Nokia eyes 15 cr Urdu speaking people with Rs. 2,500 cell phone

Finnish handset maker Nokia today unveiled its first mobile phone in India built primarily to target about 15 crore Urdu speaking population in the country.

'I don't know about other countries but this is first mobile phone going to be launched in India whose language will be Urdu.

'When Nokia came to me 6 to 8 months back, I asked them if they could take a challenge to bring mobile phone for about 15 crore Urdu speaking people and I appreciate their initiative,' Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal while launching the dual SIM mobile phone Nokia 114.

The phone is priced at ₹2,579. It will support nine languages including Urdu, English and Hindi.

'Over time we have developed supporting language capability in our device but one thing that we were missing was Urdu. I was told by the Minister that there are about 150 million Urdu speaking people in the country. We accepted challenge given by him,' Nokia India Managing Director P Balaji said.

Nokia 114 will support talk time of up to 10.5 hours on 2G network, allow internet browsing, 0.3 megapixel camera, FM radio and video streaming among other features. 'We will be launching it pan India but our focus will be five markets- Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. It is available across stores now,' Balaji said.