Nokia Lumia 521 Set to Be Available for $150 in Walmart This Month

From X-bit Labs: Even though Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone platform has clearly managed to become a rather powerful alternative to Apple iOS and Google Android, it is still dramatically behind both in terms of market share. But everything may start to change, when Nokia Corp. starts to sell its low-cost Lumia 521 smartphone in Walmart stores across the U.S. for around $150 later this month.

"There is an opportunity for us to offer a very high quality device in the mainstream. That is where we have made progress in the last couple of months and it's a strategy we'll continue to explore in the United States," said Terry Myerson, head of the Windows Phone unit at Microsoft, in an interview with Reuters news-agency.

Nokia Lumia 521 will start selling at Walmart retail chain later this month at an unsubsidized price under $150, relatively cheap for a new smartphone running the latest operating system without a long-term contract.

Nokia Lumia 520 is based on Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM 8227 system-on-chips with two Qualcomm Krait cores and Adreno 305 graphics adapter. The phone features 4.0” IPS LCD multi-touch displays with 800*480 resolution, comes with 512MB RAM and 8GB NAND flash storage. The new smartphone supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSPA/WCDMA networks, Bluetooth 3.0 as well as Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n wireless technology and so on. The smartphone features 5MP camera with no flash.

Microsoft Windows Phone-powered phones now have 3.2% of the U.S. smartphone market, compared to 39% for Apple and 52% for Google Inc's Android system, according to comScore. Microsoft hopes that a low-cost smartphone will help it to boost the market share.

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