New Delhi, Sep 12 (IANS): Finnish mobile handset giant Nokia has launched Nokia 114 its first device with Urdu language capability, a company statement said Thursday.

The first Urdu language capability handset was presented by renowed film-maker Muzaffar Ali by Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal in the present of Nokia India managing director P. Balaji here Thursday.

With this, Nokia becomes the first company to introduce regional content in 11 Indian languages - Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and now Urdu - through an in-house application Akshar in the Asha touch range of affordable smartphones.

"India today has one of the largest Urdu speaking populations in the world - over 15 crore. The proliferation of the language is deeprooted in our culture. We would like to connect this language to Internet and mobile telephoney like English," Sibal said at the launch.

Priced at Rs.2,579, the new Nokia 114, dual SIM, offers the innovative cloud-accelerated Nokia Xpress browser experience permitting users to consume less data by upto 90 percent by compressing websites in the cloud.

It also offers a long-lasting battery with over 10 hours talk time and nearly a month's standby with an Easy Swap technology enabling switching between SIMs without switching off or removing the battery.