Budget Windows Phone devices from Karbonn, Lava will start at Rs 6,000; to launch this June

Domestic handset players Lava and Karbonn will launch Windows-based smartphones in the coming few months. Karbonn’s Windows Phone devices will be in the price range of Rs 6,000 to Rs 12,000, while Lava’s range will start at Rs 6,500.   “We will come out with four devices with Windows-based operating systems by the end of May or starting June in the price range of 6,000-12,000,” Karbonn Managing Director Pradeep Jain told PTI.   Lava International CEO and MD Hari Om Rai said: “A series of Windows-based phones will be launched under the Lava brand by July. These will be priced in the range of Rs 6,500-8,500.” He said the phones would be have Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processors and feature the Windows Phone 8 platform.   “We expect the Windows-based phones to represent 8-10 percent of the volume of Lava smartphones starting July-August” Rai added.   For Xolo brand of phones, the expected timeline of launch is the coming quarter. “We at Xolo believe that Windows OS has certain goodness to offer for a certain market segment and it will help us reach a desired 15 percent share of the smartphone market by end 2014,” a Xolo spokesperson said.   Last month, at the Mobile World Congress Microsoft had announced that it would be working with nine new Windows phone partners, including Foxconn, Gionee, JSR, Karbonn, Lava (Xolo), Lenovo, LG, Longcheer and ZTE. HTC, Huawei, Nokia and Samsung are already making Windows-based devices.   As per the IDC figures of the last quarter of 2013, Android had a 78.1 percent share of global smartphone shipments while the Microsoft Windows Phone platform share stood at 3 percent.   PTI