Nokia Asha 501 is all set to hot the Nokia press stage in India as announced by Stephen Elop. One of its first new kind of generation falls to Asha platform. Lumia is the main inspiration & red color is the signature uniquely used in its design. Its expected to shop around June 2013 & $99 would be the expected pricing without any taxes. It would be come out via. 60 operators and distributors in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Key specifications

Network: GSM (900 / 1800 RM-899, 850 / 1900 – RM-900).

Display: 3-inch QVGA TFT capacitive touch display.

Camera: 3.2-megapixel camera.

Memory: 4GB microSD card bundled with the phone, cards up to 32GB supported.

Connectivity: Wi-Fi/GPRS/ Edge/ Bluetooth.

OS: Asha platform.

Colors: Bright Red, Bright Green, Cyan, Yellow, White and Black.

Battery Capacity: 1200 mAh

Stand-by Time: Up to 1152 h (Single SIM) & 624 h( Dual SIM).

Talk Time: Up to 17 h.

Music Play Time: Up to 56 h

By the help of Pelican Imaging, a new 16-element lens camera will be introduced into smart phone by the Finnish handset manufacturer into their premium series of handsets i.e. the Lumia soon in the next year as per hint provided by the company.

The interesting feature of Pelican Camera is that it contains 16 individual lenses & when the shutter is pressed then the lens snaps all the pictures together & every pixels carry depth information.

This is quite similar to Lytro camera, where a photographer can alter the focus of the image or can have multiple image focus points, soon the image has been captured.

The company claims that the photographers can change the image background, scale any portion of the picture or add any new elements into the picture.

Chris Pickett the Pelican’s CEO quoted that he didn’t say the name of the testing manufacturers name, but it would seem unlikely that Nokia would pump money into a company only to see others reap the benefits.

Global report has been launched by IDC on smart phone & cell phone sales for the first quarter of this year.

Last year in Q1 total smart phones shipped were 402.4 million units & in this year Q1 418.6 million units were total smart phones shipped where 216.2 million was the total number of smart phones i.e. 51.6%.

Samsung again shows its dominance in the market by shipping 115 million units out of which 70.7 million were smartphones. It is also interesting to know that Samsung possess 32.7% share of the global smartphone shipments & in the final quarter 27.5% of all phone shipments occurred.

Apple takes on the second spot in terms of smart phones shipments. Apple achieved 6.6% YoY increment which is much lower than global smart phone market but it is good in terms of 4% growth in cell phone market.

In terms of total phone shipments Nokia takes on the second spot with 61.9 million units & at the same time 25.1% decline YoY & also not in top 5 smart phones maker list in Q1 2013.

LG occupies the third spot by shipping 10.3 million Optimus devices with a good growth YoY whereas in 2012 LG sold 4.9 million units in Q1 of 2012. Standing side by side of the Korean Company Huawei also comes in picture with 10 million smart phones sold in the last three months.

Yet an another new mobile phone to be launched as per news came from Nokia’s Conversation blog & its twitter account.

On 24th April 7 am GMT & 12:30 pm IST , Nokia the so-called Finnish handset maker will launched some new mobile phones as per Q&A session performed by its mobile phones team together with Neil Broadley & some unknown special guest.

By going through the image a part of phone’s screen & some part of keyboard. But this is a yellow coloured phone with a poly carbonate shell similar to that of company’s Windows based Lumia phones.

Nokia’s first hardware keyboard equipped Windows Phone device like Asha the company is launched its new refresh-able handsets. Again no one is heard about the Windows based Qwerty handsets.

Twitter user @evleaks has posted some purported pictures of Nokia’s newly designed Asha  mobile handsets.Green, red and yellow were the three different handset colors for this new handsets. Many of us made to think that the new design for Asha series handsets were taken from Lumia phones.

Already the company is facing serious competition from local handset manufacturers in the 5000 rupees category. Recently Samsung has launched REX series to compete with Nokia.

Finally the mobile users in India will get a hand on World’s Cheapest Windows 8 phone from Nokia which will be available for purchase through company’s official website & also available at Nokia retailers stores only priced at Rs 14,999.

Key Specifications:

Display: 4.0-inch WVGA display
Processor: Snapdragon S4 1GHz dual-core processor
Memory: 512MB RAM,8GB internal storage, expandable up to 64GB via microSD card
Camera: 5-megapixel rear camera
Connectivity: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G
OS: Windows Phone 8
Baterry Capacity: 1,420mAH

Rs 2,000 crore notice has been sent from Income Tax department to the Finnish based company Nokia for breaking such unethical business transactions in the country.

As per report I-T department has asked the finnish mobile firm on 21st March to paid the Rs 2,000 crore amount by a week time.

Nokia Spokesperson quoted“In this regard, Nokia filed a writ before the Delhi High Court last week and on Friday, March 22 the Court has issued notice to the Income Tax department to file its counter affidavit and has granted interim stay of the entire tax demand raised against Nokia till further orders.”

