China is a massive market for smartphones, and Microsoft knows that this region is critical to growing its platform marketshare. More so, the price sensitive nature of this country means that high end devices may not always be the ticket to selling more devices. As such, Microsoft Mobility (Nokia) has announced two new devices for China, the Lumia 636 and 638.
The Lumia 638 will arrive on July 5th with a retail price of $200 (1,299 yuan) and the 636 will land on July 21st for the same price. The devices sport a 4.5in LCD, 1830mAh battery, LTE, Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor, 5MP rear camera. 8GB of internal storage and SD card support.
The two devices have identical hardware and design but will be heading to different mobile carriers; 636 to Chinia Unicom and 638 to China mobile. Seeing that Microsoft is getting this device on to two carriers in China will certainly help boost the availability of the device and should result in more sales.
The phones both run Windows Phone 8.1 that brings quite a few enhancements to the platform over Windows Phone 8. You can read our full review of the platform, here.
For Microsoft, they know that China is a critical market for the company and one where they can grow significantly. With two new low-cost devices that will soon be available in the market, we would expect to see the company move quite a few more units over the summer.
Source: Microsoft China | Via WPC