Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NOK), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Can the 625 Shine in Emerging Markets?

Another month, another Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) Lumia unveiling. As a struggling company that seemed on its way into the dustbin of tech history, the Finland-based handset maker has been very aggressive in re-creating itself over the last 18 months, and has been  finding some modest success since launching the first Lumia handsets running on the Windows Phone 8 platform. (We noted risks, but rewards have come so far.)

And while Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) seems to have moved into the No. 3 spot in market share among smartphones with Windows Phone – which Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) is the top OEM partner of the platform – there is still clearly a ways to go. Nokia, however, has been very aggressive in developing its high-end stable of handsets – those with larger margins – to try to play a role in the smartphone wars overall alongside the Android-based handsets of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS-based iPhone. And with iOS and Android controlling more than 90 percent of the market at this point, there is not a lot of room for Nokia or Microsoft, but Nokia has seen improvements in Lumia handset sales over the last couple of quarters. But Nokia lost money in the most recent quarter because of diminished  mid-range and feature-phone sales.

For Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK), the emerging markets had been the bread-and-butter and had been what has kept Nokia with a pulse in the handset market. So to address the shortcomings in the “budget” phone segment, Nokia unveiled a new Lumia handset Tuesday that likely will cater to the masses in emerging markets like India, Brazil, China and others.

Say hello to the Lumia 625, which boasts a big 4.7-inch screen to serve as the largest Windows Phone on the market when it releases  later this quarter. The phone is expected to retail for less than $300 – so for the size, the specs will be consistent with a mid-range phone, nothing terribly fancy.

The latest Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) Lumia handset reportedly boasts a 2,000-mAh battery, among other specs reported by our friends at Neowin. The display is a curved-glass screen with a modest 800×480 resolution, but the phone has a decent 5-megapixel rear-facing camera that can produce full 1080p HD video, plus a front-facing camera for video calls. There are 512 megabytes of RAM and 8 gigabytes of storage that expands to 64 GB with a microSD card. There is another feature that can be a highlight in the mid-range class.

Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) was careful to ensure that its mid-range smartphone not only ran Windows Phone 8 (making this one of the cheapest such handsets around), but it also has LTE capability, which means high-speed Internet access is available. The phone has just a 1.2 GHz processor, but the battery life is claimed to be as much as 23 hours of talk time, 23 days on standby mode or nearly 7 hours of video playback.

What do you think? Can this kind of phone help Nokia -reestablish itself in the emerging markets with this type of “budget” smartphone? If you don’t think so, what do you think is missing for Nokia to get the upper hand in a growing market segment? If you are an investor like fund manager Jim Simons (see his full equity portfolio), are you pleased by this latest unveiling? Give us your feedback in the comments section below.

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