MS spent a decade driving its smartphone brand into the ground and then excavated a sizable crater for it by floundering for several years while the rest of the smartphone market flourished with new offerings from apple, android, and others.
MS has lost its smartphone brand credibility. Releasing good, solid products will help them rebuild it but even if they successfully rebuild credibility it'll be a long time before sales catch up.
P.P.S. I've said it before, but I think it might be some sort of great cosmic karmic justice if somehow Microsoft got shafted trying to peddle a "superior" product in the face of competitors with network effect on their side.
I've seen this even among (otherwise) loyal Microsoft employees. When I remarked on a friend's iPhone he rolled his eyes and said "I've spent literally thousands of dollars on Windows Mobile Phones. I wanted to like them. They were all shit. All of them."
I'm intrigued by Windows Phone 7. I keep hearing it's great, but "Windows Mobile" and "Windows Phone" have so much negative brand affinity, I have a hard time seeing who will buy them. XBox fans, maybe?
I bought one. I have a couple of friends who bought one, as well. It wasn't for the Xbox functionality (that's actually one of the few letdowns of the whole thing, very few multiplayer Live titles). It was because we were all Zune owners.
Let me take you back to 2006. iPods were still using the classic click wheel. iTunes was horribly slow on a PC. Microsoft comes out with a competitor that has a simple up/down/left/right directional pad, and software that looks stunning and runs better on a PC. Many weren't sold on the idea. Many of those who were, however, loved it. Killer feature: the Zune Pass. All-you-can-eat from a huge library, fully integrated, syncs over wifi right to your player.
Time passes, and PMPs are a thing of the past. It's about phones now. You can either go back to using the iPod via the iPhone (and back to iTunes) and lose the Zune Pass, or to Android during its early, rough years. Still losing the Zune Pass, and having no centralized music manager. Then Microsoft comes along with a Zune phone, killer interface, Office, and Xbox Live to boot. I kept using my Zune right up to the point when I got a Windows Phone.
Microsoft is making some slam dunks recently, but the people and the press were, for a long time, unwilling to get burned again (understandably). Problem is, now the press has changed their tune but the people haven't. The Zune was a killer PMP, and now I can have it in phone form. For others, it's not so much that but the idea of not needing iTunes. That's major.
Now that I feel like a dirty shill, I'm going to go take a shower.
PlaysForSure® was hilarious. Sell people music. Revoke rights later. Oh, Microsoft. You are such a cad!
The subscription service was as much of a joke. Sure, it sounds great to be able to access a huge library for a low monthly fee, but guess what, if you don't pay that monthly fee...forever...you won't have access to any of your favorite music. A track on iTunes is $0.99. A track on the Zune subscription service was $∞.00.
I can't agree with that. Subscription is a totally different way of paying for music, and comparing them doesn't really mean much. Subscription means you can access any track instantly- yes, you'll lose that if you unsubscribe, but you can easily sign up for a competing service and get all that music back. It doesn't really make sense to compare it to 'ownership'.
Though as an interesting PS, the Zune Pass offers (offered?) 10 free permanent downloads every month. So, at 99c a track, you'd more or less make your subscription fee back.
Yeah, you still get 10 DRM-free downloads per month. If that's still not something you're comfortable with, I have heard of other ways to... "fix" the Zune DRM.
In the UK at least, the 10 DRM-free downloads no longer apply for new Zune Pass subscribers. Those who already had that type of subscription will keep it, from what I understand, but it's no longer an option for new people.
Switching from one service to another is non-trivial if you've accumulated playlists or favorites. You basically have to either write it all down and re-do it by hand, or start over out of principle.
The subscription model is the modern equivalent of the Columbia Music House. They'll send you music relentlessly even when you don't want it, only in this case if you cancel it all goes away and you've got nothing to show for it.
You'd have to be diligent to use those ten free downloads a month. You can't bank them, can you?
> The subscription model is the modern equivalent of the Columbia Music House.
This is a ridiculous comparison. Do you pay for Netflix? Hulu Plus? Cable? Internet access? These are all subscription services.
Does it cost you infinite money to read Hacker News? Or to watch "Frasier" on cable or Netflix? Of course not. Zune Pass doesn't cost infinite money, either.
Columbia House was (is?) very nearly the opposite of a subscription. You paid for a crappy CD every month. You owned it. You didn't get inclusive access to a catalog.
