Battle for the Next Billion: Microsoft’s aim for the $40 WP to tackle Google’s Android One

The “Next Billion” was a phrase constantly used in a Nokia strategy to reach the next billion consumers and connect them to the internet through a Nokia smartphone. Although Nokia is no longer around the handset business, the aim of connecting people to an internet ready smartphone is one that Android and Microsoft are gearing towards. Jo Harlow reiterates that there are still a billion people without mobile devices and two billion without internet access on a mobile device so there is a huge market to capture.

Yesterday, google revealed their “Android One” in an airy fairy attempt video using the importance of “One”. (Hurray, Xbox One, OneDrive etc).

Microsoft are going to make sure they’re not left behind trying to push windows to all consumers on every price spectrum. With more and more OEMs joining, in particular, locally based ones, Microsoft are going to make it a more achievable goal. WP is already a very decent offering on entry level hardware. The user experience is much more consistent than perhaps the Android counterpart from low to high end. But at the moment, unless on a special sale, the prices don’t start at those very low levels (that are almost equivalent to a Nokia ‘dumbphone’).

FireFox’s smartphone is about 32USD. Over the next 12-18 months, Microsoft will push the price points lower as well as continuing to drive innovation into that “affordable flagship” segment, combine design, software and services from the high end that will “trickle down.

Source

Cheers Alvester for the tip!

Category: Nokia