The Chinese smartphone marker rolled out a preorder campaign for its midrange Windows Phone 8 smartphone in Russia a couple of weeks back. Now the inexpensive handset has hit store shelves in the country, with worldwide availability planned in the coming weeks.
The Ascend W1 is retailing for 8,990 rubles without contract, which puts the price about $290.
According to a report on WMPowerUser, sales are coming along rather nicely and Wan Biao, the CEO of Huawei, confirmed the launch in Russia saying that while his company is primarily focused on the Android platform, it would continue supporting Windows Phone 8 devices as well:
“For us all the focus is on Android, but we will also try Windows. Right now, the sales are good, but it’s pretty hard to predict Windows Phone. For one OS – Android – the consumers have spent time and their money to like it. We developed Windows 8 because we do believe some consumers will like it.”
Huawei Ascend W1 is one of the most affordable Windows Phone 8 smartphone available in the market. The company has lined up more Windows Phone smartphones for release this year.
The handset packs in a 1.2GHz dual-core processor paired with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal memory alongside a 4-inch IPS LCD display.
All in all, this shows the increasing strides Microsoft’s mobile platform is making in the smartphone marketplace. Redmond has already outlined its plans to bring the Windows Phone operating system on more devices across the price range.
