Nokia reportedly plans wave of cheap phones to combat Chinese upstarts

Nokia (NOK) may be planning to go back to its roots by producing a lot more cheap phones that can compete with upstart Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE. Unnamed sources have told Reuters that after spending the past year trying to compete with high-end devices like the iPhone and the Galaxy S III, Nokia “is set to launch cheaper handset models in an attempt to fend off growing competition” in the market for low-end devices. Apparently Nokia plans to launch both “cut-price basic phones” and “a new, lower-price model of its Lumia smartphones running on Windows Phone 8 software” at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. Now would certainly be a good time for Nokia to refocus on budget devices because Samsung (005930) just launched its own line of budget phones that is meant to attack Nokia’s turf in the feature phone market.

[More from BGR: Samsung looks past Apple, takes aim at BlackBerry]

This article was originally published on BGR.com