"Subscription means you can access any track instantly- yes, you'll lose that if you unsubscribe, but you can easily sign up for a competing service and get all that music back. It doesn't really make sense to compare it to 'ownership'."
Name 3 music subscription services that have 90+% overlap in their catalogs.
Not that it's a particular boon for music acquisition, but since iOS 5, a desktop install of iTunes need not come in to the picture at all for an iOS device. Apple calls all the changes related to this "PC Free".
iTunes' hitherto expansion in scope has been amusing / scary. I noticed that the iOS app collection got saved in a subdirectory of ~/Music/ :)
I'm sooo sick of this constant windows phone analysis that doesn't address the two most important points:
1 - They were stupidly late to market
2 - Both the Windows brand and Microsoft's imagine are at best mehh..at worse very uncool and bad.
#1 is important because Microsoft simply doesn't set the [consumer] agenda any more. I don't think they've realized this. And until they do, they are just gonna keep being behind ([good] tablets).
#2 is important because if you don't realize how tarnished your brand is, you're royally screwed.
It doesn't matter how great your product is if it comes years too late. And it doesn't matter how great your product is if people have written you off already. Combine the two...come on, the thing has no chance.
re #1: there are still many markets out there with little smartphone usage.
re #2: perhaps Nokia can help them out here.
As a small case study consider India. 3G services have just been introduced in the last few months, and most people are just beginning to shift from feature phones to smartphones. Apple has a very poor retail presence here, and the iPhone is priced ridiculously high. On my visit there in December, I saw massive amounts of advertising for the Nokia Lumia (on tv and in malls) and casual conversation with friends revealed plenty of curiosity about Nokia and windows phone, how it might compare to android, and what would be better for future purchases.
* perhaps there are markets with little smartphone usage. but wp7 costs about 3/4 the price of an iphone. if i'm spending that much money i'm going to lessen my risk and get one i know has been somewhat successful. and for the same money i can get a great high end android device. here in ireland i can get 8 android devices for a less than wp7 at a minor mobile provider (the cheapest is 1/6 the price). https://store.meteor.ie/phones/
* nokia shot themselves in both feet in 2009. in 2008 at any meeting of geeks, nerds i would see 99% nokias. in 2010 it was 90% android. there was no single reason why people switched away from symbian. but we all switched. i know only one person who ever carried a windows mobile device. and he only carried it as it was guaranteed to crash eliminating the annoying calls he was bombarded with. i only know 2 people who bought nokia in the past 2 years. one was a maemo device before they were eliminated and the other was a second hand device from ebay. new devices aren't shifting. i'd see them as people ask me to set them up more often than not.
was recently watching an old tv show and heard the nokia ring tone. made me realise i hadn't heard that tone in a public space in around 2 years. nokia is not their saviour. just been run down till microsoft can buy their patents at a bargin price would be my guess.
When it comes to new markets, I agree that Apple is an non-player. Android will be the dominate player here, and I think Microsoft can certainly do well. However, there's little margin in these markets (which is what Apple is all about). So while it might look impressive that Microsoft has 30% of the India market (as an example), it won't change the fact that Apple will still be making well over 50% of worldwide profits.
As for #2, it's still too early to see how Nokia plays out, but I agree that it could change the landscape..or it might not at all. I won't be surprised either way. And if it doesn't, maybe they'll try do do something with RIM. So ya, they'll throw a ton of money at the problem.
But it's still an uphill battle and it isn't like the current leaders have become stale. So I guess until Apple AND Google start doing serious missteps, I'll continue to be skeptical.
> 2 - Both the Windows brand and Microsoft's imagine are at best mehh..at worse very uncool and bad.
Which would explain Xbox.
Edit: sorry for being obtuse. The point is that Microsoft entered the gaming market with a worse brand than today, and later than with iPhones and is despite that very sucessful.
Game consoles compete with other consoles in their own generation. PS2 beat XBOX 1 to market by a full year, and trounced it in sales.[1] XBOX 360, on the other hand, beat PS3 to market by a full year, and did better in sales.[2]
XBOX is also uniquely distanced from other huge Microsoft brands, and the overall Microsoft brand itself. People usually just say "XBOX", and it's conspicuously removed altogether from other brands such as Windows. Imagine if it had been called "Windows Game System".
100% accurate. XBOX is a horrible example. Console makers live and die by their current generation. Only Nintendo has the brand to survive failures (and I'd say even they have to start being careful now).
The history of Sega and Sony alone are very telling.
