14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone is slowly gaining more and more market share around the world, but it seems that Microsoft is not happy with the pace at which it does that.
The Redmond-based software giant is interested in speeding things up a bit, and is now said to be willing to do a lot for that to happen.
To be more precise, Bloomberg reports that the company is willing to eliminate license fees for the OS for Taiwanese phone maker HTC Corporation, should the latter agree to load it on more handsets.
Furthermore, the news site reports that Microsoft has recently asked HTC to load Windows Phone as a secondary option on Android handsets, which would increase the market presence of the OS.
Specific details on the matter are not available for the time being, but it would not come as a surprise if Microsoft and HTC indeed agreed on this.
For those out of the loop, we should note that HTC was the largest maker of Windows Mobile smartphones about five years ago, when Android was still in its infancy.
Since then, the company released only a small number of new Windows phones and focused a lot on Android, though it has lost a lot of ground on both fronts lately.
In the Windows Phone area, HTC launched only three handsets in the past 12 months, namely the HTC 8X, HTC 8S, and HTC 8XT, the last one being in fact only a modified version of the 8X.
The availability of HTC smartphones with Android and Windows Phone dual-boot capabilities could indeed appeal to users, though it’s yet unclear how the two platforms would co-exist on the same device.
HTC is losing market share in the smartphone area at the moment, and has announced another quarterly loss this week, which means that it is in a position where it could accept Microsoft’s deal, provided that the report is accurate.
This means that it might not be too long before the handset vendor makes official new smartphones with Windows Phone loaded on them, so stay tuned to learn more on the matter.