Microsoft Taps Samsung And Huawei For Dual-Boot Windows Phone Options
Just as they have apparently tapped HTC for the dual-boot option for Android phones with Windows Phone 8, it's become apparent today that Microsoft may have asked Samsung and Huawei to do the same. Microsoft was tipped this past week to have suggested HTC make a selection of devices that boot to Windows Phone 8 as well as their basic Android mobile OS to increase the likelihood that a user would find Windows Phone appealing. If Microsoft does indeed get their way with the likes of HTC and Samsung as well, we may see Windows Phone 8.1 working on the HTC One Max and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Active.
Of course that's all guesswork, as it's just a tip from Eldar Murtazin for the Samsung / Huawei move and a suggestion from Bloomberg that HTC got the call. It's suggested that each of these companies has been contacted well after Microsoft's announcement that they'd acquired Nokia's Phone hardware business.
"In Microsoft decided very simple – if our partners do not buy Windows Phone / RT for the money, do not pay for the license, we will let you give them these operating systems are free. But for free, knowing that the products are not in demand, they will not buy them, that is, it does not solve the problem.
Another thing, if they pay a little bit, to offset the cost of development and offer the use of Windows as the second option on the devices. That is, do not let a single Windows-based device, and do the same device that the company is going to release on Android, but the option to add a second Windows." – Murtazin (translated from Russian)
Critics have already taken to Twitter suggesting that a dual-boot option on some of today's top Android devices would only serve to draw in Windows Phone users to subsequently flip them over to the Google-made mobile OS. Microsoft's making of Nokia phones in the near future, meanwhile, will have no Android to be found.
Talks with HTC specifically circle around a recent relatively poor quarterly earnings report where the company's value was revealed to have dropped 90 percent since the year 2011. HTC had a loss of 6.3 percent during its third financial quarter here in 2013.