In a surprise announcement after the highly-publicized planned sale of Nokia’s feature phone business to one of Foxconn’s subsidiaries more than four months ago, Microsoft has announced the release of two new feature-phones – the Nokia 216 and Nokia 216 Dual-SIM.
So why is Microsoft still in the feature-phone market after deciding to sell that unit? The entire Nokia acquisition and the fiasco that followed was a bad move for Microsoft, so why continue a failed product line?
The answer is simple: Nokia feature-phones, which are intended for the low-income market segments, sell a ton of units all over the world. Millions of units, in fact. But the Nokia 216 and the dual-SIM variant may well be the last of these phones to earn revenue for Microsoft.
Microsoft has already announced the phasing out of the Lumia line of phones, specifically the Lumia 950 and 950 XL, the former of which is now available for a bargain price of $299 from AT&T.
The Nokia 216 models, however, are intended for the India market where there is still a huge demand for low-cost phones. The retail price will be set at around $37, and the phone will carry basic features such as 0.3MP cameras on the front and back, a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, Opera browser and the Series 30 operating system.
After the failure of the Nokia acquisition and the accompanying flop-show that was the Windows Phone operating system, the Lumia family will soon be buried alongside the other members of Microsoft’s mobile initiatives.
This time, however, they’re working smart, starting with Windows 10 Mobile as an extension of Windows 10 for a cross-device experience. For their second attempt at the smartphone market they are trying to leverage their strength in the PC operating system market and then slowly move to laptops (Surface Book), tablets (Surface Pro) and eventually smartphones (Surface Phone). And because of the narrowing gap between PCs and laptops, they’re also experimenting with the Surface Cardinal, an all-in-one PC.
The Nokia isn’t going to suddenly boost Microsoft’s profits this year or any such thing, but it will allow them to squeeze the last dollar from a failed business venture that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unwittingly left to Satya Nadella as his unfortunate legacy.
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