Facebook boosts Nokia? Compete for low-end smartphone market share

Lead: The U.S. financial website Quartz today wrote that with the help of Facebook, Nokia is expected to take a bigger share in the low-end smartphone market through its Asha 501 cheap smartphone, just launched in India.

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In Thursday, angry shareholders grilled CEO Elop Stephen Elop at Nokia's annual shareholder meeting. They want to know when he will be able to take a little action against Apple and Samsung Electronics.

Nokia will unveil its new high-end flagship product in London next week, with unclear details.

But the Asha 501 cheap handsets that he launched in India early this morning seem to be more noteworthy than the ailing company's efforts in the high-end market. The proposed retail price of 99 dollars (pre-tax), with almost all the features of smartphones, is a big one for Nokia, which hopes to capture a bigger share of the cheap smartphone market. Elop plans to sell 100 million Asha 501 in the next few years, equivalent to One-seventh of global smartphone sales last year.

Asha 501 is a dual sim double to 2G mobile phone, borrowed from high-end Lumia mobile phone design elements, looks very rugged, enough to adapt to the environment in developing countries, and claims to be able to standby 26 days (single card version can be standby for 48 days). The product has its own app store, which can be used by carriers to be compatible with the old Asha phone, and offers many tempting conditions to attract developers to Asha development applications.

In addition, if you are using a contract with Facebook operators, you can also avoid traffic charges when visiting Facebook. "How can we help these people get online more quickly and live a more colorful life," Vaughan Smith, Facebook's mobile Wagan Smith, told the media that there are still 5 billion people in the world who have not yet used the Internet? He asked himself, "Facebook."

This is not the first time Facebook has used free data traffic to attract users. The company has also launched a project called Facebook Zero, which provides free, plain text services for old-style feature handsets. But this is the first time the company has integrated such services with smart devices and is a touch-screen device similar to the iphone. Facebook is popular in developing countries. Brazil and India are one of the biggest markets for the social network, second only to the US. In India, Facebook is second only to Google. Nokia has decided that consumers will buy the company's mobile phone to make it easier to use Facebook (even if it cannot enjoy a faster 3G network).

Balaji, the Nokia India executive, said it had established partnerships with four operators,--airtel, MTN, América Móvil and telekomsel--, to offer concessions to Asha 501 of users, Balaji. Examples include discounts on data packages or free Facebook connections. The four companies have a total of 800 million users in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Airtel, with 270 million users, will launch free Facebook wireless data usage services in 20 countries where it is involved.

These phones will be sold in bare-metal form, so consumers are free to choose their preferred operators. However, they are more likely to opt for Nokia's partners because they are free to use Facebook services, or to enjoy discounts when buying data packages.

While Facebook and operators are reluctant to disclose who is paying for free data traffic, the social network has previously let operators digest the costs themselves. The company is an ideal gateway to the world of the Internet, and operators can generate revenue through Internet access fees. Even if the monthly cost is only a few dollars, the growth of data services in India and Africa will be exciting for operators.

Facebook is a big boon if more users in developing countries use better handsets. Developing countries have more Facebook users than Europe and North America, but they only contribute one-fifth of the revenue to Facebook. One of the main reasons is that the mobile phone is too low, to put ads appear a little stretched. For example, this type of mobile phone is not able to watch higher-priced video ads, which is exactly what Facebook is about to exert.

It's a strategy of winning a lot, and while Facebook is earning a lot of money, Nokia may lose most. Asha is likely to be Nokia's biggest bargaining chip in reversing its fortunes. In Hindi, Asha means "hope."