I will admit that I'm surprised that Xbox's branding easily survived the ring-of-death disaster. Part of that is how much money they threw at the problem and part of that is the state of the market [for hard-core console gamers].
Also, remember that the division is billions of dollars in the red. It'll likely take them 2 more iterations (or 10+ years) to break even assuming they can keep their current momentum (which history tells us will be hard).
I have no idea how the Xbox fits into this discussion, but I'll bite:
Windows Mobile has had a decade of shitty products that have ruined its reputation. A full ten years, during which their competitors were essentially jump-starting the modern smartphone market. They've now got what people say is a quality product, but they'll have to work twice as hard to win back iPhone and Android converts.
The Xbox, on the other hand, was (1) a first entry for Microsoft into a new market and (2) not associated with ANY existing Microsoft brand. The Xbox line won support based on its merit and quality (even considering ridiculous shit like the Red Ring of Death issues) from day one.
What was wrong with the MS brand for gaming when Xbox came out? Their OS was practically the exclusive platform for computer games at the time, and that was all they had to do with gaming, so they were neutral at worst.
Who cares? The smartphone market is rapidly maturing and it won't matter who was first and who wasn't. Do you know if Toyota started producing cars years or decades after Ford? Do you care?
The car <-> technology gets thrown around a lot; sometimes it's apt, other times not so much. This is definitely one of the latter.
The smartphone market is rapidly maturing, but that doesn't mean it can sustain a multitude of niche players indefinitely. Unlike in the car market, we'll likely only see a handful of major players able to participate profitably as the market settles a bit.
I'm not saying that Microsoft's doomed, they've certainly got the wherewithal to last longer than a failing RIM might or Palm/HP did, but in order to ever have a hit, they'll have to come up with some combination of killer new features, apps and devices.
So far, they're batting 0/3 on that front:
1) Mango is catching up to Android/iOS, but you're kidding yourself if you don't believe it's at least a little late to the game.
2) I certainly haven't heard of any killer apps for WP7 and as a developer, I've heard 0 interest in changing that. I'd love to play around with WP 7 and maybe even see what I could create for the platform, but without interest from my clients, it's DOA for me (and for customers).
3) The devices are mostly rehashes from Android models, and even those that aren't don't differentiate themselves from other medium-tier phones.
Great design is important, and I think most (technical) people will agree that Metro got it right, but claiming it's not successful because of that great design and not accounting for the two years it took to get to that point (the cost of lagging around with 6.5 and such while Apple / Android were building new platforms) is purposely misleading.
>The devices are mostly rehashes from Android models, and even those that aren't don't differentiate themselves from other medium-tier phones.
This is a problem that Android has created for the mobile phone market. Android has undeniably the worst performance of the three, and to compensate for that the handheld makers have started a spec race. Only when you get to superphone levels does Android really shine.
On the other hand, properly designed and controlled systems like iOS and WP7 don't require massive processing power to run smoothly. 1Ghz is perfectly fine, but I hear the complaint all the time that WP7 doesn't interest people because it's not dual core 1.5Ghz chips inside. It doesn't have it because it doesn't need it. Any other feature you'd like (slide out speaker, kickstand, keyboard, massive 5" screen, etc), it's got it. If you get out of the mindset that faster chips means more performance, WP7 has hardware out there that suits any need.
It took Toyota decades to enter the established american market. You might not care today who was first, but you are talking about a relatively ancient business. If you are arguing that 80 years from now, it won't matter, then I agree.
Also, you are missing that my two points intersect. Toyota has an strong brand, especially when it came/comes to reliability/quality/value. For most people buying cars, these are important qualities. So yes, they took the #1 spot because of the product they built and the brand they have. Microsoft's brand is so tarnished that it's way more of an uphill battle.
I find it hard to understand how people don't see the importance of brand loyalty in the face of Apple's extreme success.
Microsoft could do like Datsun and change to a better brand name. Meet the Nissan Phone 7.
>I find it hard to understand how people don't see the importance of brand loyalty in the face of Apple's extreme success.
That's not brand loyalty, that's marketing. The next company to market and design like/better than Apple will gobble that "brand loyalty" right up. Unfortunately that likely won't be Google or Microsoft.
Exactly correct on the brand loyalty, for example Motorola won the "loyalty" of virtually the entire mobile phone market in North America twice, once with the Star-Tac generation of phones and again with the Razr generation.
We all know what happened to them wen their products sucked too much for too long.
