The Microsoft Corp. might discontinue its Lumia-branded smartphone series by the end of the year. According to a WinBeta report, an anonymous internal source from Microsoft has shared the company’s plan about the conclusion of Lumia range. The company is believed to replace the underperforming Lumia range with the rumored Surface Phone.
The Microsoft had earlier dropped the prices of Lumia devices in numerous international markets including India. The price cuts are believed to be the company’s move on selling off the remaining stock of Lumia handsets before the end of the year.
The company has facing challenges in smartphone space over past years that caused a permanent price cut of smartphones including Lumia 650 and Lumia 950, last month. Moreover, it has removed the buying links for Lumia devices from their website. Coming to the retail side, the Lumia smartphones have been removed from various retail stores from their displays and are trying to offer steep discounts to clear the remaining stocks.
Presently, there are four major smartphone devices with Lumia lineup in the market- Lumia 550, Lumia 650, Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL. According to the report, the company is planning to discontinue the Lumia brand but it will keep selling the leftover handsets with heavy discounts till the stock lasts.
Meanwhile, the rumored Surface Phone is becoming a hot topic. The Microsoft showed excellent product lineup for its tablets and laptop with Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book. So the mobile ambitions of Surface Phone do make sense.
In December, Chris Capossela who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft strongly hinted that the upcoming smartphone lineup of Microsoft might take inspiration from its Surface tablet lineup. Moreover, Laura Janet Butler who is the software engineer at Microsoft had posted a pair of since-deleted tweets on twitter about the Surface Phone which stoked the rumors.
If rumors are to be believed, the Surface Phone is anticipated to feature a Snapdragon 830 processor with 8GB of RAM. The smartphone is expected to get released in 2017.
Reference: WinBeta