After the Thursday launch of the affordable 2G touchscreen smartphone Asha 501 in India, Finnish tech firm will bring the same phone to UK for its May 14 debut in Europe.

In UK, the affordable smartphone will retail for €75, which comes in plastic cases, garish hues and 3-inch touchscreen with a 320x240-pixel resolution and runs on the phone firm's Asha software instead of Windows Phone 8 used by its richer relatives that belong to the Lumia line.

The phone also comes with a 3-megapixel camera, microSD card slot and dual SIM card slots. Its app store contains just a few basic ones such as Facebook, Twitter and Plants vs Zombies.

Nokia said that the latest addition to its line, priced at $99, is aimed mainly at emerging markets such as India and Latin America, where there are many potential techie users made up of its young population, but could definitely afford pricier handsets offered by more known brands and even some of Nokia's units.

Power-wise, the Asha 501 offers 48 days of standby time for the single SIM and 26 days for the dual SIM, or 17 hours of talktime.

The Asha line is Nokia's response to the company's inability to regain its top spot in the mobile phone market which it lost to Apple then to Samsung. On Wednesday, impatient investors chided Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop at the company's annual stockholders' meeting in Helsinki for his failure to turnaround the company after two years of switching to the Windows Phone 8 software from its antiquated Symbian system.

The frustration of shareholders is not a surprise because Nokia's shares are down to €2.72 from their 2000 peak of €65.