Microsoft Ends Support for 'Windows Phone' After Years of Battling to Compete With iPhone and Android

[velocityg4]

It's too bad Windows Phone hasn't done better. I rather liked the UI. If it was more price competitive I would have considered one. As I can't stand Android.

They could have made it stand out by making the phones more PC like. As in allow users to install any OS they want, dual boot, select boot devices, configure the EFI. If you can get the geeks to buy in yet easy to use for the average user. It could have had a decent market share. As the average user and business relies on the technophiles to make recommendations.

They also could have built up a database of drivers and made the OS available as a separate purchase. That way people who rooted their Android phone could potentially purchase and install Windows. I don't know how practical this would be. Perhaps even work with phone makers and stores to allow people to choose their OS at purchase or make it an option on first boot and with factory restore software.

 

[gim]

No such thing as Windows Phone 10. It's Windows 10 Mobile and it mostly applies to tablets. It's crap and rarely updated.They need to let it die.

Wrong.
Tablets like the Surface Pro don't run Windows 10 Mobile.
It's not crap and it's updated regularly, the latest update was released yesterday.

Better get your facts straight before you're trying to teach somebody.

 

[justamsguy]

Windows 10 Phone is good but as said it cannot compete with andriod and IOS because app developers are least interest to spend their time on non profit things.

 

[MozMan68]

I was in the AT&T store a few years ago (maybe 4??) buying an iPhone case for my son and saw the Nokia 1520 in red and fell in love.

Remember, this was when Apple was saying no one would ever want a "big" phone. I figured I'd give it a shot...what the hell?

I actually enjoyed the live tiles, the fact that the screen stayed "on" to show me the time, notifications, etc. The camera was awesome. Biggest issue was app support for the biggies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube...but there were apps that mirrored them pretty well.

A year later, Apple introduced the bigger phones, so I went back....sold the 1520 on eBay for practically the same price I paid for it.

 

[whiteonline]

I was in the AT&T store a few years ago (maybe 4??) buying an iPhone case for my son and saw the Nokia 1520 in red and fell in love.

Remember, this was when Apple was saying no one would ever want a "big" phone. I figured I'd give it a shot...what the hell?

I actually enjoyed the live tiles, the fact that the screen stayed "on" to show me the time, notifications, etc. The camera was awesome. Biggest issue was app support for the biggies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube...but there were apps that mirrored them pretty well.

A year later, Apple introduced the bigger phones, so I went back....sold the 1520 on eBay for practically the same price I paid for it.

I thought it was great too. My thought was always the social media integration into the OS is what hurt Microsoft in the app space. Social media companies want people in their apps - not proxied via live tiles and embedded interactions.
That proxy connectivity is what I loved the most.
The other killer was the carrier exclusivities.

Hoping for a rebound with Win10/CShell...

 

[Hastings101]

That iPhone funeral was never a good idea.

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-iphone-funeral-2010-9?IR=T

Lol I'd forgotten about that, awkward. I did used to think it would be a competitor to Android/iPhone though, Windows Phone wasn't doing too badly either until Microsoft ate Nokia and then let it die. Not really sure what their plan with mobile was but it went from growing to dead so fast.

 

[gim]

The other killer was the carrier exclusivities.

Absolutely! In Germany, there was no carrier exclusivity for Windows phones. Two years ago, they had a market share of 10.5% here. Apple had 13.2% at that time!
There were other European countries, in which Windows phone did really well, I remember up to 20% in Spain and/or Italy.
Sadly, they didn't seem to care about those markets.

 

[abubasim]

Per that page, it kinda stinks that some of their most unique phones (I'm looking at you, Lumia 1020) are being left behind. The 1520 is still supported, however.

The Lumia 1020 stopped receiving updates quite some time ago. I own this phone, bought it new a few months ago from a shop that were selling off their old stock. I'm just worrying that the store will stop offering apps for WP8.1 phones with this end of support date been reached.

 

[Howl's Castle]

No such thing as Windows Phone 10. It's Windows 10 Mobile and it mostly applies to tablets. It's crap and rarely updated.They need to let it die.

As a use to be Windows Phone user, I'm aware. If you went to Windows Central or any other Microsoft focused blog, it is still referred to as Windows Phone 10. If you even further into my comments you would have been aware that I already stated Windows Mobile 10. Windows 10 Mobile doesn't just focus on tablets, that would be the full version of Windows 10. Windows Mobile 10 is updated every year like Windows 10 so now you're just bluntly spewing out false information and it doesn't matter if you think it is crap, that doesn't stop a news site from making a clickbait article only to find out that the previous version of the OS is now unsupported.

 

[Cloudane]

Wow this fake news article is evvvvverywhere

Windows Phone 8.1 is an old version, of course they're ending support. Windows 10 Mobile however is another story...

This is like saying that because Apple ended support for OS X Mavericks last year, OS X died last year and lost to Windows and Linux.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

The Lumia 1020 stopped receiving updates quite some time ago. I own this phone, bought it new a few months ago from a shop that were selling off their old stock. I'm just worrying that the store will stop offering apps for WP8.1 phones with this end of support date been reached.

At that point, do you just use it as a dedicated camera, like I'm doing with my 7 Plus on iOS beta?

 

[abubasim]

At that point, do you just use it as a dedicated camera, like I'm doing with my 7 Plus on iOS beta?

Nope. Like a regular smartphone. It has everything I need. I'll keep using until I've sold off my other phones and gathered enough money to get an iPhone.

 

[mi7chy]

Windows 10 will displace iOS and possibly even Android. If the Galaxy Note 8 comes with Android plus Windows 10 in DeX mode it's game over for the industry. Biggest barrier is Intel legal.

 

[abubasim]

Biggest barrier is Intel legal.

Intel has no interest in seeing their own processor architecture emulated by a competitor's hardware to make customers more keep on buying from the competitor...

 

[RDowson]

As a use to be Windows Phone user, I'm aware. If you went to Windows Central or any other Microsoft focused blog, it is still referred to as Windows Phone 10. If you even further into my comments you would have been aware that I already stated Windows Mobile 10. Windows 10 Mobile doesn't just focus on tablets, that would be the full version of Windows 10. Windows Mobile 10 is updated every year like Windows 10 so now you're just bluntly spewing out false information and it doesn't matter if you think it is crap, that doesn't stop a news site from making a clickbait article only to find out that the previous version of the OS is now unsupported.

From an MDM perspective, it's useless!

That was their only hope, offer a cheaper alternative than iOS or Android for Work devices for the enterprise. They had the cheap devices but there were/are so many bugs in the OS that many companies had no choice to migrate away. We went with iOS using DEP and VPP. It's brilliant and, believe it or not, cheaper than Android overall due to the ease of support.