It seems a bizarre and almost desperate pitch. Imagine a smartphone manufacturer offering up a £469.99 smartphone and then, if you buy it, giving you a phone worth £419.99 completely free.
That’s be insane. You’d think that the manufacturer had totally lost the plot. You’d think that they were in trouble or perhaps just… plain bonkers.
This is exactly what Microsoft is doing in America with the Lumia 950 XL. Buy it and you’ll get a Lumia 950 … for free. Two for the price of one. Check the first line in the image below..
Here in the UK there’s no such deal, but how do we read this exactly?
The pessimist would say that Microsoft is clearing inventory. The pessimist would say that these phones have only been available for less than six months and this smells of desperation. Just 2.3 million Lumia handsets sold in the last quarter and the Lumia 650 could be the last unit. Bad times.
The optimist would say that it’s just a good deal. Perhaps a way to re-ignite interest in the Windows mobile platform.
However, I’d have to doubt that school of thought. Microsoft themselves have told us that the platform isn’t their focus this year, and Microsoft seem to be hell-bent on pushing their mobile services into more popular mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS. You’ll certainly be seeing the Microsoft name on future mobile handsets, but on the inside – not the outside.