Microsoft Admits Windows Phone is Basically Dead

[blackcrayon]

The iPhone brought nothing new, but the prospect of cheap and free apps by the thousands cause the developers to abandon their traditional space and/or get steamrolled by new developers.

The iPhone brought nothing new? Have you ever used the browser on an old Windows CE device
Or is that the agile goalpost dodging where "new" is entirely up to interpretation. Like say, Windows Mobile brought "nothing new" the Messagepad 2100 didn't have...

 

[convergent]

MS continually shot themselves in the foot.
They had a good mobile foundation, but they opted to completely switch gears and tried to make a single OS for phones, tablets and PCs. That meant a delay in rolling out an OS and new hardware, giving android/iOS even more time.

They introduced a new UI (tiles) and that worked ok, on the phone, but horribly on the desktop, so more bad juju was generated.

Buying Nokia, trying to out Apple, Apple, but now they had to split their energies.

After buying Nokia, they kept releasing low cost phones, no flagships and in doing so the naming convention became extremely confusing.

I think there were more mistakes, but those are the ones that come to my mind.

Nokia I think made sense in some regards, but was crazy in others. Nokia had the model Samsung I think does today. They were the global dominant smartphone maker. They had a good business of flagship Symbian devices (the smartphone of the day), as well as a huge volume of lower cost phones. If you recall, Ballmer's iPhone comment was that it would never get high volume. In a sense he was correct. Only this recent announcement has Apple pushed themselves down to the low end with offering so many models. Up until now, they have really only seriously gone after the high end of the market.

 

[Leguna24]

It’s almost painful how predictable the path of Windows Phone (and Nokia) became at some point , mostly due to strange and poor decisions.

 

[convergent]

The iPhone brought nothing new? Have you ever used the browser on an old Windows CE device
Or is that the agile goalpost dodging where "new" is entirely up to interpretation. Like say, Windows Mobile brought "nothing new" the Messagepad 2100 didn't have...

Yes, I have used the browser on an old Windows CE device. Things evolve. I never said Apple didn't improve on anything. The then current other smartphone platforms weren't dramatically worse than the iPhone for browsing. In fact, I hated my first experience with an iPhone, and didn't actually buy one for several years after it had improved a bit. I also hated a soft keyboard, and still do for that matter. But everyone else jumped on the "copy the iPhone" bandwagon, which pushed out other choices.

This thread is talking about why Microsoft failed with their phone. I stand by my position that it was the App Store and SJ's vision that did them in. Even in the article they talk about paying developers to write apps. They missed the market disruption. And another disruption will occur at some point. The leaders usually have the hardest time with those disruptions.

 

[maflynn]

It’s almost painful how predictable the path of Windows Phone (and Nokia) became at some point , mostly due to strange and poor decisions.

I think this is where Apple's structure vs. MS's structure came in to play. MS, more bureaucratic and many decisions were probably hashed out by executives with little to no mobile phone experience - that's the only thing I can come up with.

 

[convergent]

I think this is where Apple's structure vs. MS's structure came in to play. MS, more bureaucratic and many decisions were probably hashed out by executives with little to no mobile phone experience - that's the only thing I can come up with.

I don't agree with that. It was all SJ. Microsoft had way more mobile phone experience than Apple, even before they bought Nokia. They had been in the smartphone business for years already. They had something to lose... Apple didn't really. That causes people to be slow to move. If a disrupting approach happened right now in smartphones, Apple would be slow to respond. They have a lot to lose. There is no one in Apple today like SJ, or anywhere near it.

 

[sracer]

MS continually shot themselves in the foot.
They had a good mobile foundation, but they opted to completely switch gears and tried to make a single OS for phones, tablets and PCs. That meant a delay in rolling out an OS and new hardware, giving android/iOS even more time.

They introduced a new UI (tiles) and that worked ok, on the phone, but horribly on the desktop, so more bad juju was generated.

Buying Nokia, trying to out Apple, Apple, but now they had to split their energies.

After buying Nokia, they kept releasing low cost phones, no flagships and in doing so the naming convention became extremely confusing.

I think there were more mistakes, but those are the ones that come to my mind.

Exactly.

One cannot re-re-re-reboot a platform and honestly expect it to survive let alone thrive. I did quite a bit of development for Microsoft's early mobile platforms... including a lot of UI work. It was extremely frustrating to have Microsoft revamp everything every couple of years.

 

[Applebot1]

The problem was that word called,”Windows”... awful in every way.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Windows Phone was never really competition for the iPhone, the two big players are IOS and Android, i think it will be this way for a long time to come.

