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Microsoft has yet to launch its first marquee smartphone since taking over the Lumia name and business from Nokia in 2014. Invitations arrived in press inboxes for Redmond’s press conference on March 2 at 8:30 a.m. CET, short on clues about Microsoft’s plan.
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The invitation, a simple cartoonish hot-air balloon and clouds on a field of Microsoft blue, only states “come along for the ride.” Cloud storage has played a role in Microsoft’s strategy for linking its Windows platforms across multiple devices, but the main star of the show should be a device or two, not a software service.
In the past two years, Nokia (the devices arm that Microsoft bought) used MWC to launch a lot of inexpensive handsets for emerging markets, including a basic non-Lumia phone that sold for €15, the Nokia 105 .
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While it’s possible that Microsoft will pick up where Nokia left off in unveiling brightly-colored budget Lumias, this is Microsoft’s time to wow us with the first flagship Lumia to bear Microsoft’s name, one that runs Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system, tailored to fit the phone.
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