China-based Huawei has announced the price for its first-ever Windows Phone 8 (WP8) smartphone, the Ascend W1. The smartphone, which was recently unveiled at the CES 2013 will be retailing for 1599 Yuan or $260.

Huawei did not disclose the pricing of the Ascend W1 smartphone at the CES, but let on that the smartphone will be released in Q1 2013. The company has now revealed that the Ascend W1 will be released in China and Russia in January and will launch in Western Europe, Middle East, USA and other selected countries soon after.

Now the smartphone is available for sale in China via Huawei's official online store in black. The other three color options - red, white, and blue are yet to make an appearance online.

The 1599 Yuan (approximately $260) price tag for the Ascend W1 makes it even cheaper than Nokia's budget-friendly Lumia 620, which costs 1999 Yuan (about $320) in China.

The Ascend W1 sports a 4-inch IPS LCD with OGS Technology (800 x 480 pixels resolution) and 223 ppi. The smartphone is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8230 processor that is clocked at 1.2GHz

The Ascend W1 measures 4.90 x 2.51 x 0.41 inches and weighs 4.59 ounces. The smartphone has 4GB of internal memory and the option to expand the memory further (up to 32GB) via a microSD card. It also packs in 512MB of RAM, a 5-megapixel primary camera, a VGA front-facing camera, and a 1950mAh battery, and comes with WP8 out of the box.

With the Ascend W1 releasing in China, it seems that the cheapest WP8 smartphone in the market will soon make its way to other countries as well.