As per PTI reports, Karbonn Mobiles’ Managing Director, Pradeep Jain was quoted stating, “We will come out with four devices with Windows based operating system by the end of May or starting of June in the price range of 6,000 – 12,000.” At the same time, Hari Om Rai, Lava International Inc. CEO and MD claimed that the firm will release a lineup of Windows based phones sometime around July in the price bracket of Rs 6,500 to Rs 8,500. Furthermore, he added that these smartphones will be incorporated with chipsets belonging to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 series. The announcements from Lava and Karbonn have come in as an after effect of Microsoft’s confirmation about the fee waiver for domestic phone manufacturers to obtain Windows Phone 8 OS license, which was the headlines in the tech industry just days ago.
Redmond based software giant has waived the fee for the Windows Phone 8 license in order to cash in enough market share from the rapidly progressing Indian smartphone market claimed the third largest in the whole world with only USA and China as its leaders. Besides, Lava and Karbonn, the software firm has also tied up with China based manufacturers including Huawei, Lenovo, Gionee, ZTE and Foxconn and premium brands such as LG, HTC and others to build Windows Phone based devices. But, at this point of time, the fee waiver to acquire the Windows Phone 8 license is only applicable in India. If Microsoft continues to add more hardware partners in developing markets such as India and China, the company will definitely benefit from the growing consumer demand and bridge the gap between Windows Phone platform and its competitors – iOS and Android. This is commendable as the western and developed markets such as Europe and USA are highly saturated with smartphones. Interestingly, the market research firm, IDC (International Data Corporation) has predicted that Microsoft can record an astounding growth of 29% in the next four years. we are excited about to see how Windows Phone fairs in budget price range as Lumia 520 did outperform most of budget Android rivals in terms of performance. Windows Phone operating system works well on low end hardware contrary to Android and seeing more of them in budget price range might finally give Microsoft a strong ground in Indian Market.
