www.WirelessFederation.com/news: LG-made low-cost Android smartphone is planned to be launched by Orange in Europe later this year. Operator’s affordable smartphone strategy has been emerging this week and it includes a range of devices made by Chinese vendors including Huawei, ZTE and Gigabyte.

According to Patrick Remy, Orange’s vice president of devices, at the beginning of 2010, 15% of Orange portfolio was smartphones and this will rise to 30% by the end of the year, and will be 50% by 2013 while with the plethora of white label devices in the pipeline, Orange’s low-cost smartphone portfolio will also include handsets designed by “A-brand” phone makers. The company LG is on the first A-brand product in its affordable smartphone range.

No specific information about the launch timetable and likely cost of the device has been revealed yet. The handset includes the entire standard features like a touchscreen interface, WiFi, GPS, full Web-browsing, and a five megapixel camera and the Android-powered smartphone will launching soon in Spain, Austria, Slovakia and Romania.

The company has explained its objective as-  to make low-cost smartphones available for free even on low-cost tariffs and it is in discussions that could see it offer cheap smartphones to prepay customers, with devices that are priced around €120. Orange’s aim of doubling revenues from mobile multimedia services between now and 2012 will get a push from these cheap smartphones.

The operator is putting extra focus on highlighting services like mobile social networking, instant messaging, location-based services and content, taking lesson from the fact that at the beginning of 2009 only one in 10 Orange customers was using mobile multimedia services.

Remy also opined that 25% of Orange’s customers are now using mobile multimedia, which is significant and tremendous growth, but it still means 75% of its customer base are not multimedia users and Orange’s affordable smartphone range will further lower the barrier to mobile multimedia uptake.