Finland's Nokia is in advanced talks to acquire the wireless infrastructure business of telecom firm Alcatel-Lucent, reports said Monday.

The announcement of a deal could come "quickly", an unnamed source told French business newspaper Les Echos, while Bloomberg News quoted sources as saying Nokia could announce an agreement "as early as this week".

Finnish telecom equipment group Nokia announced an unexpected return to mobile devices Tuesday with a tablet aimed at the Chinese market.

"We are pleased to bring the Nokia brand back into consumers' hands with the N1 Android tablet, and to help make sophisticated technologies simple," Nokia's head of products Sebastian Nystroem said in a statement.

Struggling Finnish handset giant Nokia unveiled on Thursday its next-generation of lower-end mobile smartphones as it seeks to gain traction in a market expected to be worth $15 billion by 2015.

Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop released the $99 Asha 501 touchscreen Internet-enabled model at a global launch in New Delhi that especially targets emerging market users moving up from their no-frills first mobile phones.

Nokia unveiled a cheaper model in its Lumia smartphone range, powered by Microsoft's Windows phone software, as it tries to regain dominance in emerging markets like China.

The Finnish cellphone maker, which until recently was the world's largest maker of phones, said Monday the new Lumia 520 will start at €139, or about $183, before phone-company subsidies.

Struggling Nokia Corp. is downsizing by more than 1,000 jobs, part of a wide-ranging plan to cut costs and streamline operations.

The Finnish firm says it will lay off 300 workers in its IT sector and transfer "some activities and up to 820 employees to strategic partners," India-based HCL Technologies and TATA Consultancy Services, which have operations in Finland.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) paid rival Nokia 50 million euros ($65.8 million) to settle a patent dispute, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing U.S. regulatory filings.

Analysts believe RIM will also have to pay the Finnish company a licence fee of between $2 and $5 for each handset sold using Nokia technology, the newspaper wrote.

Samsung has overtaken Nokia as the top mobile phone brand for 2012 and has opened up a decisive lead over Apple in the smartphone market, a research firm said Tuesday.

This will mark the first time in 14 years that Finnish-based Nokia will not sit atop the global mobile phone business on an annual basis, according to IHS iSuppli.

Chinese telecom firm Huawei announced on Monday plans to invest 70 million euros ($90 million) to open up a research and development center for smartphone and tablet software in Finland, home to rival Nokia.

"The Finnish R&D center will be a key driver in Huawei’s research and development of new technologies for mobile devices," the company said in a statement.

Nokia says its Windows 8 phones will hit stores in Britain and France this week, before reaching Russia, Germany and other select markets in November.

The Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 are the ailing company's first handsets to use Microsoft's Windows 8 software, launched last week.

Google and Microsoft have introduced new champions in the fiercely competitive smartphone arena a week ahead of what is likely to be the hotly-anticipated debut of a next-generation iPhone by Apple.

Microsoft and Nokia joined Wednesday to boost their smartphone arsenal with two new Lumia handsets powered by Windows 8 software.