Karbonn, Lava to launch Windows Phone smartphones in few months

Domestic handset players Lava and Karbonn will launch Windows-based smartphones in the coming few months.

Karbonn's Windows phones will be in the price range of Rs 6,000-12,000. Lava's price starts with Rs 6,500.

"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," Karbonn Managing Director Pradeep Jain told PTI.

Lava International CEO and MD Hari Om Rai said: "A series of Windows-based phones will be launched under the Lava brand by July. These will be priced in the range of Rs 6,500-8,500."

He said the phones will be based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor and will feature Windows 8 platform.

"We expect the Windows-based phones to represent 8-10 per cent volume of Lava smartphones starting July-August time- frame," Rai added.

For Xolo brand of phones, the expected timeline of launch is the coming quarter.

"We at XOLO believe that Windows OS has certain goodness to offer for a certain market segment and it will help XOLO reach a desired 15 per cent share of the smartphone market by end of 2014," a Xolo spokesperson said.

Last month, at the Mobile World Congress Microsoft had announced that it would be working with nine new Windows phone partners, including Foxconn, Gionee, JSR, Karbonn, Lava (Xolo), Lenovo, LG, Longcheer and ZTE.

HTC, Huawei, Nokia and Samsung are already making Windows-based devices.

As per the IDC figures of the last quarter of 2013, Android had a 78.1 per cent share of global smartphone shipments while the Microsoft Windows Phone platform share stood at 3 per cent

Huawei confirms dual-OS Android and Windows Phone smartphone for Q2 release

Huawei has confirmed that a dual-OS smartphone will be available in the US in Q2 2014, running Android and Windows Phone operating systems.

Huawei's chief marketing officer, Shao Yang in an interview with TrustedReviews, has shed some light on the company's upcoming smartphone plans.

Yang was quoted as saying, "We are still committed to making Windows Phone devices. Compared with Android, the priority of Windows Phone is much lower but is still one of our choices of OS. We are definitely using a multi OS strategy."

It seems that despite Microsoft's desperate push (evinced by co-marketing reports in the past), device manufacturers like Huawei still consider its Windows Phone OS a secondary option to Google's Android.

Yang further said, "With Windows Phone, one direction for us - and one that we are now following - is dual-OS. Dual-OS as in Android and Windows together."

Yang claimed that the dual-OS device could be a new option of consumers who have been offered Android or Windows Phone on a device, and not both operating systems in a single device.

"If it is Windows only, maybe people will not find it as easy a decision to buy the phone. If they have the Android and Windows together, you can change it as you wish and it is much easier for people to choose Windows Phone," added Yang.

The technical details of the dual-OS implementation are not clear as of now, whether the Android and Windows Phone operating systems would be offered through a dual-boot menu at the start-up of the Huawei smartphone, or if the user would be able to switch between the two operating systems at any point.

Huawei might have confirmed its dual-OS smartphone for this year; however, Asus seems to have cancelled its plans for launching a dual-OS tablet which was expected to be launched this year.

Wall Street Journal in a report has suggested that the Taiwanese manufacturer had to suspend its plan under pressure of Google and Microsoft.

An earlier report had claimed that Microsoft, in an attempt to promote its mobile and tablet ecosystem, was considering offering free versions of Windows Phone and Windows RT to device makers