I have wondered whether sales of WP7 would be better had they either named it something else (without the word windows) or have it owned by a separate/new company/subsidiary. Though I suspect that, for the time being, their lateness to market is the real killer (and the brand issue the ongoing on).
I believe that developers, carriers, some consumers, analysts, hackers, etc., remember the MS DOS and Windows monopoly, the MS dirty tactics (it's not ready until Lotus doesn't work!) and general sleaziness, and don't want, in any way, to enable MS to have another monopoly, much less in a market so massive and so full of personal information as the cell phone market.
The actual OS can be the best of them, but we would be very stupid if we forget the last 30 years of MS history.
That's why MS image is 'uncool' and 'bad'.
The product coming to market years too late? I don't think it matters at all, if it's the right product from the right company.
Windows Phone is failing because Microsoft wants the same level of autonomy that Apple enjoys with the iPhone, and there's no way the carriers will allow it.
What should MS do? They need to produce a product that is similar in quality to the iPhone. Microsoft understands how to do this better than anyone else in the mobile space, but it means stripping away most of the carrier control and the carriers obviously won't go for it. And if you don't have the support of the carriers then you're dead, and that's the position Windows Phone finds itself.
Apple sells phones to users. Every other manufacturer sells phones to carriers, that means it's all about making the carriers happy. RIM, Samsung, LG, and Motorola all know this.
Nokia understands this better than any other manufacturer, which is why their involvement with Windows Phone is so important to MS. And at this point the success of Windows Phone depends entirely on Nokia.
It will be interesting to see what Nokia does to the Windows Phone platform to make it more palatable to the carriers, but we can be certain that those changes won't be particularly user friendly (not that it matters).
The low carrier support and the lackluster hardware have indeed hindered the platform. As a college student with a Windows Phone, however, I can attest anecdotally both to the operating system's (mostly the UI's) popular appeal and, on the other hand, to widespread popular distaste for the brand itself.
With other, tech-ignorant college students as my data points, I have found that most people's first impressions of the OS are quite positive, ranging from "oh, that phone's nice" (and they aren't talking about the physical device, a bland, somewhat chubby HTC Trophy) to "that's the coolest phone I've ever seen." As mentioned, these aren't people into tech I'm talking about—most of them have iPhones because they wanted one, or everyone else has one, or because there parents got them, so they did, too. I thus do not actively promote my phone in any way—all I've been doing, when I've gotten these sorts of responses, has been showing someone what someone else texted me, or some other datum or whatnot.
When they inevitably ask—"what kind of phone is that?"—and I say "Windows Phone," they, just as inevitably, immediately lose all interest.
This may parallel, I suppose, the reason Xbox, for example, remains instead successful years after its introduction: one of my uncles called my dad on Christmas day this year concering some computer or network problem (my dad, as a software engineer, of course bears that burden in our family), and mentioned incidentally that he had gotten my cousin an Xbox as a gift. My dad, who used to work for Microsoft and still gets a discount on their software, suggested that he might have been able to save some cash had my uncle told him ahead of time, or that he could still save on games if he wanted. What did my uncle say, however, but "oh, I didn't know it [Xbox] was Microsoft." Indeed, my uncle to this day refers to Microsft in conversation with my dad as "the evil empire."
So yeah, I think the brand name itself, however irrational the reason, hasn't helped at all. Also, there isn't a single actual window in the Windows Phone OS... Time to change up the name.
I still can't believe that MS called their new phone Windows Phone 7 Series. They should've pulled an "xbox" and used a completely different name with no association with Windows. They don't realise how badly Windows Mobile tarnished the "windows" name in mobile.
"But in the meantime, in their commitment to quality, Microsoft seem to have ironically shot themselves in the foot."
WinMo has been with us for 10 years. Microsoft had a large market share of the smartphone market a five years ago but they let their product stagnate. If they weren't complacent, Apple and Android wouldn't have had a chance.
What the article should say is that Microsoft took way too long to finally deliver a quality product and the competition came in and ate their lunch.
No, it's because they were too late to market and because their product wasn't that much better to change the computing paradigm again, like the way the iPhone did in 2007. So WP7 may be a little different than iOS and Android, but it's still mostly the same, and Android and iOS already have huge leads and ecosystems.
Also, because Android is open source, it will reach markets that WP7 never will because it's proprietary and it has restrictions that are even higher than the desktop Windows, which back then "won" because it was the default option for the market leader IBM, and it had no real "mass-market" competition before it.
