Microsoft Announces Initial Windows Phone 8 Hardware Partners

Microsoft announced today the names of their hardware partners who will be launching the Windows Phone 8 handsets in the beginning.

And there was no surprise that Nokia will be one of the companies that will be launching the WP8 handsets early in the market. Others are HTC, Samsung and Huawei. The only missing player here is LG, which backed out of Windows Phone Segment to concentrate only on Android. Instead Huawei has joined the WP bandwagon which will surely benefit Windows Phone’s presence in Chinese market.

It was long been rumored that Qualcomm would lose its exclusive status as the sole SoC vendor for Windows Phone handsets, but today Microsoft announced that Qualcomm will be the sole provider of dual core SoCs for initial launch devices from hardware partners Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, and HTC. So for now, Qualcomm will continue to be the sole source of chipsets inside Windows Phone 8 devices.