Slashdot Mirror
Did the Windows Phone 7 Bomb In the US?
Thorfinn.au writes "Microsoft's new smartphone platform is off to what could be considered a slower start than expected in North America. That's according to The Street, which has released a report saying that the company sold some 40,000 units on its first day on the market.
Early sales numbers from other phone platform launches include Apple's estimated 500,000 iPhones being snatched up during its launch weekend in 2007, and a million and a half G1 Android phones being bought up by T-Mobile subscribers in the phone's first six months." Do you know anyone with one of these phones? Me either.
You better bring something that no one else has. I'm still looking and waiting for something that WP7 devices are offering that isn't covered by Android and/or iOS. I understand that a hybrid is valuable when Android and iOS offer either extreme but ... can someone tell me what WP7 does that makes it unique? What are its selling points? Because from what I've read, there are no unique aspects to it.
It's XBox all over again. They'll lose several billion on WP7 and write it off. WP8 will come out and after three years of shoving the platform down people's throats, they'll be a hard won 25% of the market. Don't get me wrong, I own an XBox 360 but how many years of mistakes did it take for them and how much did they lose on the original to come to that piece of market share?
Why flush money down a losing venture until it starts to see a return? Because they can. And one of the many faults of capitalism is that those with a ton of money can do the stupidest shit and still come out okay.
My work here is dung.
The last sentence of the summary should say: me neither.
--
Brought to you by your local Grammar Gestapo office.
Not that I am a big fan of Microsoft (far from it actually), but come on Taco, don't turn /. into another engadget or gizmodo.
While I agree it's not as good as Microsoft probably hoped for, I'd like to point out that comparing it's sales to the iPhone (who was, for all intents and purposes, the first of its kind to go critical) and Android (the first solid competitor to the first smartphone to really go critical) isn't exactly fair.
If anything, I'd say that 40,000 for the first day in an already crowded market isn't bad. Not great, but not bad.
Living With a Nerd
At this moment, declaring Windows Phone 7 a flop is just FUD.
There's the XBOX, they make money of their servers and related products, and they do a lot of business with various products and services related to Exchange.
And they make a damn fine mouse.
But in the consumer world, there's Windows, Office, and XBox. Everything else they've tried to do has failed.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Another fabulous slashdot article summary - comparing the sales on the first day of the WP7 phone with 6 months of sales for the G1? Seriously? I'm no Microsoft fanboy (I've got a G1 sitting on my desk 8 inches from me right now), but c'mon. It would be much more interesting to know how many G1's were sold the first day, the first week, and the first month, and compare that to WP7.
Surprise not found.
Neither?
I *do* know someone with a Windows Phone 7 phone.
It was bought for them by their work.
Do I know anyone who has bought one by personal choice? Not yet...
No their server products make money, the database, their dev tools, heck even the xbox by now makes money. But I do not see Winmobile end of the line, it simply is a restart. Microsoft usually is very stubborn about pressing products into the market. If they followed the US business rules they would have given up Windows by version 2.0 and probably their dev tools by 1988.
Is it still true that Office and Windows are their only profitable products?
No, they make a pretty good basic mouse.
TMobile sold out of the HTC HD2 within hours of launch. What more do you want?
WP7 looks promising, but it's not going to make people cancel contracts to jump over to AT&T or TMo to switch to the platform. I'm guessing you'll see slow adoption over the course of the next year as contracts are expiring. I think most people are taking a "wait and see" approach to WP7.
I will say this, next year when I'm in the market for a phone, it will probably be down to a WP7 phone or whatever Palm/HP has cooking up. I love WebOS, but I also love my Zune and the idea of a phone that expands on what the Zune HD has been doing is really appealing to me.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Say what you will about Microsoft but I don't think they actually had expectations of the things flying off the shelf in the first few days. They know they're re-entering a brutal market with a lot of very good products and very strong competitors.
