Stephen Elop, Executive Vice President of Microsoft sat down with me for a chat this morning, following the announcement of two new Microsoft Lumia phones. 

The Microsoft Lumia 640 and 640 XL will be available in Ireland later this year. The Lumia 640 has a 5 inch screen while the XL boasts a 5.7 inch HD display. Internally both phones have a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and have quad core CPU running at 1.2GHz. They both also have 1GB of RAM. 

As with previous Lumia devices, the 640 and XL have strong cameras on board. There is a 13MP ZEISS optics on the XL and an 8MP camera on the 640.

Both phones run Windows 8.1 at present, but will host Windows Phone 10 when it becomes available later this year. 

Delivering premium at each price point

When discussing the new announcements, Stephen explained that the XL offering continues with the trend of larger screen phones and gives consumers the ability to work on important documents when on the go:

Elop acknowledged the success of the lower end Lumia phones and said that this is a key part of their business:

"When we as a group talk about our strategy, we said we need to deliver premium at each price point."

That clearly seems to be the case with the tech giants promising to keep the new phones at the affordable end of the scale. Elop also promised a new high-end smartphone after the launch of Windows 10. 

Follow our coverage of #MWC15 here.