Samsung’s low-cost Omnia M has landed in China – Can it push Windows Phone over the 10% mark?

Windows Phone is running a global strategy, trying to pick up a toehold in every country that it can, moving handsets at the fastest clip possible. That strategy is showing some results, as the line of smartphones has grown to control about 7% of the Chinese market.

However, 7% is only a start. To have a real impact in the region, and to spur development of applications that are tailored to that location’s culture, Microsoft will likely need to crack the 10% barrier, at least.

Enter the Samsung Omnia M, a low-end handset that, while not technically a Tango handset (with the basement amount of RAM), will run the Tango software. The phones are cheap, but capable, given the low hardware specifications that are at the core of the platform. The phone is currently getting underway in China.

Samsung does have a certain brand cachet to it. If the company finds even middling success with the phone, it could boost Widows Phone as a whole by a point or two, towards that 10% barrier. According to WPCentral, the phone will be live on China Mobile, China Unicom, and eventually it is said, China Telecom. That’s a lot of potential customers.

10% in a market the size of China’s? That would give Windows Phone its first big win, of a sort, and prove that it can enter into iOS and Android territory, and carve out a spot of its own.