surprised everyone at the Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona when it unveiled its first range of Android phones, leading to suggestions that Microsoft – which is set to acquire Nokia for $7.2 billion – is set to face stiffer competition for the mobile software market.

The Finnish phone maker once led the global mobile market, with sales in more than 150 countries, making it the largest phone vendor in the world as at 2012. Over recent years, it has experienced some decline in sales owing to a surge in demand for smartphones, which led to a fall in share by 4.9 per cent in Q1 of 2013.

Nokia sees the launch as an opportunity to stay relevant in the smartphone market. However with Microsoft’s takeover very imminent, Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice-President, Windows Phone, revealed the software giant was “less excited” about the development.

“Some things we’re excited about, some things we’re less excited about. Whatever they do, we’re very supportive of them.”

Stephen Elop, Nokia’s Senior Vice President moved to clarify Nokia’s reasoning behind such move, stating that Lumia is still “our primary smartphone platform” and that the low-cost Andriod family will just be employed as a “feeder system”.

The smartphones which include Nokia X, X+ and XL will come with a wide range of apps such as Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Here maps, Vine, Outlook, Bing, OneDrive and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

Nokia X, priced at $120, is scheduled to go on sale immediately in Asia-Pacific, Europe, India, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa while Nokia X+ and Nokia XL priced at $136 and $150 respectively will begin to hit the markets by the second quarter.