Microsoft: Windows Phone will pass Apple in China on cost
BEIJING: Microsoft Corp, the world’s largest software maker, says its Windows Phone operating system will propel it past Apple Inc in China’s smartphone market as its partners release devices costing as little as US$158.
Passing Apple was an “interim goal” as the company’s longer-term objective was to supplant Google Inc’s Android as the local market leader, Simon Leung, Microsoft’s chairman and chief executive officer for the Greater China region, told reporters yesterday.
He didn’t give a time frame for reaching the targets.
“We will continue to drive the price down,” Leung said. “Our goal is number one. Having a goal to be number two is not really a goal.”
China is poised to become the world’s biggest smartphone market in 2012, making it crucial for manufacturers and sellers in the battle for sales. Shipments of the devices, used to download games and movies, would jump 52% to 137 million units in China this year, allowing the country to overtake the United States for the first time, research company IDC said.
Microsoft’s manufacturing partners would “definitely” offer devices in the price range of 1,000 yuan (US$158), Leung said, without specifying which partners or devices would meet the target.
Microsoft planned to bring its Windows Phone software to 23 more countries for a total of 63 and put the operating system on less expensive smartphones, it said last month. – Bloomberg