Microsoft makes Windows Phone more affordable with new Lumia 435 and 532

The first Lumia to shed the Nokia branding and wear Microsoft's name instead was the Lumia 535, a $130 phone that signalled an ambition to bring Windows Phone to a wider audience by lowering its price. Today continues that downward momentum with Microsoft's announcement of the Lumia 435 and Lumia 532, both measuring 4 inches in size and costing less than $100 before the usual taxes and subsidies.

The Lumia 435 is the cheapest Lumia to date, priced at 69 euros (just over $80), but it still runs Windows Phone 8.1 with the Lumia Denim update and also comes with a decent 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. Those basic specs, along with the WVGA (800 x 480) display, are shared with the Lumia 532, though the latter handset has a 5-megapixel camera in the place of the 2-megapixel one on the 435 and also comes with a quad-core Snapdragon 200 processor. The 435 makes do with a dual-core version of the same chip, though there are definitely more similarities than differences between these two handsets: the Lumia 532 costs just 10 euros more, at 79 euros ($94) before taxes.

Both new Lumias will be available from next month, rolling out across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, with India being singled out for a special mention. It's the obvious target market for devices of this kind, and it's also a place where Microsoft can seek to capitalize on its own good reputation and Nokia's extensive legacy, which is being carried on by the Lumia brand. As to the choice of bright orange and green (coincidentally, the colors of the Indian flag) as the colors to accompany the standard black and white options, they echo the palette available with the Lumia 930, which Microsoft told The Verge was chosen after extensive customer research to determine the most popular colors around the world.