From New Delhi to Shanghai to Johannesburg, a flood of cheap handsets from the likes of China's ZTE and India's Micromax is destroying Nokia's top position in emerging markets.

Compounding the woes for the Finnish phone maker, Asian handset manufacturers are increasingly turning to Google's free Android software, which is popular with operators and consumers in cut-rate markets.

Nokia is already under pressure in the high-margin smartphone sector as Apple, Blackberry maker Research In Motion and Google seize market share, leaving the basic cellphone business as Nokia's most valuable part. That is now under threat.