According to phone maker Infosonics, Microsoft will drop its license fee by up to 70 percent.
BARCELONA—Windows Phone's license fee may be going down, down, down.
So a couple of really interesting bits of speculation have floated up recently. One is that Microsoft is looking to drastically reduce the cost of OEMs to license Windows 8.1. For lower end devices, that is.
But it seems that the company might do the same for Windows Phone handsets too.
This new report comes from PCMag.com, actually, where Joseph Ram, the CEO of Infosonics (a low cost Android phone maker) shedding some light on the situation:
“We’re hearing Microsoft will drop the license fee quite a bit, as far as 70 percent, which will make their product more competitive in terms of price.”
Quite a bit, indeed, at least enough to make Infosonics consider making Windows Phone devices. If this holds true, then we could have ten companies entering into mobile partnership with Redmond, instead of the nine that Microsoft itself confirmed recently.
Then again, if this holds true, then we just might see some miracles happen in the sales and shipments column when the quarterly market statistics fly in.
This probably is the reason why Microsoft announced that it was adding support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 and 400 processors. The low to midrange is the best place to target right now, and lower licensing fees would pave way for affordable new hardware.
However, one has to wonder just how much of a say Microsoft’s new CEO has in these decisions. Convincing board members and large shareholders to cut revenue is not the easiest job in the world.
source:eyeonwindows│via:pcmag
