Earlier this morning, Microsoft announced that it will be transitioning “select” Nokia X products from Android to Windows Phone. Apparently that’s not the only big mobile move that the folks in Redmond have planned, though, as a new memo has revealed that Microsoft may end up transitioning resources away from other platforms.
According to an internal memo acquired by The Verge, Microsoft is planning to shift its development and investment efforts away from Asha, Series 40 and Nokia X devices to “maintenance mode.” That means that those products won’t receive new features or service updates. This transition is expected to occur over the next 18 months.
Moving forward, Microsoft will focus on Windows Phone as well as its own services and apps. This will result in new Windows Phone hardware at the low-end and high-end. The memo says that Microsoft will “shift [its] flagship engineering efforts towards new flagship products time with the next release of Windows and Windows Phone.”
That next major release may still be a ways off, but Microsoft won’t wait that long to release new high-end handsets. The company says that in order to build success in the near future, it will focus its high-end efforts on the Lumia 930, Lumia 1520 and “other high-end products” that it will reveal “very soon.”
It’s kind of a bummer to see Nokia’s entry-level Asha, S40 and X devices getting the axe. Sure, they may not appeal to some mobile fans that love high-end specs, but Nokia has a history of crafting some quality handsets that were also super-cheap. Since Microsoft plans to replace those products with low-end Windows Phone devices, it’ll be interesting to see just how low MSFT can go with those products.
Meanwhile, fans of shiny new hardware should be excited for the news that high-end Windows Phone devices are coming “very soon.” It remains to be seen exactly what those products might be, but the good news is that it doesn’t sound like we’ll have to wait long to find out.
What features do you hope to see included in the next high-end Windows Phone handset from Microsoft and Nokia?
Via The Verge
