Budget Windows Phone 8 device a possibility, says Microsoft

Microsoft has revealed how it could enable the existence of budget Windows Phone 8 devices, like Nokia's Lumia 610.

When asked about whether Windows Phone 7.8 is designed to capture budget and emerging markets, with Windows Phone 8 taking the slack on the premium end, senior product manager for Windows Phone Greg Sullivan explained:

‘I would argue those are not mutually exclusive strategies and that is in fact is our approach. We will continue to support the current platform with the 256MB footprint in devices like the Lumia 610. And one of the points about the new architecture is that it will scale both up and down.'

'In fact, having support for removable SD storage will enable OEMs to build devices with less storage initially that is user expandable, so the bill of materials is potentially even lower for the handsets,' he added.

Windows Phone 8 has been causing quite a stir as existing devices such as the Nokia Lumia range and first-generation devices won't be getting the update because the all lack the right 'hardware'. Instead, they will receive Windows Phone 7.8, a sort of stop-gap with the same user-interface but not the same 'Shared Core'.

This meant it wasn't quite clear how Microsoft could make Windows Phone 8 in a budget form, especially when the cheapest Windows Phone, the Lumia 610, is still way above the cheapest Android equivalents.

Speaking on why the update split had to be done, Sullivan explained that it was a necessary move to give consumers the best experience:

'We’ve really tried to do the right thing for all audiences and that means making Windows Phone 8 the best possible release we can. Therefore we targeted the latest generation of hardware by building what are effectively primarily hardware-dependant capabilities that we achieve with this new [shared] core.'

'It made more sense to focus on making Windows Phone 8 as good as we possibly could, fully exploiting this new generation of hardware,' he added.

Check out part one of our interview with Greg Sullivan.