Lumia 520

The extensive new China Brand Power Index is fascinating reading on many levels. Who knew that McDonald’s Coffee is the third most popular cafe chain in China? Or that Buick is the second most popular compact car brand? Yet perhaps the biggest shock can be found in the mobile phone category, where Nokia (NOK) still beats Apple (AAPL) in brand power and trails only Samsung (005930) for the title of China’s No. 1 mobile brand. As a matter of fact, Samsung leads Nokia only slightly on points (542 vs. 530), whereas Apple is far behind with 411 points. More →

Nokia (NOK) decided to eschew the high-end smartphone market at Mobile World Congress this week to focus on a line of lower-cost phones aimed at defending its turf in emerging markets from the likes of Samsung (005930) and its REX feature phone series. The Finnish phone manufacturer on Monday announced four new phones: The Nokia Lumia 720 and 520 smartphones and the Nokia 301 and 105 feature phones. The Lumia 720 is the most high-end of all the devices with a 4.3-inch touch display with a resolution of  800 x 480 pixels, a dual-core 1GHz Snapdragon processor and a 6.7-megapixel camera. The device is priced at $329 before carrier subsidies and will begin launching in Asia during the first quarter of 2013 before expanding to Europe in the second quarter. More →