Half a dozen people with iPhones, at least nine friends and family with Androids (including me), and nobody with Windows Mobile since we went from the HTC Moguls (WM6.1) to Epic 4Gs on launch day (8/31). The Mogul was a good phone, but the Epic (and Android) blows it away. From what I've seen of Microsoft's latest mobile OS in their commercials (large, white-on-blue buttons for a few categories, to start), I'm not interested. It looks like one of those large-button old-school phones. I'm a techie and a fan of open source, so it's not surprising that I enjoy using the Android OS. What was pleasantly surprising is how easily my parents (competent Windows users, but not true geeks) have picked it up and are enjoying it.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I don't understand it either. What happened to Microsoft? They were very innovative in the 90s, and then after XP it appeared that all they wanted to do was sit on their ass and do nothing. It culminated in Vista. The development cycle for what would ultimately be Windows 7 was gigantic if you compare it to the rest of the industry. And just now they are releasing a new smart phone OS? How can a company of that size grind to a total innovative halt like that?
Apparently most stores only got 10 or so units and they sold out immediately. Pretty hard to sell more units of something if you don't have the stock.
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for an hour. Set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The commercials say WP7 phones don't make you want to use them extensively. It's true, I skipped buying one!
In WP7, to a large extent they have copied all the shortcomings of the original iphone OS. /. is giving me "unknown error" for submission. Any ideas why?(missed getting 1st comment :( )
From what I've heard, it doesnt have true multitasking, proper copy paste, app installations from non trusted sources,etc -- similar shortcomings like the original iPhone
Its almost as if they tried to copy iPhone , but copied the original one rather than iPhone 4.
Also, why is this in the Apple category??
And
There's the XBOX, they make money of their servers and related products, and they do a lot of business with various products and services related to Exchange.
The Xbox is not remotely profitable. The entertainment division has been a hole down which money was flushed until extremely recently. It may not be a bleeding hemorrhage any more, however.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe its due to the fact that theres handset shortages everywhere and partner staff were not trained correctly, their canadian launch was abysmal, i have not seen any adds on tv for it at all here in canada, theres no advertising in their launch partner stores like telus, bell and rogers, on launch day the only store that had anything in ontario was telus flagship store in toronto and they only had the htc surround which almost no one likes, i called several telus stores in london ontario where i am, and most dident know when they were getting them, they received shipment on the second day of launch but
so far were on the 4th day and the lg optimus 7 is nowhere to be found, acording to posts on the net the situation is the same at bell and rogers with staff either not knowing what windows phone 7 is or not very interested in selling it, so it sounds like ms at least in canada is not pushing its launch partners to get any displays out or doing a very good job in getting interest going, but hey just last night alone i saw 5 kinect adds in one hour, that speaks where their priorities lie.
I have an N900, run GNU/Linux at both home and work and will probably by an HTC Android phone sooner than later. Nonetheless the UI on the Windows Phone 7 looks pretty lovely to me. I think MS has done a fine job.
The question these days of course is not what the phone can do OOTB, but what you can install on it later. AFAIK there isn't much of an 'app ecosystem' for the platform. They're also charging device manufacturers a license fee to ship with the OS, which isn't smart in a world rapidly flowing with Android phones. I wouldn't ring the death bell just yet though - it seems the market's changing pretty fast with the iPhone losing it's fashionable appeal here in the EU now that road-workers, plumbers and unemployed single fathers have the things.
Market differentiation allows for consumer individuation - something Apple's aesthetic homogeneity, doesn't offer. Think Similar (TM).
I love the comparison of First day :: Launch Weekend :: First 6 Months
Like anyone can even know that
Too little, too late.
The smartphone market is flooded and the Win7 phones are too late and too expensive.
Microsoft would be smart to subsidize the cost of the phones (which are only on AT&T and T-Mobile) and give it away for free. Then, it might make an impact.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
who will be the first to see the 'blue screen of death' on their phone?
