BARCELONA — Microsoft has dropped several interesting announcements at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today: The company has announced a long list of partners for the Windows Phone platform, including Lenovo (which recently bought Motorola from Google), LG, Huawei and ZTE.
Some of these companies, LG for example, have launched Windows Phone devices in the past, but the platform hasn't exactly been their focus. Now we can expect them to at least try to go back into the mix and launch some new WP devices.
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Other freshly announced WP partners include Karbonn and Lava in India, as well as JSR and Longcheer. The company also reiterated that HTC, Nokia and Samsung are all (still) partners.
Microsoft also announced details about the next Windows Phone update — presumably 8.1, although Microsoft didn't outright say it — which should be arriving in spring 2014. It will bring support for low-end devices (such as those with 512MB of RAM and 16GB of storage), as well as better support for non-touch devices.
The new version of the platform will also support phones with Snapdragon 200 and 400 chipsets, as well as dual SIM devices, paving way for low- and mid-range device makers.
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