Earlier this year we got wind of the codenames for the next two versions of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system: Tango and Apollo. It’s been widely speculated that Apollo will be Windows Phone 8 and that Tango will be a small update similar to the NoDo update that Microsoft issued earlier this year. Thanks to Honk Kong site We Love Windows Phone, who was in attendance at a Microsoft conference taking place on their home turf, we now have confirmation from Microsoft employees that Tango is indeed not going to be a major update, Tango’s target audience is places like China, India, and other developing countries, Tango handsets should come in at a relativity low cost compared to other Windows Phone devices, and that Apollo will indeed be the next major update to Windows Phone.
Does this mean Microsoft is purposefully going to fragment their operating system just to get their Bing services in front of more eyeballs, thus driving up advertising revenues and locking in an entire generation of people into an ecosystem they didn’t necessarily know had some competition in rich Western Countries? Where have we heard this before? Oh right, Ovi, which Nokia put on the most anemic smartphones to ever be released, all in an attempt to shove their brand into people’s faces to prevent them from jumping onboard the Android train.
Now it’s a bit premature to criticize Tango since we don’t have all the necessary information, but if Microsoft does indeed plan on creating a “poor man’s Windows Phone”, then they need to rethink their strategy. The $200 smartphone of 2014 will look like the $500 smartphone of today, so there’s no need to create an artificially crippled version of an operating system just to widen the user base.
Is no one at Microsoft or Nokia looking at Apple and seeing how they’re playing the game?
[Via: Engadget]