MS doesnt have "fanboys" to the degree google and apple do these days, they wont line up or rush into a 1.0 release. The market is too fluid and competitive for any one now to dominate in the longer term. I think their approach will be similar to that of their Xbox consoles, nobody gave them a chance, too late to the game to compete with Sony and Nintendo are they out of their minds? etc. But they stuck with it slowly giving consumers what they wanted, features and services they couldnt get anywhere else that consumers had been crying out for and also spent zillions marketing it which probably played a larger role, yes the Xbox doesnt dominate the market, but it does very good business and thats all any company wants.. will it bomb? I think not.. I have one, but that said i also have a few iPhones and a Nexus one. WP7 is 1.0 in features and function to be sure, but it wont be forever and i like many aspects of it and am using it day to day atm over my other phones.
So they've outsold the G1 if you extrapolate 40,000 per day for six months which is 7 million, greater than the 1.5 millions G1s.
He's on it like Donkey Kong.
I played with it. It was not innovative. I was waiting for the "WOW" factor. The only thing they changed was the interface. I don't feel it was enough to WOW me. I feel like its the same 'ol windows phone, which I use on a daily basis....
The Xbox fiasco has racked up some 7+ billion in visible losses. If you take away all the profitable products that the Xbox is mixed in with over the past 8 years the losses are significantly higher. I've seen Microsoft people estimate the actual Xbox losses up in the 15 billion range.
Just last quarter the Xbox was still such a drag on Microsoft's E&D division that they still 200 million in the red for the quarter.
That means that even with the profitable products in E&D, the hundreds of millions in online fees being charged that the Xbox is still a massive money sink.
Xbox revenues, yes. Profits, no.
That is why Microsoft is fed up with the clusterfuck of a product and is now trying to turn it into a Wii type device instead of handing the idiots running the Xbox disaster more billions to blow on new Xbox hardware.
Why would anyone expect anything different? My expectation for Windows Phone 7 is that it will have slow uptake, but, if it is a good phone OS (and not junk like WinCE, which actually did pretty well for awhile), it will gradually increase market share with very few people realizing that that is what they are running. There will be four groups of people: "I've got an Iphone", "My phone runs Android", "I've got a BLackberry", and "I don't know what OS my phone runs". The last group will be composed primarily of those running WP7.
People aren't going to go out and buy a new smartphone just to get Windows Phone 7 on it, but they may replace their existing phone with a WP7 phone when it is time to upgrade.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Come on people, give it a week or two. Not all movies are #1 after the 1st box office weekend. Sometimes it takes a while for them to catch on.
.NET dev, so of course I lean toward MS products. I've never owned an Apple product other than the IIe, and I'm a proud Android owner.
Our DBA picked up the WP7 on launch day, and after I played with it for a few minutes, It's very cool. Without going into the pros/cons, I'll just say I was very impressed with the screen's crispness, and the fluidity of the phone's interface. The WP7 is late to the game in a crowded market, but other products (Chrome browser, for example) have made headway...just give it some time before calling it DOA.
Disclaimer: I'm not a MS fanboy, but I am a
These days Android is so promising that so many apps are available for you, you cant risk buying the new release WP7. I think they still need to prove there competitiveness now that Apple and Android Phone has well-established their names on this category.
http://www.pathtoasia.com/jobs/
_
Not really. The design and manufacturing are contracted out: All MS gives is the brand.
If I could get one of these in a PDA-like form instead of phone-like, for under $300, I'd get one, if for no other reason than compatibility testing, development, and the XBox Live integration.
But I am not going to replace my phone at this time.
And that's a real key point to remember, there. Unlike many consumer electronic devices, there are huge barriers to getting a new phone as soon as it comes on the market. Contracts to not all expire at the same time. Check for sales numbers on the 2-year anniversary of the release of previous popular phones (like the iPhone 3Gs for example), and check for sales numbers after a full year of peoples' contracts expiring, and then we'll talk.
Myself, I have no idea if WP7 will succeed, but I think it's got a shot, especially if they take certain actions that they haven't taken yet (eg. extend the "indy marketplace" concept from the XBox to WP7, and STOP PUSHING ZUNE BRANDING SO HARD).
a million and a half G1 Android phones being bought up by T-Mobile subscribers
Who's the unlucky sap who bought half a phone?
