While the biggest news out of Nokia World is the announcement of Nokia's first Windows Phone, the mobile phone company also unveiled a new line that is aimed at emerging markets such as India and Africa.

The Asha lineup is a combination of featurephone and smartphone that will target the "next one billion" consumers who will want their phones to go online.

"Our research suggests the next billion is a really young crowd," Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia, said. "They see technology as a way to upgrade their life, despite affordability constraints they are extremely savvy phone users. For those people today we are producing 12 phones per second, one million phones per day, 365 million phones per year."

The new Nokia Asha lineup will initially offer four new models, the Asha 200, 201, 300 and 303. All four phones run on Nokia's Series 40 but have different features. The Asha 200, 300 and 303 will ship by the end of the year while the Asha 201 will be available in early 2012. The Asha 200 and 201 will cost around $85. The 300 will be priced at $120 while the 303 will cost around $160.

The Nokia Asha 200 and 201 are designed for the young, urban consumer set. Both phones will feature a full QWERTY keyboard, a 2.4 inch QVGA display and will integrate various social networking, e-mail and messaging services. The Asha 200 can support dual SIM with an EasySwap option while the 201 will only have a single-SIM. Both phones will have an expansion slot that can support up to 32Gb.

The Nokia Asha 300 will have a touchscreen display and more up-to-date operating system. It will run on a 1Ghz processor, 128 MB of RAM, offer Bluetooth 2.1 support and 140MB of internal memory. It will also have a 5 megapixel camera and a microSD expansion slot. The Asha will have 3G capability with Nokia's web browser to access the internet. It also comes with Angry Birds Lite pre-installed.

The Asha 303 is the flagship of the Asha line and with its metallic finish it certainly looks like it. It has a big 2.6 inch touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, and 1GHz processor. The 303 comes with the upgraded Nokia Browser which compresses the web for mobile by up to 90 per cent. It offers a fully integrated social networking site, as well as e-mail and instant messenger and one-touch access to the music player. The Nokia Asha 303 will ship with Angry Birds Lite, Facebook Chat, Whatsapp and Nokia Maps for Series 40.