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25-533: Nokia Asha is a discontinued series of low-end feature phones and smartphones produced and marketed by Nokia . The name "Asha" came from the Hindi word meaning "hope". On 3 September 2013, Microsoft announced its purchase of Nokia's mobile device business, with the deal closing on 25 April 2014. The company previously announced an intent to use Asha as an "on-ramp" to the Windows Phone platform, but in

50-557: A community of one million or more people. Students also ranked high among smartphone owners. Mobile phones in Japan diverged from those used elsewhere, with carriers and devices often implementing advanced features; such as NTT docomo 's i-mode platform for mobile internet in 1999, mobile payments , mobile television , and near field communications ; that were not yet widely used, or even adopted, outside of Japan. This divergence has been cited as an example of Galápagos syndrome ; as

75-608: A company memo released in July 2014, it was announced that as part of cutbacks, Microsoft would end the Asha and Android -based Nokia X range entirely, in favor of solely producing Lumia Windows Phones and Nokia-branded "feature phone" products. On 11 January 2018, HMD Global acquired the Asha brand name. Below are the mobile phones in the Asha range. None of the Asha models have GPS functionality. All Asha phones included an FM radio . {cn} The Asha 305 and Asha 311 models are known as

100-446: A measure of increasing their financial gain margins. The final product quality (low or high) is not dependent on the price elasticity of demand, but the specific needs that the product is aimed to satisfy and, in some cases, aspects of brand recognition (e.g. prestige, practicability, money saving, expensiveness, environmental conscience, or social status). When there are needs or desires with specific and even complex characteristics,

125-550: A more direct audience for their messages. With few exceptions, such as American Idol , the Super Bowl and the Olympics , it is not common for a substantial audience to watch a program at once. Still, networks do target particular demographics. Lifetime targets women and MTV targets youth. Sports channels, for example, STAR Sports , ESPN , ESPN 2 , ESPNU , STAR Cricket , FS1 , FS2 and CBS Sports Network , target

150-527: A result, these feature phones are retroactively referred to as a 'gala-phone' ( ガラケー , gara-kei ) , blending with 'mobile phone' ( 携帯 , keitai ) . While smartphones have gained popularity (and implement features introduced on them), many gala-phones are still commonly used, citing preferences for the devices and their durability over smartphones. Mobile games oriented towards smartphones have seen significant growth and revenue in Japan, even though there were three times fewer smartphone users in

175-704: A robust operating system, embracing third-party software, and having capabilities such as multitasking and graphics capabilities in order to meet future consumer demands. These platforms also eclipsed the popularity of smartphone platforms historically aimed towards enterprise markets, such as BlackBerry. There has been an industry shift from feature phones (including low-end smartphones), which rely mainly on volume sales, to high-end flagship smartphones, which also enjoy higher margins, thus manufacturers find high-end smartphones much more lucrative than feature phones. The shift away from feature phones has forced mobile network operators to increase subsidies of handsets, and

200-523: A small non-touch display. Feature phones tend to use an embedded operating system with a small and simple graphical user interface , unlike large and complex mobile operating systems on smartphones . The functions of feature phones are limited compared to smartphones. Following the rise of smartphones, the feature phone has sometimes been referred to as a dumbphone . However, some feature phones can provide functions found in smartphones, including internet capabilities, apps, and mobile games . Prior to

225-577: Is based on Nucleus RTOS . Additionally, many phones could access the internet using Wireless Application Protocol . KaiOS can be used as an operating system for feature phones that supports certain apps written using HTML5. Niche market Not every product can be defined by its market niche. The niche market is highly specialized, and aiming to survive among the competition from numerous super companies. Even established companies create products for different niches; Hewlett-Packard has all-in-one machines for printing, scanning and faxing targeted for

250-529: The Asha series as they do not carry the "Asha" branding, despite mistakenly being marketed as such by some carriers and retailers. According to The Verge , Nokia had a project referred to as Asha on Linux and also as "MView"—a reference to Mountain View . The project used a fork of Android on a low-end handset to maximize margins. The project resulted in the Nokia X family of devices, unveiled at MWC 2014. It

275-558: The United States, technological innovation with regard to expanded functionality was a secondary consideration, as phone designs there centred on miniaturisation. Existing feature phone operating systems at the time were not designed to handle additional tasks beyond communication and basic functions, and due to the complex bureaucracy and other factors, they never developed a thriving software ecosystem. By contrast, iPhone OS (renamed iOS in 2010) and Android were designed as

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300-437: The country than in the United States as of 2017. Java ME was a popular software platform for feature phones in the 2000s, with 3 billion devices supporting it as of 2013. Other platforms which saw significant adoption at this time include Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless , abbreviated as BREW, and Adobe's Flash Lite . MediaTek developed an embedded operating system named MAUI Runtime Environment which

