Microsoft on Wednesday launched their low end smartphones on the Lumia category. Lumia 532 and Lumia 435. The two were announced at the mid of last month with a Eur 69 and Eur 79 price point for the Lumia 435 and Lumia 532 repectively. These make the second and third Microsoft branded Windows Phone devices after Lumia 535 late last year.
The Lumia 435 is already available and selling in Kenya as of mid February with Midcom and the announcement today marks a new shift in distribution plan for Microsoft. They are selling officially via Jumia, an online marketplace, kind of like Amazon in the US. Jumia is now almost 2 years old and has realized a 900% growth with a product portfolio of 100,000 products.
Jumia has for sometime now ventured into product partnerships with vendors directly and this one with Microsoft is one such. Lumia 435 which is selling at Kshs 10,200 at the open market is selling at Kshs 8,700 on Jumia. Lumia 532 doesn’t have a discount as yet and sells at Kshs 11,750.
Lumia 435 ia s a 4 inch WVGA device with 8GB internal storage and support for 128GB memory cards, 1GB RAM, a 1.2 GHZ dual-core Snapdragon 200 processor, 2MP rear camera, VGA front camera and 1560 mAH battery. Lumia 532 on the other hand is a 4 inch WVGA device with 8GB internal storage expandable to 128GB via microSD, a 1GB RAM, 1.2 GHz Quad Core processor, 5MP rear camera, no flash and VGA front camera. Battery is the same as for 435 and both come running Windows 8.1 with the Lumia Denim update. Colour options are White, Black, Green and Orange with changeable shells.
