Microsoft’s Choice: X or Asha?

With the sale of Nokia’s devices and services division coming to a close near the end of April, Microsoft stands to gain control of the Lumia lineup as well as both the Ashas and the X lineup. Meaning that Microsoft have some difficult decisions ahead of them, namely which lineup should carry on as the low end device from Nokia/Microsoft.

It’s no secret that the Asha lineup is slowly dying, they were once successful, but the Asha OS based off of Smarterphone, as well S40 have become cumbersome to maintain and simply outdated. Asha sales globally have begun to slip and what little ground Nokia gained in the high end smartphone market with Lumias these past two years, they’ve begun to lose that in the low-end. Enter the X; Nokia finally gave what most tech reviewers and consumers have been asking for over the past two years, an Android Nokia. However it’s not the one many of us high end smartphone users wanted, or would even consider; but it was an obvious push to regain the market-share that the Asha’s have begun to give up. Early signs of the Nokia X show a favorable outcome (and hopefully we’ll see some decent sale numbers), especially since the other two members of the family, the X+ and the XL are yet to be released.

On the other hand Nokia X is essentially running Android, and no matter how you spin it; whether you call it “Linux open source” or a “stepping stone to Lumias” it’s still not running a Microsoft OS, or even a neutral one, it’s plain out running a competitors OS. All the while Microsoft are scrambling for every bit of market-share they can get, even if it means dual booting their OS onto Android phones. Regardless of how dedicated Microsoft is to their own platform OS (although it doesn’t seem that way sometimes) it won’t sit right with them & others if they’re pushing their competitors OS (and it will probably sell better than their own OS as well).

With the Nokia X and XL set to launch around the same time as the Nokia/Microsoft deal closes, I can see Microsoft allowing the three X devices to run their product lives, slowly ramping down availability with time, provided they don’t want to pursue the Android course that is; but what about the promise of “More X devices to come”? Would Microsoft shut down a successful and profitable division of their devices sector and stick with a slowly fading line (Asha) to save face? Or will they continue to use it as a way to “push” users to Lumias and Microsoft services, while making some $$$ along the way?

What do you guys think? Either way it’s going to be an interesting year for Nokia and Microsoft.

Tags: featured

Category: Android, Asha, Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone