With a price that's just right and a slew of top-rated features, the recently introduced Lumia 430 dubbed the cheapest in the series ever, is poised to carve a solid following in emerging markets, where price tags are a clear factor. In which case, Microsoft will come head to head once again with the undisputed King of the Mobile World, Google and its Android One initiative.
Armed to the Teeth
No doubt about it, this is the cheapest one yet from the Natya Sadella-led Microsoft. But it does not mean this Windows Phone is a softie.
Running on dual-core 1.2 GHz dual-core snapdragon processor, the Lumia 430 shores up the tech giant's defenses against a frenetic attack from Android products.
Equipped with a 2-megapixel camera with a fixed focus, the 4-inch phone boasts 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. Its brother, the $81 Lumia 435, currently the 2nd cheapest in the bunch has nearly identical features - except for a slightly enhanced battery.
If you think its hardware specs are amazing running on a Windows Phone 8.1 (which according to TheMotleyFool will be enhanced to Windows 10 this year), its biggest come-on maybe its software.
The handset will be a darling to the Windows Office fans as Office is a standard feature. Add Skype and 30GB SkyDrive storage and you may have an irresistible offer in the making.
The Old Guard
But Google is not without its aces; any half-cooked marketing and product launches would surely fall by the wayside.
Though certainly not invincible, the search king has been leading the smartphone market by leaps and bounds - in the low-end market more so.
Last look, Android devices account for a 77% of the total smartphone market in 2014, a formidable stumbling block to any takers in emerging markets.
But cracks are emerging in the Google-dominated smartphone world. In what is coined as Android fragmentation - a topic dissected in Gizmodo - the search king is struggling to keep its OS from "forked"ones. By definition, forked OS are tailored Android phones where more often Play and Search, Google's bread and butter are replaced.
ABI Research estimate 29% of Android devices sold late 2014 are forked.
Microsoft doesn't have that problem. And though it only accounts for a measly 2.8% of the global smartphone market, 90% of the total PC market today runs on Windows, an operating system that it has continually upgraded.
It seems a battle royale is in the offing, most especially true for an emerging market as big as India, a country approaching 1.3 billion in population.
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