Windows Phone: ZTE confirms its disinterest and explains why

Brutal blow for the development of the Windows Phone ecosystem? It referred it here no later than yesterday, Nokia outrageously dominates sales of smartphones equipped with Microsoft's OS with more than 80% of shares.

A situation that does not really push other manufacturers to embark on the adventure. Not bad historical partners of Microsoft, like Samsung, have more or less renounced promote their Windows Phone equipped terminals. In fact, only HTC seems to maintain its efforts or even confirm with the upcoming release of a third terminal.

Worse, according to a recent article from always knowledgeable Digitimes, many Asian manufacturers (ZTE, Asus, Acer...), some Microsoft partners, have decided to throw in the towel and do not foresee to launch or relaunch Windows Phone references.

The takeover of Nokia does not explain everything, it must be said that Finland is the only really feed the segment with a real range of terminals. Taiwanese colleagues also evoke Windows Phone finally weak overall market share in the world, the price of licences imposed by Microsoft.

Nothing in the roadmap of ZTE

But it seems that the real reason, one that would discourage manufacturers, concerns the orthodoxy of Redmond in hardware specifications. "We have no products Windows Phone 8 in the roadmap", confirms William Chhao, Terminals Sales Director France for ZTE.

"First, there is that historically, Windows has never really emerged in the mobile. Then, we consider that Microsoft is not flexible enough. Such chassis, to such chipset, such RAM, such configuration. All this is far too rigid. It cannot compete with Android like that", deals the Manager. In short, lack of latitude left to the manufacturers would explain in large part this disenchantment.

However, when questioned on this point, Microsoft said having heard such grievances. And this in 2011 with the promise more flexibility in hardware configurations, the choice of processors, with screen sizes...

This flexibility also seen in the Lumia from Nokia range which in fact has quite different terminals with each other. "Nokia and Microsoft have both need one another." The manufacturer therefore got things that are impossible for us", launching William Chhao.

In short, ZTE, which is now trying the Firefox OS adventure is not likely to return anytime soon in the lap of Windows Phone... However, remember that the Chinese today is the 5th global seller of smartphones... Microsoft should not remain insensitive to this kind of argument.