The announcement earlier this month that Microsoft plans to acquire Nokia"s smartphone hardware business started speculation that the three other Windows Phone hardware partners (Samsung, HTC and Huawei) might decide to stop making such products. This week, one of those partners, Huawei, indicted they still plan to make future Windows Phone devices.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Richard Ren, who runs Huawei"s consumer division in Europe, as saying, "We will continue to develop devices running Windows Phone, and launch more products ... We remain one of Microsoft"s strategic partners." Huawei has only released one Windows Phone 8 smartphone so far, the Ascend W1, but the company has confirmed it will launch the Ascend W2 later this year.
That has to be encouraging news for Microsoft, who claims that it still wants third parties to make Windows Phone products even as the company will start making its own when the Nokia deal is completed in the first quarter of 2014.
As we reported earlier in September, HTC told Neowin in a statement that it was "assessing the situation and have no comment at this time" in terms of their future Windows Phone plans. Samsung gave a swift "Decline to comment" when asked the same question.
Source: Wall Street Journal | Image via Huawei