Android is the default option already for pretty much any manufacturer now, from noname Asian manufacturers to more recognized companies.
Played with the WP7 for an hour when we got it in the office. You are spot on about it being not that much better. It was nice and all, but at the end of the hour I was very much "meh" and had no reason to actually use it let alone tell someone that they would want it v.s. my iphone or blackberry.
The provocative headline isn't really where the article is going, but it does make a good strategic point: windows phone is failing because they've decided to split the difference between their competitors' strategies, requiring enough control to allow the software to be good, but not enough to ensure that the hardware is also good, thus ensuring that their products aren't so great that consumers demand them but also requiring enough control that carriers don't like them and thus don't push them. Optimal points often live at the extremes rather than in the middle.
The lateness is not that important since phone contracts are up in about 2 years and at the time, people shop for new phones and usually aim for the coolest one as their new phone. Phone markets renew every couple of years but clearly the iphone keeps beating the value(how many iphone's generation 1 do you see on the street?). The iphone was even late to the game but that didn't stop it from taking away the coolness and market of the motorola Razr which everybody wanted and had back then.
Another factor is the Windows phone, Android and iPhone have about the same initial and per month cost. Roughly the same price but All 3 give very different values back in terms of apps,feature,ease of use. Coping with the downsides or nuances is also a 2 year commitment so unless an option is clearly way ,way better, people will stick with an iPhone or go back.
With pcs it's a different ballpark. A macbook feels nicer than a generic Acer notebook, but one costs $1,500 and the other $499. The phones are all around $199 and plans are about 70 bucks a month. Even if the phone is "free" the per month payment is the same.
Also the iPhone sets a standard of experience which still is unmatched. If I drove a mercedez, then switched to an Acura and didn't like it as much, it doesn't mean either is bad. Acura is awesome, but I might miss the feeling,driving, status,smell, etc and hold the Acura up the Mercedez standards. Windows phone is stuck in an unconfortable situation where it doesn't give way greater value to an iphone user but doesn't cost way less either to make it into other emerging markets and grab marketshare from somewhere else.
* people shop for new phones and usually aim for the coolest one as their new phone. *
I think you're discounting the invested value of apps. I've probably got about $400 worth of paid-for apps on my iPhone. The Windows phone might be the "coolest", but my migration cost is far greater than just the hardware cost to get back to a similarly useful handset.
Android seems to have more free apps, and less overall selection. It might be easier to switch from Android to Windows phone than iPhone to Windows phone.
You are right. Apps are the new golden handcuffs for users of a current platform and are a new challenge to overcome for both android and windows phone.
Still there's millions of new users who are just about to get a new smartphone coming from candy bar phones, and when shopping they just go mostly look up for the iphone.
I stood up at an ATT store some times watching how people shopped phones. The color squares of Windows Phone and huge screens of android phones attract people initially, but as soon as they start comparing they flock to the iPhone.
Amazingly, I just got back from a vacation in Mexico where smartphones are just becoming popular, and went to the local vendors out of curiosity. The push for IOS/android is impressive, there are ads on the street, movies, everywhere. You can get an iPhone with no downpayment and 600 pesos(45 usd) a month.
Phones are always about the carrier. Apple understood that when they started off with AT&T. Then, they showed people what a well executed smartphone can look like.
Android also looked after the carriers, as the author had pointed out, by flooding market with choices. The presence of these "choices" overload the consumer, making them forget about choosing carriers.
Microsoft, meanwhile, tried to persuade people that the phones they own are like the PCs they own. I don't think this will necessarily gel. The reason is I still can use my PC when internet is down, but my phone is a brick if it can't communicate with the network.
Apple was the first company that was able to make a phone without bending over backwards to the operators demands. They could do this because they
1) had a great product
2) had no existing mobile revenue stream to lose
3) was able to shop the device around to several carriers
before settling on one launch carrier - without even showing the device to the carrier!
Compare this to Nokia, which once made a E61 version without WiFi and VoIP support in order to sell it to carriers in the US.
Android looked after the carriers by allowing them and the manufacturers to install (almost) what they want on the device, including applications that you can't uninstall without jailbreaking the device.
By the way, my phone is certainly not a brick without a network. I have all my music, videos, ebooks and lots of apps on it. I use it all the time in airplane mode when flying.
Every time I see a screenshot of a Windows phone with the IE logo I retch. I don't know of any web developer who would willingly put IE in their pocket, too many bad memories full of frustrating hacks.