People are not excited because past versions of their OS have had such serious issues, that why would people want to put themselves through that again?
I knew so many people that switched to Android, the Palm Pre, and the iPhone from a Windows Phone because they got tired of rebooting their phone on a daily basis.
I love to see these guys fail.
It failed? I thought it was a big success? Maybe they should have built a few more??
I'd hardly call it news. I can guarantee anyone here expected it to flop like a fish w/ it's head cut off & tossed into a desert within the first week on the market, like that other retarded phone Microsoft launched. Seriously, who would buy a phone with no SDK (= no apps)? Furthermore, simply purchasing this pseudo-smartphone would be an (unwise) investment of at least a $15 data plan for at least 2 years, or $300! Why not get a fully POSIX-complient phone while you're at it, then!? Hell, most embedded electronics are these days!
Yes, because that makes perfect sense.
Try "Me neither."
[/englishpedantry]
I know several people and all of the surrounding stores were sold out in a few minutes after going on sale.
Shows the faith the manufacturers have in them, although its pretty obvious if you've just invested the eye-watering costs of setting up the manufacturing facilities you'd make sure it was so anyway. Look at the ranges from the initial players, HTC, Samsung, LG etc - turned off, there's nothing between their WinPhone 7 and Android models.
I arrived at AT&T 10 minutes after they opened and they were sold out the 4 phones they had. I was the first person to get on the waiting list. There were 5 people behind me waiting to get on the list. They did receive one more phone that day and I got it. I suspect the demand was higher that day than the available inventory. As for the phone, I love it. Showed it to my wife and kids (14 & 16). The kids raved about it, and my wife (not a technology nerd) was surprised she like it so much versus her iPhone (3G). The UI is very slick, usable and responsive. This is not your typical Microsoft version 1 product. It feels a lot more like it came from a first class consumer electronics company than a business software company.
Like:
BSOD: Don't leave home without it!
or
Abort, Retry, Fail - WP7 gives you options!
We're all still locked into our 47-year contracts.
My god it's only been 3 days!
The only thing I want to know is: Does Windows 7 Mobile allows me to squirt my pals?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Bunch of blotchy blocks - I don't get it. The commercials are cool though but if you're not really looking at or using the phone then would you judge it as successful? I guess sales are all that matters.
Xbox
Zune
Windows Phone 7,Windows Mobile
All those high profile failures are part of Microsoft's disastrous E&D division.
E&D and the online services/search products are reason everyone wants Ballmer gone. Blowing billions on garbage products like the Xbox and Bing are something the people who actually make profits, OS, office software, and server&tools are sick a tired of after a decade.
There is only so long that people are willing to wake up and go to work everyday just to have other people like the idiots running E&D blow billions in profits on junk products.
With visionaries like this working in Microsoft research, it is no wonder why Microsoft keeps missing the next big technology wave.
I don't. Clearly it's a failure.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
And they make a damn fine mouse.
Have you ever tried the mouse wheel?
Really?
