I was in the Phones4U shop the other day browsing (I thought I should given they’ve sent me this S4 to have a look at) and I was astonished to come across a Nokia Lumia 520 for £99.95 on Pay As You Go.
I obviously knew this was coming. I’ve sat in too many Nokia keynotes where executives have been explaining that as price points come down, we’ll start to see Windows Phone (and Nokia) spread to the levels where Symbian devices used to play. It was quite a difficult ask, to believe this, particularly when many of their initial devices were launching at the 300+ Euro price point.
The assembled masses of journalists knew this. If memory serves the 520 was launched back at Mobile World Congress with a target price of about £120. If it’s already on sale at sub £100 (excluding the mandatory tenner that most retailers will insist on applying for the initial sim card/credit) then this can only be good news for Nokia.
I hear the 520 is selling like hotcakes in India. I’m not surprised. This is what Nokia has been talking about for years, ever since they announced their move to Windows. If they can get Windows devices cheap enough and at substantial volume, the executives firmly believed they’d be able to hoover up millions of customers particularly in the large developing economies. I’ll need to hunt around for some official perspective from Nokia but from what I’m hearing from various colleagues, it’s looking good.
The more 520s you can shift, the more the economies of scale work, the more you can push the cost down, the more the ecosystem benefits. It looks like Nokia are delivering there.
And on the higher end, I was admiring Rafe Blandford’s Lumia 925 the other day. I think I could be persuaded very easily. Here is his colleague Steve’s take on the 520 by the way.