is the tricky part in designing a product for this age. We will know if the new Asha line will live up to its name and turn things around when it starts to ship by the fourth quarter (Asha 303 and 300) and the first quarter of 2012 (Asha 200 and 201).