At the 2011 China International Communications Exhibition ZTE showed off their first Windows Phone, dubbed “Tania”. We don’t know whether or not that’s a codename or the actual name of the product, but that’s not important. What you should be paying attention to is that ZTE has now become a Windows Phone maker. The Chinese handset vendor is known for producing low cost handsets that compete quite well with what more familiar brands, such as Samsung and Nokia, offer. Tania runs Windows Phone Mago, has a 1 GHz single core processor, 4.3 inch display with a resolution of 800 by 480 pixels, 512 MB of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera, and pretty much everything else you’d expect a Windows Phone to have, with the exception of a front facing camera. That feature is supported by Windows Phone Mango, but isn’t a Microsoft imposed system requirement.
Tania may or may not sell well, but it represents an issue Nokia will face when they enter the Windows Phone market later this year. One of Nokia’s main objectives is to bring Windows Phone to new price points, and no one knows low price points better than ZTE. Sure, people will buy Nokia because of the brand, but how many people who walk into the shop and see the Tania, which we assume will undercut Nokia’s price tag, will end up leaving the store with the more expensive Nokia device? We’ll have a better picture of what Nokia will bring to the table next month when the company is scheduled to kick off their annual “Nokia World” event. It’s widely believed that we’ll get an update as to what Nokia plans to do with Windows Phone at said event.
Thanks to Microsoft’s iron clad restrictions on what manufactures can do with Windows Phone, how exactly will vendors differentiate themselves? Besides design, there isn’t really much they can do.