BARCELONA, Spain — Microsoft is setting itself up as the antiflagship phone maker, at least until Windows 10 comes out.
At the Mobile World
Congress here on Monday, Microsoft for the first time showed off Windows
10 for phones and continued its evolving strategy of delivering
low-cost Lumia devices that are attractive to emerging phone markets —
and the growing prepaid phone market in the United States.
The Lumia 640 and
Lumia 640 XL are brightly colored; can be upgraded to Windows 10 when
that mobile operating system finally debuts; and although pricing may
vary by carrier, they will start as low as 139 euros, or about $156, for
a 3G version and €159 for a 4G LTE model. That translates to phones
that are cheap or free with new contracts or on prepaid plans, or
affordable enough to be bought outright. The Lumia 640 offers a
five-inch display, while the Lumia 640 XL is, not surprisingly, much
larger, with a 5.7-inch screen.
The Lumia 640 XL will be available starting in March, and the Lumia 640 comes out in April.
Manufacturers like
Motorola and Microsoft have recently been eschewing high-end phones that
are usually aimed at status-conscious buyers in the United States, in
favor of creating devices that are affordable around the world. About one billion people are expected to be upgrading to smartphones in 2015 alone.
“We’re finding a lot
of success,” said Stephen Elop, the executive vice president of the
devices division at Microsoft. “Our Q2 results, in terms of the number
of actual phones sold, was the largest quarter ever in the history of
the Lumia line. And most of those sales were in the lower price tiers,
those people who are buying not only in an AT&T or Verizon store but
Walmart or Target.”
Microsoft said the
Lumia 640 line represented few compromises: Its Qualcomm Snapdragon
processor runs at 1.2 gigahertz; it has a high-definition display and a
nine-megapixel camera; and it comes loaded with Microsoft services, like
a one-year subscription to the personal edition of Office 365 (which
can be extended to one computer and one tablet), an included terabyte of
OneDrive storage and some free Skype calling.
At a show and in an
industry dominated by the release of high-end, high-priced and
high-powered phones like the flagship devices created by Apple and
Samsung, it is the more accessible models that might find broader
success. But as shoppers increasingly choose phones for the services
that run on them, hardware with acceptable power and lots of included
software might prove a winning strategy over time.
Microsoft also
demonstrated some Windows 10 features, focusing primarily on how it
keeps information, like search history and reminders, synced across
devices and has a reading view for articles on mobile. Users familiar
with, say, Google will obviously not find such features particularly
groundbreaking, but they will be handy. For example, if you use Cortana
to set a reminder on your PC, the reminder will automatically sync to
your phone.
Mr. Elop said that the
company would not snub the flagship forever and that it would debut
high-end Lumia devices once Windows 10 was released this year.
At its news conference
in Barcelona, Microsoft also showed off a new Bluetooth folding
keyboard, usable with both iOS phones and tablets, Android devices and
Windows tablets, as well as a new office suite for small to medium-size
businesses, developed with AT&T.
“We also recognize
that, particularly in developed markets, that flagship moment is really
important,” Mr. Elop said. “We’re committed to the flagship, and you’ll
see some beautiful devices later in the year.”
Mr. Elop declined to specify when Windows 10 might be released; the company has said only that it would be in 2015.
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