I remember the first version of the Windows phone. The only thing that I could use it for, outside of calling people, was playing Solitaire. It would not send or receive SMS messages. I couldn't send or receive email. It was a joke wrapped in a rubber chicken. The damned thing was a mess, and no one at Verizon could make it work right. I pitched it and went with a standard 'flip-phone'. Embrace the suck...

 

[maflynn]

I don't agree with that. It was all SJ.

I think you misunderstood my point. Apple is organzied like a start up, so they can be fairly nimble and react to changing markets. MS is the epitome of a large corporation, so its quite possible the MS engineers had some great ideas, but were then saddled with questionable changes. This is all conjecture on my part, I have no inside knowledge, but watching pod casts and blogs, its quite clear MS was (and is) very bureaucratic.

Regarding Apple now that they're more established they themselves are showing signs that infect large successful businesses - corporate bloat. Yes, Apple had less risk, they didn't have a user base, so they could swing for the fences, but I do believe it was less of that, and more of just how MS was run.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

As has happened before, Microsoft just couldn’t see the future.

Bahlmer couldn't see farther than the tip of his nose. That is funny...
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As has happened before, Microsoft just couldn’t see the future.

And the Zune came out in brown. BROWN! How fitting for a device that just couldn't escape that color...

 

[Macaholic868]

In other news water is wet!

 

[convergent]

The problem was that word called,”Windows”... awful in every way.

So insightful...

I think you misunderstood my point. Apple is organzied like a start up, so they can be fairly nimble and react to changing markets. MS is the epitome of a large corporation, so its quite possible the MS engineers had some great ideas, but were then saddled with questionable changes. This is all conjecture on my part, I have no inside knowledge, but watching pod casts and blogs, its quite clear MS was (and is) very bureaucratic.

Regarding Apple now that they're more established they themselves are showing signs that infect large successful businesses - corporate bloat. Yes, Apple had less risk, they didn't have a user base, so they could swing for the fences, but I do believe it was less of that, and more of just how MS was run.

No, I understood what you said. I just completely disagree that Apple is like a "startup". They are big, bloated, and quite frankly stubborn. When SJ was there, I think the correct model descriptor was "dictatorship", and that worked because SJ was SJ. In comparison to Amazon, Google, etc... Apple is not nimble. They are extremely predictable, sadly.

 

[Juan007]

Another one bites the dust. How’d that iPhone prediction work out Balmer?

 

[78Bandit]

Windows Phone was a good OS hamstrung by old Microsoft ways of thinking. They continued to try and get licensing fees for the OS itself (I recall it was somewhere around $50 per phone) even as Apple was going toward a completely vertically integrated system and Google was giving away Android licenses with the caveat that Google services be preinstalled. Phone makers, when faced with a choice, went with the free option.

Too late Microsoft realized it needed to get into the hardware side of things and threw multiple billions at Nokia, which itself was failing too. Unfortunately by that point the app gap was too big to overcome. You also had the big reset between Windows Phone 7 and 8 where most of the existing apps had to be rewritten to work. A lot of developers said "screw it" and put their efforts into iOS and Android instead.

Anyone who said Windows Mobile sucked didn't use it. It was well designed, live tiles were great but underutilized, and it was much more modern. Sad to see it fail because it could have forced Apple to finally get away from its OS that acts like Windows 3.1 with its focus on programs rather than content.

 

[Hater]

Small companies maybe, but larger one and governments are entrenched in Windows and I can still get the same machine components for a fraction of the cost that you pay for a Mac. Sorry, but I doubt this will ever happen. Besides, Apple killed their business competition when they killed OSx Server.

No surprise on the phone though, it was dead when it really started. Support and App development was scarce.

My old work did an evaluation with loads of iMacs, replacing all workstations that were FOH (front of house, customer facing machines) with iMacs. I won't say what business it is, but think high-end retail fashion outlet. Thousands of stores worldwide.

Apart from issues with remote OS deployment and group policy integration issues, it seemed to be OK until it came to hardware failure, with some sites waiting months for hardware replacement, where the existing (Dell) same day service was absolutely fantastic. This is the only reason Apple lost an 8 digit contract.

I believe that remaining machines were bought outright and new replacement machines are new AIO Dell's. Although there were failures, some of those iMacs are still running! (I believe this was 2010/11/12) but they've been running the Windows 7 build exclusively for 4 or 5 years now.

 

[coolfactor]

This is not really good, because we need competition to push the other companies to make better devices.