 Indian tax officials has sent an order to Nokia & has been confirmed by the company. The Indian & Finland Govt. will depend the company strongly since company is in full compliance with local laws as well as the tax treaty based on bilateral norms.

Nokia Spokesperson commented that “Nokia arrived in India 18 years ago and has grown to become a market leader, contributing to the rapid growth of the Indian economy. Nokia has invested over USD 330 million in Chennai since setting up the factory.”

 Euro 737 million i.e. about Rs. 5,192.57 crore is the figure released from NSN India in Dec 31st 2012 i.e. 19.1 percent decline of revenue occured due to the net sales figure drop since the telco operators hasn’t bought telecom gears as per expected.

In 2011 Euro 911 million was the net registered sales from company’s point of view.

If we compared year 2011 with 2012, then net 2 percent decline in total revenue has come up, like 13.37 billion euro in 2012 & 13.64 billion euro in 2011 despite some issues like divestments and restructuring plans.

 NSN commented that “Overall, since 2010, we have reduced component costs as a result of annual purchase price negotiations. During that period we have also experienced some wage inflation, particularly in China, where the rising cost of prices for goods such as food has driven inflationary pressure in salaries. Similar pressures are evident in India.”

As per company’s report “Five businesses have been divested, with two more divestments ongoing. We have exited multiple poorly performing contracts and ceased from active business in several countries.”

Euro 1 billion was the target set by NSN in November 2011 as per cost saving & employee reduction i.e. 17,000 globally plan. Already it has shifted its focus from countries like Japan, USA to deliver such higly tech advanced equipments and to review certain under-performing countries or contracts with a view to exiting if necessary.

 58,411 employees across the globe &  including 10,192 employees in India were reported from NSN end at the end of 2012.

Nokia one of world’s premier handset maker has joined hands with insurance firm New India Assurance to provide facilities like handset theft & accidental damage.

Kannan Gopalakrishnan Nokia India’s Director Retail commented “Through this initiative, our effort is to address one of the major concern of mobile phone buyers and enhance their buying experience with us. Insurance cover will be provided on purchase of new Nokia mobile phones from today onwards, initially across 10 cities.”

Rs 50 or 1.25 per cent of mobile phone cost will be paid as a premium only when the customers will be ready to purchase the respective handset along with the avail offer.

Nokia devices retail stores will feature this unique plan all over India in some cities like Delhi and the National Capital Region, Jaipur, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Cochin.

 Segar Sampathkumar General Manager New India Assurance’s  commented “Customer will be required to make police complaint, inform its service provider and furnish acknowledgement to us for claim. It is not mandatory to get an FIR for making claim. He will have to approach for claim within 48 hours of loss. We have surveyor who will verify the claim after which amount will be paid to customer.”

There will be no claim for customer when the mobile phone is lost overseas or simply lost. But the customer can claim if the damage caused by external impact on the device due to dropping,Mobile phone damaged in an accident & accidental entry of fluid in the device.

The insurance coverage will be for one year after the required handset is purchased. The depreciation value of the handset will be calculated by the company as 10 per cent for claim made within three months of purchase, 25 per cent between 3 to 6 months and 50 per cent between 6 to 12 months.

Product Specification of Samsung Rex 60:

Display Resolution:7.1cm (2.8”) responsive QVGA Display

Camera: 1.3 MP

Talk-Time:  15 h.

SIM Support: Dual-SIM.

Applications Support:Facebook & Twitter

Messengers: ChatON, Yahoo, GTalk & Facebook ChatFree Games, Music & Apps from Samsung App store.

Activesync: Push Mail with Contact & Calendar Sync

Product Specification of Samsung Rex 70:

Display Resolution:7.62cm (3”) Capacitive QVGA Display

Camera: 2 MP

Talk-Time:  13 h.

SIM Support: Dual-SIM.

Applications Support: Preloaded

Messengers: NA

Activesync: NA

Product Specification of Samsung Rex 90:

Display Resolution:8.89cm (3.5”) Capacitive HVGA Display

Camera: 3.2 MP

Connectivity:WiFi (802.11b/g/n)

Talk-Time:  15 h.

SIM Support: Dual-SIM.

Applications Support: Preloaded

Messengers: NA

Activesync: NA

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Another Smart Phone launched under Asha brand name with dual-sim & Wi-Fi support & can access great apps & games. This phone will be available in Q1 2013 in countries like Brazil, Middle East, India & others.

Specifications:

Network Supported: GSM ( 900, 1800)

Processor: CPU (1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon).

Resolution: 240 x 400 pixels, 3.0 inches

OS: NA

Camera: 2 MP primary camera.

Data:GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, USB.

Memory: System Memory (64 MB RAM), Internal Memory (128 MB ROM), External Memory upgradable via. microSD up to 32 GB.

Battery Back-up: 1100 mAh

Standby Time: Up to 600 h

Talk Time:Up to 17 h

Music Play Time: Up to 54 h.

Available Colours: Black, White, Golden Light

Expected Price: 102 USD.

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