Mmm I don't know man, the Titan II is better specd than the Lumia in every way.
"Best Phone at CES: Nokia's Lumia 900 With Windows Phone 7" PC World
"Best phone of CES 2012: Nokia Lumia 900" ZDNet
"Nokia Lumia 900 wins awards at CES 2012" WPCentral
Includes:
- CNet's "Best of CES" smartphone
- Popular Mechanics editor's choice award for CES
- Popular Science "Product of the Future"
- LAPTOP magazine's "Best of CES" finalists
This is not going to appear to be a low end phone by anyone's imagination. Pricing it low makes it appear to be low end and comparing the Titan II, which I agree is well priced at $199, will kill high end price point for WP devices in the market and hurt the brand. It will make it less of an object to be coveted and more of something you buy because you can't afford that iPhone.
Again, I'm not saying I want to pay more than I have to for a phone like this but I also want the WP ecosystem to survive. We need to have WP devices at the low, middle, and high ends of the market, with clear differences between each tier.
The rigid requirements that MS has in place for WP, while good for numerous reasons, also limit much differentiating between models outside of size (at the cost of pixel density and the screen size increases), storage (currently it seems to max out at 16GB unfortunately), and camera. This doesn't allow for much differentiation between the tiers.
For whatever reason, I compare it to cars again. Back in the 1960's and earlier, GM had clear differentiations between their car lines. You started with Chevys and as your situation improved, you would move up to a Buick or Pontiac or Oldsmobile and possibly someday, a Cadillac. Alfred Sloan, the long time president and CEO of GM, called this building "a car for every purse and purpose."
In the 1980's, that all changed. There was a scandal when it was revealed that Oldsmobile engines were appearing in Chevys. Over time, the differentiation between the tiers became less and less. Oldsmobile is gone. Pontiac is gone. Even Saturn came and went. While GM is still around, although after a large government bailout, it's not the same company it was.
While this analogy is far from perfect, I do think MS needs to allow for more differentiation to make a WP device for "every purse and purpose" as well. Hopefully, Apollo will allow that. We'll have to see.