Long time after Huawei announced that it is going to ’shelve’ its future Windows Phone hardware development, one of the company’s executives has made an outright bold statement. In a latest interview, Joe Kelly, Huawei’s international media affairs head said, “We didn’t make any money in Windows Phone. Nobody made any money in Windows Phone”.
These claims made by the Huawei on not making money with its two Windows Phone based products, the Ascend W1 and Ascend W2, first came in limelight in August. That was the time when Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer business group, in an interview told The Wall Street Journal, “It wasn’t profitable for us. We were losing money for two years on those phones.”
However, Kelly’s latest statement, which blatantly states that no one has made money on Windows Phone, as he told the Seattle Times, is somewhat a tough claim to be proved. It is more of a ’saving face’ tactic used by the Huawei. In the meantime, Microsoft is constantly working on adding OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to join the Windows Phone ecosystem with attractive incentives that includes making Windows Phone itself free on devices with a display smaller than nine inches. Microsoft also struck a hardware partnership with Qualcomm which enables OEMs to use a basic reference design for making their Windows Phones, also powering them to place the OS on phones made for Android first, similar to what HTC did with its latest HTC One for Windows.
What’s your take on Kelly’s statement? Do you agree or is it Huawei’s ’sour grapes’ act? Let us know through your priceless comments!
