Nokia announced an entry-level addition to its Windows Phone line, the Lumia 510, which it said “continues to meet our commitment to bring Windows Phone to new, lower price points”.

The ailing device maker said that it will be priced at around US$199, excluding taxes and subsidies. Sales are expected to start in India and China, followed by other Asia Pacific countries and South America.

Nokia has been struggling against competition from Android device makers in the low-cost smartphone market, with a number of local competitors also proving a headache in countries such as India and China.

The company has cited “competition from more affordable smartphones and from competitors with broader portfolios of feature phones with more smartphone-like experiences, such as full touch devices”.

In order to address this, Nokia has introduced its full touch Asha range, which the company has taken to referring to as “smartphones”.

These Series 40-powered devices are priced lower than the Lumia 510, in order to appeal to more cost-sensitive customers – its most recently announced products are around US$99.

The company’s most recent results release highlighted Nokia’s weakness in China, which had previously been something of a stronghold for the vendor. Device volumes in this market fell 64 percent year-on-year to 5.8 million units, with revenue falling 78 percent to EUR278 million.

This, the vendor said, was “primarily due to Symbian”, with the legacy OS previously having filled the vendor’s mass-market smartphone role. In addition, Symbian-powered devices were available which supported the TD-SCDMA 3G network of China Mobile, the country’s largest operator – which is not the case for Windows Phone.

The Lumia 510 is powered by the legacy Windows Phone 7.5 platform, running on a Qualcomm processor with 256MB of RAM. It has a 4-inch display, and 5MP camera.

Microsoft added support for devices with 256MB of RAM to Windows Phone 7.5 earlier this year, in order to enable the creation of smartphones with a lower bill of materials.

The first handset to result from this was Nokia’s 610, previously the entry-level model in its WP portfolio.