I wonder why MS hasn't leveraged the fairly successful Xbox Live social network (that I know about, anyhow) to build a solid fanbase for their phone offering. Score-watching, social-sharing, and franchise related minigames with exclusive content or game items seem a natural extension of the XBL ecosystem and would build brand loyalty with a demographic that has a particularly high appetite for consumer tech as well as a fairly high disposable income.
They have. Kinectimals, Fable, Crackdown and Need For Speed all have Windows Phone mini games/apps that allow you to earn unique achievements and items. Halo has a 'dashboard' app, but not a game, afaik.
See also "Xbox LIVE Extras" (messaging, scoreboard and avatar editor) and the "Xbox Companion" (Xbox remote control).
Those games are mostly old as sin, with the newest (aside from Kinectimals) predating Windows Phone 7 by a year. No surprise they aren't getting any attention.
i don't get these posts.
what' does "failing" mean? it's not like any of the other platforms just gained all that market share overnight. people don't just switching operating systems on a whim. if it really is great, it will slowly start to take some market share over next 12-24 months. what is all this bickering about?
I don't fully buy what this guy is selling. I tend to agree with Kindel's analysis of why WP is doing so poorly. Is the author aware that the Facebook app was created by Microsoft?
Having used a WP since this summer I love it. I can't say enough about it. If you're into social you'll love this phone with deep Facebook and Twitter integration.
I think the hardest thing about using this phone is missing out on apps that Android and iOS get. I'm resigned to the fact that if I stick with this phone that I'm going to miss out on a lot of cutting-edge apps. I can understand as a developer if you have to develop, maintain, and provide support for an app that two app stores is enough. The programming paradigm for WP is different enough where I could see a case for not poking that bear.
I am sad. I think WP has a lot going for it. It's really an elegant OS and it's a very good actual phone. I don't know if there's really room for a third horse in this race.
I still don't understand why the xPhone doesn't exist. This has always seemed like the obvious direction for Microsoft from a brand perspective. Use the phone as an extension of the 360 and do some really cool things with it - messaging hub, video chatting, go all in on games. It's just crazy to me this doesn't exist.
One thing I like about the Xbox Live app on WP7 is that you can message people from the app and the live tile updates if you have a message waiting. I downloaded the new companion app but I havent tried it out yet to see what other integration they have. My only want now is to be able to enter in registration codes on the phone instead of in the xbox. I miss out on too many twitter giveaways at work :P
To me thats like saying corporate customers would be turned off by the iPhone. I get where you are coming from, but I think it could be handled in a way that would make both consumers/professionals love the phone. Apple is clearly the example to follow. Microsoft has leverage with the 360 its just crazy to me they don't use it.
I'm assuming an Xbox phone would be more than just the name, so the design, UI, accessories, and marketing would all be Xbox-y and targeted to gamers to some degree.
An Xbox phone that looked like Windows Phone 7 would be no big deal for business, but an Xbox phone that looks like it is part of a gun from HALO probably would be a problem.
Looks like the Nokia partnership may be their last best hope. Android can have the crapware-laden low-end of the Smartphone market and Microsoft and Apple can be seen as the quality brands, and if Nokia sells enough phones it will at least save MS's reputation.
Keep in mind though, Google has both the crapware-laden low-end, as well as some very desirable phones in the Nexus Line. WP7 has neither, really. I'd like to like it, as I think it's awesome that MS is finally doing some real UI innovation, but none of the phones tickle my fancy enough for me to really give it a shot.
What are you looking for in a phone? MS doesn't give hardware manufactures a whole ton of room to differentiate, but in the room that they do give, it seems to be covered fairly well. Is it just an overall build quality thing?
I'm not going to lie, I simply don't like the look of any of the WP7 phones. Yes, I know it's shallow, but it's a pretty big first barrier to overcome. I've heard some people say they really like the Nokia phones, but none of them really do anything for me.
The Nokia partnership will never succeed until they can make the phones much cheaper. If they could get them under $100 without a contract they would sell millions. There is a massive untapped market for cheaper phones with apps.
I recently got a Samsung/Windows phone after my old -- very old (but easy-to-use) RaZr got wet and went south. My only requirement for the new phone was that it had to be a Samsung and it had to be free -- no exceptions.
I walked out the door with a Windows Phone.
I like it I guess.. Wasn't sure I would, but I do. It's stable, holds a good charge, and is reliable. I deleted every icon from the main display, except two -- Voice and Messaging. Everything else is on the menu. Access is easy. Call clarity is good and the features work fine.
