Editor’s Note: Guest Author Pratibha is a technology enthusiast interested in analysing and reporting about different technologies.
We all learnt this already that Microsoft is bringing Windows Phone to new markets and even moving to next, affordable new phones by expanding hardware support and regional availability at different places worldwide. In the recent announcement during the MWC Nokia’s event, it is confirmed that Windows Phone 7.5 now enables our partners to deliver phones using a lower cost processor (the Qualcomm 7x27a “system on a chip”) and reduced memory (256MB on-board memory)—while still delivering the buttery-smooth Windows Phone experience.
Taking advantage of the expanded hardware support, the new Nokia Lumia 610 is Nokia’s fourth and most affordable Lumia smartphone. ZTE has also unveiled their second Windows Phone, the ZTE Orbit, which will be available in the second quarter of 2012. With such an ongoing uproar, Microsoft is providing an update to the Windows Phone SDK with the release of the minimums hardware requirement emulator to let you determine how your apps install and run on lower memory devices. This preview does not include a “go live” license so you can’t publish apps created with it. A final version of the SDK, complete with the go-live license, will be available next month.
In the coming month Microsoft plan to extend Marketplace to customers in 23 more markets, including; Bahrain, Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam.. In terms of actual potential app customers, the addition of new price points and customers in China and the other new markets represents a near 60% increase in the total addressable market for Windows Phone.
