GLOBAL – Nokia has reached one of the biggest milestones in the company’s history – selling 1.5 billion Series 40 mobile phones.

The record-breaking handset was sold to 21-year-old old Mayara Rodrigues in Brazil.

“It is small and beautiful,” said Mayara as she held up her new Asha 303 in front of the Magazine Luiza store in São Paulo where she received it.

Receptionist Mayara decided a Nokia was right for her after researching which phone would be easiest to use, affordable, and offer the best music and photo editing. Although she originally thought about buying a Nokia C2, she was given a free Asha 303 as the 1.5 billionth customer.  

She’s just got married, and so she likes to keep in contact with a lot of family and friends via social networks. 

On the Asha 303 that’s easy – you can type messages on the QWERTY keypad and update your status on a social network like Facebook, or Orkut – the one Mayara uses. You can also use the Nokia Browser to search the internet, compress the data that you want by as much as 90 per cent, and download it more affordably.  

Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President for Mobile Phones at Nokia, said: “We are incredibly proud to reach this milestone. Having 1.5 billion Series 40 devices sold is a hard-to-reach mark, let alone one attainable in a single line of products.”

 McDowell added that Series 40 had played an essential role in Nokia’s ongoing strategy to connect the next billion users to mobile technology: “It is gratifying to consider how Series 40 devices have made mobile technology accessible and help continue to change people’s lives for the better.”

 

The first Series 40 phone, the Nokia 7110, was developed in 1999,  but the introduction of the Asha range – with services like Nokia Maps for Series 40, Nokia Browser, Nokia Money and Nokia Life Tools – has led to a blurring of the traditional distinction between a feature phone and a smartphone, with Series 40 now leading the evolution of a new category called ‘smartphone lite’.   

As far as Mayara Rodrigues is concerned, it doesn’t really matter what category her phone falls into: The Asha 303 gives her everything she wants for the right price, and she can even play Angry Birds on it.