We’ve mentioned before that Nokia’s Lumia 520 line of smartphones is one of the world’s biggest smartphone bargains and now it looks like future Windows Phones could offer even better deals for budget buyers. Infosonics CEO Joseph Ram tells PCMag that Microsoft plans to cut licensing fees for Windows Phone by as much as 70% in an effort to draw more manufacturers to use the platform and to help make Windows Phones cheaper to battle the onslaught of dirt-cheap Android phones that are spreading through emerging markets.
The current licensing fees for Windows Phone devices are currently somewhere between $23 to $30 per device, which means a 70% price cut would leave them in the $7 to $9 range. If this isn’t enough to get Windows Phone significantly higher market share then we wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft start offering some version of Windows Phone as a free-to-use platform just as Google does with the basic nuts and bolts of Android.
