HTC will start volume shipments of its feature phone, the HTC Smart, to major markets in Europe and Asia at the end of March 2010, according to industry sources. The company actually began to ship the HTC Smart phones to India recently to test the water with an unlocked price of 10,000 rupee (US$220), the sources noted.

HTC's pricing strategy will bring the HTC Smart to compete head on with the Corby-series handsets from Samsung Electronics, the Cookie handsets from LG Electronics (LGE) as well as the Nokia 5230, the sources indicated.

However, the pricing seems to have begun to pay off as HTC has received orders for the HTC Smart handsets from a number of telecom carriers in Europe, including Telefonica/O2, Telecom Italia, KPN of the Netherlands and Netcom of Norway, the sources said.

 source:digitimes