Microsoft To Sell Lumia 521 Through Walmart

Bangalore: In search of widening its user base, Microsoft Corp plans to sell Nokia Lumia 521, at Walmart later this month at an unsubsidized price under $150, reports Business Insider.

Walmart is believed to start carrying the phone next week. The Nokia Lumia 521 was sold out at the first retailer, the Home Shopping Network last week. The device is a T-Mobile specific variant of the Lumia 520, 4G mid-range Smartphone that was debuted at Mobile World Congress in February. It offers certain high-end features like 4-inch touch screen, five megapixel camera and 8GB storage expandable to 64GB.

As Walmart will be selling Lumia 521 with T-Mobile’s $30/month unlimited data and text plan, the phone doesn’t require a long-term contract and will work out much cheaper than heavily subsidized iPhones and upscale Android devices that generally come with pricy long-term contracts.

If the sale turns out to be successful at Walmart, Microsoft may have found another way to attract more users to its Windows Phone platform. The more users, the more app developers it will attract and hence more apps will bring in more users.

Currently Windows Phones have only 3.2 percent market share in entire U.S., compared to 39 percent for Apple and 52 percent for Android.