First and foremost, I'll admit that I'm biased because I've already purchased two Android based phones (G1 and Nexus One). That said, I believe the key to the somewhat slow start on WP7 based phones is that Microsoft's commercials and marketing approach hasn't been really well thought out, and I think people are subconsciously following the hidden unintended message. The core to their campaign is that they're advertising their OS as one where you can get more done in a shorter period of time, so that you won't have the phone stuck in front of your face at all times. Their tag line is "Designed to get you in and out and back to life." What that makes me think, right off the bat, is that for efficiency's sake, everything you need would be quickly accessible. A noble goal. But the down side of that, to which I don't think Microsoft's marketing department really paid any heed, is that perhaps the reason you're getting "in and out and back to life" isn't because of a well designed interface or intelligently managed data, but because there's little else to do with the phone. I think Microsoft is unintentionally screaming "Our latest operating system is so limited, you won't want to use your WP7 phone for longer than ten seconds!" I'm not really one of those people they're complaining about in the commercial: when I get an email or text message, I quickly look at it if I'm in a position to do so safely and then put my phone away. But based on the number of apps and things I can do with my Android based phone, I can completely understand that there are a lot of people out there going from app to app, emailing, tweeting, texting, or just staring at a map or navigation app being updated by GPS. This isn't because they can't get the activity completed with their Android, Blackberry, or iPhone, but because they can use it for more than ten seconds without getting bored. While I haven't touched a WP7 phone and I have no idea how many apps are available for it, Microsoft seems to be implying that having more apps than what they supply is too many; anything else might just cause that same "confusion" and lack of progress that users of other phones suffer from. I think customers are picking up on the cues and are slow to buy the WP7 phones. Of course, the other possibilities include over-saturation of the smartphone market (how many people are willing to break their recent cellphone contract they just got in order to get the latest Android, Blackberry, or iPhone so they can switch to yet another new one?), or simply unattractive phones or deals... But if you ask me, Microsoft's marketing is to blame, and not in terms of under-advertising their product.
The sharpest blade is no match for the sharpest mind.
Now that is hilarious. The same console that kicked the the shit out of the first Xbox is almost beating Microsoft some 8 years later.
That is some serious humiliation of Microsoft by Sony.
I got the Samsung Focus and it has the sexiest screen I've ever seen. The UI is very responsive, a lot more so than my iPhone, and I really dig the contacts section. You have your basic contact info, pulled from all your online accounts, like google, windows live, etc..., but you also get a timeline facebook feed for each of them. At first I didn't think that was much of a feature but, I really dig it now. Is it perfect? Hell no. But, it's very, very good. I also do a lot of playing around with XNA so this was a no brainer purchase for me.
I wonder if they fixed the alarm bug from Windows CE / Pocket PC / Windows Mobile.
I purchased the phone on day one not because I am a fanboy to Microsoft, but because I liked demos of the OS, especially the UI. I am noticing that alot of people are hung up about the lack of a few features that Apple and Google currently offer, and to these points I want to reiterate that Microsoft as psomised that they will be coming in the form of updates. Before buying, I read ALOT of the early reviews of the phone, and most everyone was pleasently surprized as they all expected Windows Mobile 7 a successor to 6.5, but rather they got Windows Phone 7, a compleatly different OS. One last point, it does bring several new things to the table, and I think my favorite is the integration of Microsoft Word and Excel (I have not used the one note app yet). As a college student I am constantly getting emails with attachments of these very kind, and it is super useful to beable to open and edit them on my phone (when they are not too long).
...and it never was. It's about long term sales. MS is late to the game, when the market is already approaching optimal saturation. For them, they won't see the huge initial growth that the other platforms did.
What they are banking on, and what I am watching for, is their staying power. If MS has learned anything, it's patience. They have the war chest and experience to play the "slow and steady" game.
This assumes that they have something unique to offer. I see them as being in one of the best positions to challenge RIM ( I wish to $diety SOMEONE would. Blackberries suck ass, and the server is only fun to administrate if you are a masochist ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You better bring something that no one else has.
If M$ is true to form, you can expect WP7 phones to synchronise better with Outlook and the user's desktop IE. Things will just work better between the WP7 and Windoze 7 on the desktop. Exchanging pictures, music, videos, etc. will all just work right with WP7 phones and other phones will either not get it right or it won't work at all. Things like DRM sharing will work between WP7 phones and the user's desktop but won't work for anyone else's phone.
This is the same strategy M$ used to drive out the competitors to M$ office. One way of offering a better product is to sabotage your competitor's products. This is one thing that M$ does well.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
naming your phone OS after an OS that people use only because they have to (yeah, I know Win 7 is better than Vista, but what isn't).
Observe that even though Mac OS X has a better image than Windows nobody calls iPhone OS X or even iPhone iOS in marketing. Sure, Microsoft makes only the OS, but they should have come up with a different name, Google uses "Android" for example, if they used "Linux" their success would probably be different.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
Then read this
http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/65871.aspx
and have at it. 99 centes too much you say? How about 0 cents, for any app. For all apps. Who says Micrsoft is greedy? They give it all away. Of course, it's not their apps, but that's beside the point
Do you know anyone with a one of these phones? Me either.