My main complaint is that I had to setup a Windows Live account to manage my contacts. I'd rather just plug it in to my computer and be done with it locally.
Am I Windows brand loyal? No. But I have had no issues whatsoever.
Earlier this year my boss was having trouble with his old Android phone (the battery was going) and it was cheaper to get another phone. He bought a used WM7 phone off Craigslist, and he really liked it.
In the end, he sold it and bought another Android phone, because the camera on the particular model he bought was complete junk. He said if it wasn't for that he would have stayed with WM7.
Everything I've read indicates it's a very nice OS. MS knows what they're doing so they've done a good job of making sure there are apps in the app store (where WebOS really stumbled).
I hope it stays around, it seems like a nice piece of competition (interface-wise) for Android and iOS. But it was so late to the game I think it's going to have a very hard time ever getting out of third.
One big reason Android is it's easier to modify such as rooting it, Apple can be jailbroken but I'm not sure about Windows phone.
People have suggested I try Big Launcher, Launcher 7, Simple Home which I may try to see if my dad likes one of them. Most of those pretty much make it look like a Windows phone.
The problem with this analysis is the writer defines quality as stable, easy to use OS but neglects the fact that the phone manufacturers define quality slightly different. Sure, it's great to have a nice OS and a phone that does not crash but if the OS ties their hands (design-wise), they may not have room to innovate as they would see fit.
This reminds me of the story about when then phone companies wanted to get into web hosting. They decided that uptime was their competitive edge (when last did your land-line go down?) and thought webmasters would see that as valuable. However, for many webmasters, cost was the big issue but the phone companies could not deliver at the same cost as lots of mom and pop webhosts who had (comparatively) horrendous uptime.
This is a classic strategy mistake. Value is in the eye of the buyer. The maker cannot decide something is valuable just because it is good. The buyer decides what is good and then the maker follows suit.
I understand what the author is trying to say! But the title is so different from the content. Its great and its a compromise? its neither here nor there?
FUD from a website that doesnt's even bothers to try and render well on the iPhone. Also isn't saying that it tries to achieve something in the middle of userfriendliness of the iPhone and ubiquity of the Android, and then say it has a marvelous user interface kinda of a contradiction?
Have no idea how this kind of spam got into HN.
I would think that Windows 8 and the next Xbox will have killer integration with WP 7.x but knowing Microsoft's dysfunctional departments, I will not be surprised if there is none or its done poorly.
Think:
- A build once deploy to WP7, Win8 and Xbox Live dev to attract developers.
No it's failing as a result of making extremely crappy mobile products for over a decade. That leaves a lasting impression in many people. Apple's first attempt ( while not perfect ) blew away the established ruling companies.
Or, in my case, i've been screwed by MS so many times over the years tht it feels great to have excellent alternatves and watch the arrogant asses struggle. I won't buy their products again and they have earned my enmity. I hope they lose billions.
It's the apps, stupid. Development itself for Windows Phone isn't terrible. Not as painful as Blackberry, not as idiosyncratic as Android. HOWEVER, the friction involved when attempting to move a Windows Phone project past initial development into testing mode is annoyingly high, in my experience.
Take, for example, the requirement of getting your "Hello, World" app installed on real hardware and out to beta testers:
Apple: Pay your $99 bucks, get the development environment and your identity info, generate certs. You can have your app running on your own equipment in just a few hours. A couple more hours to figure out how to package it the right way for testers (or use TestFlight) and you can add up to 100 beta testers.
Android: Don't even need to sign up as a developer and pay your 25 bucks until you're ready to go. You can have your apk running on your own devices in no time at all. You can shoot your apk out to as many people as you want to test.
Blackberry: The web site's a hot mess, but it takes less than a day for them to get you your signing key, so you can generally get Hello World running on your Blackberry hardware within a day. You can shoot your app out to as many beta testers as you want.
Windows Phone: You can't test on real hardware until your developer's identity has been verified by a third party company external to Microsoft. There are documented cases where this has taken more than three months to complete. (This is if you can even pay for the developer's account because their web site rejects valid credit cards as a matter of course unless the stars are aligned. Apparently some bug where they see all credit cards as debit cards?) We're on month two and counting waiting to get 'verified.'
I totally get that they need to determine who you are in order to get your apps into the Marketplace (Apple does this as well, although I believe they do it internally--and they're relatively fast), but just to test your software on your own hardware?
