Nokia Says Indonesia 2nd Biggest Asia Market, Launches 2 New Asha Phones

Nokia Asha 309

Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) launched two new models in its Asha budget phone series – the 308 and 309 – in Jakarta, Indonesia, earlier today. Both phones are priced at under $99. Nokia insists they are “full touch” smartphones, but as they run the ancient Symbian S40, some would say they’re just fancy feature phones. The pair come with only 2.5G (GPRS) connectivity, but its range of apps and price look well suited to its target market – young feature phone users who still want some fun apps.

The phones have a 3-inch touchscreen which is scratch resistant. The Asha 308 has dual sim cards, while the Asha 309 (pictured) has a single sim card slot and also supports WiFi. There are four main selling points, say Nokia, for the new phones:

1. Games: The phones come with 40 free games from the likes of EA, and also such as Need for Speed and FIFA. Nokia mentioned that the company is working with Namco to bring 20 more games to the table, with Rovio’s Angry Birds in the fold too.

2. Nokia Life+ provides users with articles about entertainment, lifestyle, women’s info, and more. This probably appeals more to women than men.

3. Offline Nokia maps: Jussi Nevanlinna, the global head of developer product marketing at Nokia, said that the new Asha phones use the same map feature-base as the pricier Lumia series. The Nokia maps app also has a newly-developed ‘nearby’ button which lets users know nearby places of interests. Unfortunately, the prototype Asha models at the event were not able to use this feature yet, so I couldn’t test them out. But the Nokia Maps app on the Lumia looks awesome.

4. The battery lasts a whopping 42 days on stand-by.

The new Nokia phones use the same Nokia cloud browser which claims to able save data plans up to 90 percent. Though there are always alternatives like Opera Mini if you don’t fancy that. The Asha phones come pre-loaded with the usual social network apps like Twitter and WhatsApp. The phones will be out at the beginning of the fourth quarter this year – which means next month.

Nokia Stats for Asia

During the launch event here in Jakarta, Nokia also shared some statistics. Here are a few Asia related stats:

• Indonesia is amongst the top 10 nations who are users of Nokia.
• China ranks number one (though surely for not much longer), with Indonesia a close second in Asia Asia Pacific.
• The Nokia Asha 305 is the number one phone in China according to its pricing point category, while the same phone is the number one phone in Indonesia in its segment.

For developers out there, these stats might be of interest to you:

• There have been 20 faculty roadshows run by Nokia across Indonesia. There are more than 12,000 Indonesian developers for Nokia.
• The Nokia Asha series, which is sold in only four countries – Nigeria, India, China, and Indonesia – accounts for 75 percent of the 8 million music downloads worldwide. From the 6.1 million Nokia browser downloads, 60 percent of them come from Asha.
• Globally, there are around 17 million downloads per day from the Nokia Store. 60 percent of traffic to the Nokia Store comes from the S40 platform.
• At the moment, there are nine Nokia developers that have received more than a million downloads of their apps.

Right now, with the Asha event wrapped up, Nokia is holding its 24-hour hackathon called HackNation to find the nation’s best S40 platform developers.