My wife was the first person I knew who had an Android phone, and it was when I bought her a Droid this past December. That was quite some time after the G1 came out, so I guess Android bombed too.
Oh, what?
I've actually been pretty happy with my WM6.5 phone. However, I'm a power user that runs a cooked ROM. Stock AT&T ROMs suck - bloated, slow, unreliable.
However, WP7 removes basically every feature WM6.5 had that made it attractive to power users despite its UI glitches. So Microsoft basically threw away their existing customer base.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I do, my somewhat technophobic wife bought the Samsung Focus and hasn't put it down for 3 days. The few games she has are much cooler than what I have on my iphone and it plays them beautifully ! The screen is WAY nicer than my iphone 3gs, the interface is very cool. I've pried it away from her a couple times and I am definitely replacing my iphone with a wp7 soon, I just wanted to wait and make sure it wasn't cancelled like the kin and I'd like to see microsoft get the cut & paste taken care of. There's also a bug with adding memory cards to the phones that can cause instability and microsoft is apparently working on a patch.
xbox live integration is very cool for us gamers, and I'm actually shocked at how well games play on the samsung focus, I have not been impressed with them on my 3gs. The official Tetris for the wp7 sucks 'tho, some idiot decided to make it all tap and swipe instead of having virtual controllers... It also seems like microsoft might have made a mistake in letting hardware-beta-testers leave the first reviews for most (then-beta)-apps. groundspeak's geocaching app sufered from some poor beta-hardware testers reviews, but the app and hardware at launch actually work better than the same app on my 3gs.
I'm torn between getting one now and waiting for even better hardware to come out, but I'm definitely making the switch, apple's "holier than 'thou" approach to everything just makes me nauseous !
Microsoft said their target was first time smart-phone buyers, which would include people like my wife and she was never sold on the iphone, but she did want the wp7 and she loves it... She was not interested in the Kin and predicted it would flop and die, so she has some taste... I think it'll be a success, especially once the xbox crowd discovers it, the integration w/ the xbox live stuff and the phone's gaming abilities are really cool.
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
After seeing the advertisements, I realized I don't do nearly enough "clubbing" to enjoy this new smart phone. Further more I surely do not want more "clubbing", except for baby seals of course.
We have two (Samsung Focus and HTC Surround on AT&T) that we purchased for testing. Both devices are slick, smooth, and fully-featured. The Exchange integration is easily the best available, even ousting Touchdown for Android. The ability to not only view but edit Office documents is also huge. The UI is very intuitive and the functionality of launch features like Social apps integration and the music player are working great. Sure it has its flaws.. not being able to connect to WiFi that uses a hidden SSID for example... but people seem to have terribly selective memories when it comes to the the early days of their now-favorite mobile platforms. This is easily the best, smoothest, and most well-rounded launch of any mobile platform (unified or open) to date. Should Microsoft have waited just a bit longer to make sure they didnt make some of the same mistakes that they criticized other manufacturers for (e.g. no cut, copy, paste, or true multitasking)? Absolutely. But at least they learned somewhat and launched with a road map for integrating those features within the next 3 months. WP7 pushes the industry in a number of ways, and I look forward to seeing it improve and forcing the the other two to stay on their toes. I, for one, welcome (back) our former mobile overlords.
The G1's numbers aren't comparable to the others: 1.5 million over 6 months = 8,300 / day if spread evenly across the whole time period. Of course the spread is not even, but this naive comparison would imply that WP7 is doing just fine.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
The phone is a flop as expected from the Janey Come Lately, no surprise there....
but the BIG success is the AD...
Few ads generate as much talk about the ad over the product than this...