It's well-known that Apple competes with itself. Look at the iPod history. There was zero decent competition, and yet Apple continued to push the envelope, releasing new iPods each year when the previous year's model continues to be top-of-the-class in the industry. The same is happening with iPhone.

It's hard to imagine that Apple was once solely a "music player" business. A narrow category compared to smartphones, and yet it's what drove a home run after home run for the company.
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Windows Phone was a good OS hamstrung by old Microsoft ways of thinking. They continued to try and get licensing fees for the OS itself (I recall it was somewhere around $50 per phone) even as Apple was going toward a completely vertically integrated system and Google was giving away Android licenses with the caveat that Google services be preinstalled. Phone makers, when faced with a choice, went with the free option.

Too late Microsoft realized it needed to get into the hardware side of things and threw multiple billions at Nokia, which itself was failing too. Unfortunately by that point the app gap was too big to overcome. You also had the big reset between Windows Phone 7 and 8 where most of the existing apps had to be rewritten to work. A lot of developers said "screw it" and put their efforts into iOS and Android instead.

Anyone who said Windows Mobile sucked didn't use it. It was well designed, live tiles were great but underutilized, and it was much more modern. Sad to see it fail because it could have forced Apple to finally get away from its OS that acts like Windows 3.1 with its focus on programs rather than content.

I'd almost go as far as to say that Microsoft's Windows Phone design inspired Google's "Material" design has become so popular.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Bill Gates has the audascity to say he uses an android phone.

Bill Gates really needs to switch to the iPhone X 256 GB, a fully loaded iMac Pro, both maxed out 12.9 and 10.5 iPad Pros, Apple TV 4K, Macbook Pro for on the go, and a first generation Apple Watch Gold.

 

[i.mac]

This is not really good, because we need competition to push the other companies to make better devices.

Ahhh... Competition deal again.

Apple invents and perfects and creates a trend. Others copy and update. Refresh and repeat. That’s competition.
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Bill Gates really needs to switch to the iPhone X 256 GB, a fully loaded iMac Pro, both maxed out 12.9 and 10.5 iPad Pros, Apple TV 4K, Macbook Pro for on the go, and a first generation Apple Watch Gold.

He has done this in his secret survival bunker. End of day bunker requires only the best.
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Another one bites the dust. How’d that iPhone prediction work out Balmer?

I wondered where’s the link to that quote?

 

[vmachiel]

This is not really good, because we need competition to push the other companies to make better devices.

It was never competition anyway..

 

[macTW]

This is not really good, because we need competition to push the other companies to make better devices.

“I don’t like Apple’s latest decisions. Therefore someone needs to be competitive to drive down their profits.”

 

[Lesser Evets]

There is a WINDOWS PHONE??

I'm being serious: I never knew. I can see why it wasn't successful... Windows. Ugh.

 

[iMi]

Windows Phone was never really competition for the iPhone, the two big players are IOS and Android, i think it will be this way for a long time to come.

Of course they were competing. I think what you're saying is that they were never a viable competition. They had a very small market share, but in the world of technology things can change rapidly and we've seen that before.

Even when a small player exits the market, consumers may be negatively impacted by having fewer choices.
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There is a WINDOWS PHONE??

I'm being serious: I never knew. I can see why it wasn't successful... Windows. Ugh.

Windows 10 on mobile is actually a great operating system. The major problem was the lack of apps from third party. Key apps that anyone coming from iOS or Android would need and expect were missing.

Microsoft tried to pay developers and even made apps for them, but the gap was so significant that it simply wasn't enough for them to gain marketshare. An excellent mobile platform (live tiles, native file system, alphabetical list of applications at a fingertip) but without the broader support.

There were simply not enough mobile users to justify the resources and the time needed for developers to support the platform, so it starved. It's a shame, really. I guess hopes for the killer Surface Phone are gone.

 

[mi7chy]

Having used Windows CE/Mobile, iOS and Android, what killed Windows Mobile was that it was too slow to evolve in the right direction. It was a desktop OS trying to fit in a mobile role. iOS is in a similar but opposite predicament being an iPod OS that's too limited as a modern mobile device and also slow to evolve. In contrast, Android's success in capturing nearly 90% of world marketshare is due to it evolving fast as a hybrid OS combining the best mobile OS experience with desktop OS capabilities. Microsoft, instead of treating it as a competing platform, have fully embraced Android platform and also evolving Windows 10 to be very much Android like. The future is the convergence of mobile and desktop.

 

[nburwell]

He also said he would never have an Apple product in his house or let us children use them.

I wonder how that's working out for him.

Could you imagine him having that conversation with his children why they can't have an iPhone...