With Hong Kong people's enthusiasm for innovative products, Microsoft is eyeing the Hong Kong market to attract mainland tourists visiting the shopping paradise. David Paul Morris / Bloomberg

Having acquired Finnish mobile giant Nokia, Microsoft is going down market in Hong Kong and other neighboring markets with the hope of building up a sizeable user base that can help popularize Windows OS, which is lagging far behind Android and iOS of Apple.

Market analysts said the strategy, if successful, can help the sales of the company's high-end phones in the highly competitive marketplace dominated by Apple, Samsung and other Japanese and Taiwanese vendors.

"Pre acquisition (of Nokia), Microsoft only had access to high-end consumers through our smartphone devices, but never have them have the mass scale of addressable base through affordable and local Lumia," said Mark Trundle, general manager for Microsoft Mobile in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

"With the advent of delivering lower cost smartphones, it is opening a brand new market for Microsoft which, in the past, we never had access to," he said.

Microsoft Mobile, the mobile arm of technology giant, has introduced a line "affordable smartphones", including Lumia 535, which was released in December and marketed at a unit price of HK$1,298 ($167.4). By contrast, the company's flagship phone, the Lumia 930, is priced at HK$5,388.

Trundle said the cheaper phone could be bought by the consumer as a second phone. "Given the saturation and penetration of phones within Hong Kong, not everybody can afford to be walking around with two or three HK$6,000 devices," Trundle said.

Hong Kong is an important market to Microsoft and other vendors of electronic goods because it is a shopping paradise for tourists, especially those from the Chinese mainland. More than 50 million mainland travelers visited Hong Kong last year, a number that simply cannot be ignored by any seller, he said.

In the December launch, the decision to replace the Nokia brand name with that of Microsoft's on the back of the phone is a signal of change that has been taking place since the acquisition of the Finnish phone maker in 2013.

"So the product you are going to see in the forward launching will be Microsoft branded," Trundle said, adding that such a move is to "ensure that there is a seamless transition from Nokia to Microsoft".

More importantly, competitive pricing of the new products can help Microsoft Mobile popularize Windows OS.

The share of smartphones using Windows OS in China decreased to 0.6 percent for the three months ending November last year - from 2.7 percent a year before - according to consumer research company Kantar Worldpanel.

Applications' localization is crucial to a Windows eco-system, said Trundle, as the device is expected to bring more relevant experience to Hong Kong users and, in turn, help popularize the Windows platform.

The most recent case is the HKTV app, which was launched in December. "We're actually there as part of the launch vendor of choice with HKTV to be able to bring that to the market of Windows platform," Trundle said.

"With over half a million apps currently sitting on the Windows platform, we are hugely passionate about applications and, for Hong Kong consumers, that's critically important," he said.

Hong Kong people are willing to try any innovative product, Trundle said, and he predicted that mobile payment function, larger screen and upgraded front-facing webcam will become popular this year.

Contact the writers at selena@chinadailyhk.com and agnes@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 01/08/2015 page9)