Re: beta testing, you only get three registered development devices tops per developer and while they do have a facility for beta testing, it requires automated review by Microsoft to pop into the Marketplace.
I hear from Windows Phone users daily, many of whom moved to Windows Phone from Android phones because their phones were just too unreliable and they can't bring themselves to go to iPhone, and they are very vocal about being frustrated with the number and quality of apps available to them. I can't help but feel like Microsoft just doesn't understand how important quality apps are to smartphone users and how the friction they've got in their app developer workflow is a serious impediment to growing their app ecosystem.
I really wish Microsoft would get this workflow together already...they've got a fantastic chance here to make serious inroads but I don't feel like they really understand (mobile) Developers, Developers, Developers! yet.
This is so typical of the brain rot most technology reviewers suffer from.
The basic line is something like "if it has been well engineered, and someone has put a whole lot of effort into it, and its a bit different to everything else out there, then we are basically obliged to give it high marks".
They seem incapable of judging devices by the most basic and important standard: user experience. If the user experience is bad, then nothing else matters. A user interface is not brilliant if no one wants to use it.
WinPho7 is the best current example of this going round. Almost universally acclaimed by reviewers, almost totally ignored by consumers.
I like the design of the Metro UI. I can find my way around, the transitions and layout is basically informative and attractive. In my mind, it beats the tar out of Android in those dimensions. I'm not sure if I could even call it inferior to the design conventions and capabilities on iOS, which often accrues the most praise.
Although you could take "user experience" to very generalized levels ("did it get to market early enough", "do my friends have it", "are there applications I want", "is it in the mobile phone store"), these are usually considered social or business questions. One only need look at the flop of the Nexus One -- basically a well designed phone, but one that was positioned poorly with carriers -- for evidence.
I think it is sociological and business factors that blight the Windows Phone, not its design or user experience, except in the most overgeneralized sense.
Have you actually used Windows Phone for any considerable length of time and have any real criticisms of the UX or are you just armchair quarterbacking? At least all the reviewers have actually used the devices, some for a week.
> On the other hand, Kinkel argued, Microsoft’s insistence on certain consistencies of interface and hardware has left its partners handcuffed.
That's an interesting interpretation, I think the simple truth is that Microsoft is coming too late at the party. We're entering a nuclear winter where only Android and iOS (and soon, most likely mostly Android) dominate the space for the next five years to come.
On a related note, I found the following article fairly accurate when it comes to evaluate reactions to Windows Phone:
Lateness to market and image of Microsoft are thoroughly valid points, much like the reasons WebOS never worked out for Palm. There is a broader reason though:
Metro is a bad UI. It looks impressive in screenshots, but its usability is dismal. It relies too much on trying to guide the customer and be exciting rather and too little on creating a sensible and memorable logic that the user can intuit.
The implementation on WP7 is bad, all squished and uni-coloured (and on Xbox it's even worse). It does not bode well at all for Microsoft that they can't seem to remember that software is supposed to be used. It's like they've only learned the lesson of typography from Apple, and not the elegance of actual use.
Can you clarify what you mean by any of that with examples? Because I've enjoyed the Metro UI every time I've used it, and so has every reviewer I've seen. I guess we are all weird?
Sorry, have to disagree about Metro. Are you talking from experience with using WP7? Almost every review has only good things to say about Metro. When even Gruber(who jumps on every opportunity to diss non-Apple platforms) praises it, you know it's good.
And what about it being uni-coloured? Much of Metro is extremely colorful, including the tiles.
Yeah, dunno. I've seen the reviews and so on, but having played with metro on some devices, admittedly just in a store for maybe 10 minutes a few times, I just don't like it. The large text that just kind of runs off the side of the screen, and content hanging off just at the right edge to scroll to feels sloppy somehow. Also, I find the up transition jarring (kind of a page flip thing). The live tiles are sort of neat, but overall I don't care for the design aesthetic.
This is totally subjective, and probably just inertia w.r.t. what I'm already used to, but I just don't care for it, no matter how well reviewed it is.
MS has lost its smartphone brand credibility. Releasing good, solid products will help them rebuild it but even if they successfully rebuild credibility it'll be a long time before sales catch up.
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395281
Edit: I found a decent chart that tells the tale: http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/npd-u...
P.P.S. I've said it before, but I think it might be some sort of great cosmic karmic justice if somehow Microsoft got shafted trying to peddle a "superior" product in the face of competitors with network effect on their side.