Microsoft will use price in the next round of its battle against Apple and Samsung to grow market share and convince more users to jump on the Windows phone platform.
This month the company will begin selling the Lumia 830, a fully featured smartphone that it believes stands up to Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and Apple’s iPhone 5S on technical specifications while being significantly cheaper, it said.
“We’re going to challenge Apple and Samsung and expose the premium they are charging for a phone,” said Chris Weber, corporate vice president of mobile device sales at Microsoft at the IFA electronics show in Berlin. The Lumia 830 is Microsoft’s first major product launch since it completed its acquisition of Nokia earlier this year.
The Lumia 830 will cost €330, cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the Apple iPhone.
“It’s the first affordable flagship,” said Weber.
Among its main features is a better camera than its predecessors’. It can quickly go from standby to shooting and also capture 4K video, which is video at four times the resolution of high definition. It will also come with the latest version of Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, and a number of Microsoft productivity apps.
But will the lower price be enough?
Microsoft is still wrestling with an image that its smartphone ecosystem lags that of Apple and Google’s Android. The perception was gained soon after Windows 8 launched, when early buyers found many of the most popular mobile apps weren’t available on the new handsets.
“It’s an area where perception lags reality,” said Weber. “We’ve made a ton of progress.”
The executive conceded there’s “more work to be done,” but he said the company feels good about the 320,000 apps now available in its app store and the progress it’s making, which includes 500 new apps per week.
Gartner estimates that Microsoft has a 3% share of the global smartphone market.
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
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