325-700: The first generation of Asha Full Touch phones; the second generation is the Asha 50 x line. All devices up to the Asha 50 x series run the Nokia domestic operating system with Series 40 UI platform, also known as S40. The Asha 501 (released in May 2013), Asha 500, Asha 502, Asha 503 and Asha 230 (announced on 14 February 2014) are powered by the Nokia Asha platform , which builds on S40 and Smarterphone . Nokia X2-01 Nokia X2-01 Nokia Asha 201 (single SIM version) The Nokia 206, 207, 208, and 301 were not part of

350-478: The first time that smartphones have outsold feature phones. Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time. A survey of 4,001 Canadians by Media Technology Monitor (MTM) in late 2012 suggested about 83 percent of the anglophone population owned a cellphone, up from 80 percent in 2011 and 74 percent in 2010. About two thirds of

375-666: The high selling-prices of flagship smartphones have had a negative effect on the mobile network operators, who have seen their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) margins drop as they sold more smartphones and fewer feature phones. To help make up for this, carriers typically use high-end devices to upsell customers onto higher-priced service plans with increased data allotments. Trends have shown that consumers are willing to pay more for smartphones that include newer features and technology, and that smartphones were considered to be more relevant in present-day popular culture than feature phones. During

400-420: The home office niche, while at the same time having separate machines with one of these functions for big businesses. In practice, product vendors and trade businesses are commonly referred to as mainstream providers or narrow demographics niche market providers (colloquially shortened to just niche market providers ). Small capital providers usually opt for a niche market with narrow demographics as

425-582: The late 2010s and early 2020s, multiple new companies were formed specifically to manufacture and sell such phones in North America. These companies reported accelerated growth in 2023 and early 2024, driven by those who find contemporary smartphones too addictive , including parents worried about their children developing such addictions. In developed economies in the mid 2000s to early 2010s, fashion and brand loyalty drove sales, as markets had matured and people moved to their second and third phones. In

450-638: The market niche requires specialized suppliers which are capable of meeting such expectations. Unlike mass audiences, which represent a large number of people, a niche audience is an influential smaller audience. In television, technology and many industrial practices changed with the post-network era , niche audiences are now in much greater control of what they watch. In this context of greater viewer control, television networks and production companies are trying to discover ways to profit through new scheduling, new shows, and relying on syndication . This practice of "narrowcasting" also allows advertisers to have

475-506: The mid-2000s, best-selling feature phones such as the fashionable flip-phone Motorola Razr , multimedia Sony Ericsson W580i , and the LG Black Label Series not only occupied the mid-range pricing in a wireless provider's range, they made up the bulk of retail sales as smartphones from BlackBerry and Palm were still considered a niche category for business use. Even as late as 2009, smartphone penetration in North America

500-410: The mobile phone owners polled said they had a smartphone, and the other third had feature phones or non-smartphones. According to MTM, non-smartphone users are more likely to be female, older, have a lower income, live in a small community, and have less education. The survey found that smartphone owners tend to be male, younger, live in a high-income household with children in the home, and residents of

525-595: The outdoors, at workplaces that proscribe dedicated cameras, and as an emergency telephone . Several models are equipped with hardware functions; such as FM radio and flashlight , that prevent the device from becoming useless in the event of a major disaster, or entirely obsolete, if and when 2G network infrastructure is shut down. Other feature phones are specifically designed for the elderly, and yet others for religious purposes . In Pakistan and other South Asian countries, many mobile phone outlets use feature phones for balance transfer , referred to as Easyload . In

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550-621: The popularity of smartphones , the term 'feature phone' was often used on high-end mobile telephones with assorted functions for retail customers, developed at the advent of 3G networks, which allowed sufficient bandwidth for these capabilities. Depending on extent of functionality, feature phones may have many of the capabilities of a smartphone, within certain cases. The first GSM phones and many feature phones had NOR flash memory , from which processor instructions could be executed directly in an execute in place architecture and allowed for short boot times. With smartphones, NAND flash memory

575-534: Was adopted as it has larger storage capacities and lower costs, but causes longer boot times because instructions cannot be executed from it directly, and must be copied to RAM memory first before execution. In developed economies, feature phones are primarily specific to niche markets , or have become merely a preference; owing to certain feature combinations not available in other devices, such as their affordability, durability, and simplicity. A well-specified feature phone can be used in industrial environments, and

600-542: Was low. In 2011, feature phones accounted for 60 percent of the mobile telephones in the United States , and 70 percent of mobile phones sold worldwide. According to Gartner in Q2 2013, 225 million smartphones were sold worldwide which represented a 46.5 percent gain over the same period in 2012, while 210 million feature phones were sold, which was a decrease of 21 percent year over year,

625-494: Was one of two known Android projects at the company, the other was running the OS on high-end Lumia hardware. [REDACTED] Media related to Nokia Asha mobile phones at Wikimedia Commons Feature phones A feature phone (also spelled featurephone ), brick phone , or dumbphone , is a mobile phone that retains the form factor of earlier generations of mobile telephones, typically with press-button based inputs and

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