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A leaked Windows Phone roadmap shows what we’ve got to look forward to in 2012. In the short term a batch of cheapy phones for the masses, but by the end of next year we could be looking at “superphones”.
The October roadmap shows us a skeleton of what we can expect from the Tango and Apollo versions of the Windows Phone operating system. By midyear, we’ll see Tango phones for “products with the best prices,” which sounds pretty disappointing even without knowing what those products are. What’s got us a little more excited are the Apollo Windows Phones coming at the end of next year. What features will these “Superphones” have? [WMPoweruser]
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“products with the best prices” sounds like budget phones, the “better that a feature phone” market an area currently dominated by Android & Blackberry. I guess the idea is ‘get them early, keep them for life’. You sell a low end smartphone for the same price on contract as someone would pay for a feature phone so that, when they renew in 18-24 months, they made trade up to something more capable and expensive but still using the OS they have become accustomed too. Unfortunately Windows Phones Top of the range phones are about a year behind their Android cousins and so (purely in terms of specs) are competing with mid range Androids which means that their bottom of the range phones will have an even tougher job unless Nokia can churn them out at rock bottom prices.
Hopefully the ‘Superphones’ will approach Androids top of the range (likely to be 8 core the way things are going) or they won’t do a lot to push up that market share.
Makes sense – get them in with the cheap budget phones
A theory for the early adoptions of Windows was that they allowed it to remain pretty easy to copy and distribute Windows illegally, so that everyone would get it, and without realising it…need it for a long time ahead
Vista was the 1st one I had trouble getting a decent crack for, I got one but, it was hard getting a good one. Especially for the updates
I buy legal copies now – I was a young cheap student back then
“pretty disappointing even without knowing what those products are” Depends on the person and what’s on offer. I’m sure not everyone would be unhappy at paying less than £35pm+ for a nice windows phone.
Interested to see what Nokias next big WP7 mobile will be. Personally, I don’t like the feel of the Lumia.
By that I mean the physical material it’s made of, the OS from I’ve played around with is pretty slick.
Which Lumia? The 800 (polycarbonate) or the 710 (plastic)?