Two segments in particular are generating a lot of posts on web sites... thats the Mystery Woman in the Black Lingerie...
http://www.suite101.com/content/the-windows-7-phone-commercial-and-a-lingerie-clad-woman-a303721
Two segments which probably total 10 seconds and this woman can now cash in.... she is probably the hotest thing out there right now.
For me the theres a third segment with the redheaded bride.. but I prefer redheads. Both would be full time distractions over some stupid phone.... but unfortunately I see alot of people like that, just another reason why I don't have a smart phone.
The ad is a great hit, spot on to the lusers of the crackberry, but the disease is present on all the similar phones users.
A+ Marketing, F- phone, F- OS
This is not the phone you want! Android!
1311393600 - Back to Black
40,000 units would be about what I expected them to sell. Microsoft is entering a market already serviced 100% by both Android, iOS and to a lesser extent, RIM. What does WP7 offer that one of those three don't offer to those that are looking for a specific feature set? You could possibly make the argument that WP7 offers the best feature set of Android and RIM, but that would be a stretch, and then you have the problem of the fact that WP7 has nothing to offer in terms of apps to speak of...
Then there's the minor stigma of being a Microsoft product and the MAJOR stigma of Windows Mobile 6 and it's predecessors. The previous versions of Windows Mobile alone would keep me from even considering a Windows phone at all... WM6 was so horrible that I the visceral kneejerk reaction I have when anyone even mentions a Windows based phone is "Worst phones ever."
Microsoft has a lot of ground to cover before anyone seriously considers a Windows based phone over an Android or iOS (or RIM). They have so many things working against them at this point that it's going to be a long, hard road that I don't know if they can ever make it. They might have a meager share eventually, but given the development costs and continuing support costs of WP, I suspect it's going to fall by the wayside just like WM.
I just don't see any place in the market for WP7 and I don't hear of anything MS is planning to make WP7 stand out from the background noise. The 40k units moved are most likely to people who don't know and/or don't care about what phone they have, they just got whatever was handed to them by the sales person.
They have a key differentiator: built in theft prevention - nobody wants to touch it
It must be good if Slashdot felt the need to shit on it so quickly just because it's a Microsoft product.
Let's see what a site with quality editorial content says:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/11/windows-phone-7-already-doomed-dont-let-early-sales-fool-you.ars
The two features I'm most hoping to see in WP7 is privacy and end-user control. iPhones and Droids are very poor in this regard: They control what you can install, they can uninstall software without your consent, and goodness knows how much your usage is tracked. Does anyone know how WP7 fares?
We're not saying that it DID bomb. We're just asking the question -- did it bomb? Based on an unconfirmed, context free number measured against an unspecific post facto metric.
Did someone launch a missle at Los Angeles? 'Cause, you know, someone saw a contrail. And Obama's trip to India -- it cost $200M a day. Is Obama a secret muslim?
There are now four pretty good mobile operating systems to choose from, backed by companies with different design and development philosophies, and different strategies competing for an exploding market. And its obvious that all four companies are in it to win.
Windows Phone, whetever else it may be, is not a knock off of iPhone and is not a fractured ecosystem like Android.
I say, bring on the party.
Anybody with an iPhone, or an iPad. I know one person with an iPod, maybe two.
Accordingly, that means the whole product is a complete failure.
Same applies to Android phones and the PS3.
We all have different needs and wants from our devices so to help you understand my angle; I am an occasional business traveler who enjoys being connected to email, can access maps and driving directions, restaurant and business information nearby, read various Office documents, and generally stay in touch. I am also a hobby programmer and enjoy writing little utility apps for my personal use. I am not a heavy app downloader - my iPhone had all of 20 installed apps. I am a gamer but generally enjoy puzzle and strategy games over FPS or other games that demand heavy real-time input. I do not own an XBox (PS3 for me). I do not use Facebook or Twitter in any real capacity. I tried, and I just don't get it. And finally I am a HUGE music lover. I'm the guy that still buys CDs for the artwork and rips them at higher bitrates. I'm always on the lookout for something new. I also rip all of my DVDs (movies and TV) so I can take them on travel and watch them on the plane.
