Expanding its trek down the low road to move deeper into the mobile market, Microsoft has partnered with Archos to release a series of economy tablets and smartphones running Windows Phone 8.1.
Archos is planning to unveil its latest series of mobile devices at IFA 2014 in Berlin. While the lineup will include Android devices, its Windows Phone tablets and smartphones are expected to take center stage during the manufacturer's presentation. Archos is a French consumer electronics company that makes portable media players and portable data storage devices.
"Our upcoming line-up of consumer products delivers amazing performance, superior design and impressive affordability," says Archos CEO Loic Poirier. "We are committed to making technology universally available and are proud to shape the market by providing high quality, yet attainable devices."
The Archos 40 Cesium, a Windows Phone smartphone with a $99 price tag, features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 Quad Core processor and a 4-inch display. The handset will be offered in black, yellow and blue.
The 80 Cesium tablet, starting at $149, features an 8-inch display, a resolution of 1280x800 and an Intel Quad Core processor.
The 40 Cesium will release sometime in September while the 80 Cesium is slated for an October launch.
"Archos prides itself in being an early adopter of cutting-edge technology," says Archos. "Based on its experience with and the success of the Archos 9 PC tablet in 2009, the first tablet running Windows 7, Archos proudly unveils the Archos 40 Cesium smartphone and Archos 80 Cesium tablet with Microsoft's mobile OS."
At IFA 2014, Archos will also show off a tablet and smartphone running Android. The $129 Archos 50b Platinum features quad-core processors, a 5-inch display, with a 2-MP camera on its face and a 8-MP camera on its back.
The Archos 101 Oxygen is a 10.1-inch tablet that is powered by ARM Cortex-A17 Quad Core processor and fitted with 1.5 GB of RAM. The full HD tablet includes 16 GB of storage space and is listed at $249.
The partnership with Archos comes at shortly after Microsoft and HTC finally revealed a Windows Phone version of the HTC One M8. With a promotion setting the Windows Phone version of the handset at half the cost of the Android version, which has identical hardware, the HTC and Archos deals attest to Microsoft's focus on minimizing the cost factor in consumer adoption of its mobile operating system.
While Microsoft hasn't given up on pushing the Windows Phone, China's third-largest manufacturer of mobile devices has all but given up on Microsoft's mobile OS. All production of Huawei's Windows Phone devices have been halted and placed on life support.
