German firm in charge of providing Lumia support

Oct 4, 2016 09:47 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is expected to announce the end of the Lumia series in the next couple of months, but the company used the Ignite conference last week to reiterate its commitment to Windows Phone, making many believe that its phones could actually survive the cut.

And yet, the firm has just dropped a new hint that the end of the Lumia brand is close, as it decided to transfer support services for phones included in this series to a third-party German company.

B2X will be in charge of helping customers with Lumia issues, according to a report from WBI, so after following a few troubleshooting steps on the official support page, users will be transferred to engineers employed by the German firm.

Outsourcing support services is a common practice among large technology companies, but Microsoft doing it now with so many rumors pointing to the end of the Lumia brand isn’t quite the perfect moment. This change only fuels speculation that the Lumia series is approaching its demise date, and Microsoft is expected to release an announcement in this regard in December.

As far as the new company that’ll be in charge of fixing customers’ phones is concerned, little is known about it besides the fact that it’s a Microsoft Authorized Customer Service Provider.

What’s next for Windows phones?

As for the future of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, not much can be said at the moment, and the information that the firm provides is quite vague. Last week at Ignite, Microsoft said that it was still committed to keeping Windows 10 Mobile alive and even hinted that first-party devices would continue being developed.

This gives hopes that the eagerly-anticipated Surface Phone would see daylight at some point and now everyone believes that the 2017 target for the release of the device is still in place.

Certainly, all these rumors do not help Microsoft and Windows Phone as a platform at all, but the company doesn’t seem to be too bothered with what’s happening for the time being. Hopefully, more clarification would be provided in the coming weeks and months.