If you picked up on the iPhone comment above your first question might be why I considered defecting? The simple answer is iTunes. I've had many minor glitches and nags with iTunes over the years, however the recent move of my music and movie library to a NAS was so painful it was the last straw for iTunes.
So what's to like about Win7?
Microsoft targeted its marketing towards people who think their phone is consuming too much of their time and want to just use it and get back to their lives. Maybe not the best market in a society that texts to distraction, wants full computer experience in their hand, and would worry more about leaving their phone at home than their keys. Maybe?
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
TheStreet has been wrong before. It's citing one unnamed source with no credentials whatsoever. Putting any faith in this number is pretty silly.
Hey gais! I heard they sold 52million on the first day! Can I be your next source?
More importantly, the phone is sold out virtually everywhere. Its been sold out for two weeks now in europe.
So, whatever the number actually is it is entirely driven by who much stock is on hand rather than demand. Probably won't be able to tell what the real demand is for a couple months with all the component shortages.
So stop reporting this drivel!
Geez. This is probably the most Slashdot has ever stretched for an anti-MS story. It's only been available for three days and they're already declaring it a flop. Filing under Apple is a nice touch. Shows where the bias lies here. It almost smells like this story was prepared before the phone even went on sale. The only way to get any worse would be to say, "Windows Phone 7 Sells 0 Units Week Before Launch."
And as a matter of fact I do know somebody with a Windows phone.
Remember, the ones that they gave to "all" of their employees? Or at least the 50,000 US employees, presumably.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This isn't a PC that can be used for 5 years. It's not a laptop that gets maybe 4 if you push it. It's a contractual based item that continually has openings in the market every two years for a person on contract. After that, they basically get a free or heavily subsidized phone for their replacement. It's stupid not to, unless they want to end their contract and go month to month, but most people don't do that.
As for WP7's features and functionality. This is Slashdot. The requirements we have for phones having secure Exchange support, multitasking, copy and paste, are things that surprise surprise, are not heavily used by most people. Granted, not having copy and paste, or multitasking, and things like that as a nerd, are hard to forgive. However, having my Samsung Galaxy S sitting on the desk here, I rarely find myself using the ability to multitask, or copy and paste. And Exchange support isn't an issue as it's my personal device.
I think that what MS is offering is the ability for app developers to develop good looking, functional applications in a very short amount of time using skills they largely already have. The amount of tie-in to the data across the platform is from what I've read and seen, unsurpassed at this point. That's why with very little fanfare, I did a look at the apps available for WP7, and they are really nice, and I haven't found one that is as low quality as what I regularly see on the Android marketplace.
Will WP7 be a winner? Time will tell. There are issues that bulge out at me like having the carrier have a "say" in the updates to the phone. This is where Apple makes strides, and Android is showing its pain points. I've had my Galaxy S for months and am *still* waiting on an update to Froyo, and Gingerbread (2.3) is around the corner. I will probably never see that update at the current pace, and would be best advised to basically buy a new phone anyway.
I think WP7 is an interesting platform, and one I might jump into after a few kinks are worked out. I'm not loyal to one platform, I will try what's best, and after having used Android and seeing its deficiencies that are based on the platform as a whole, not little things here and there, I look forward to the "one-ness" that the iPhone had. WP7 gives me more choices, has nice apps that do what I need, and adds competition to the marketplace. If MS is "in it to win it", the only benefit to us is that the other guys have to stay on their game and keep the competition up, and as a result we get better products all around.
And BTW, I went to the AT&T store, and they were sold out. I played with the demo units. They only had a handful to start off with, so I am thinking that the 40k number may be due more to supply than demand. Like I said though, a single weekend isn't going to make or break the platform, but they better start getting inventory and pushing that marketing machine so they can move those units.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Actually, they stole that "feature" from applications developed for SGI.
Remember, MS was copying their "high end enterprise" market-model from what used to occupy the high-end market in computing... SUN and SGI. Unix-based $20,000 workstations that had $50,000 applications loaded onto them.
There were tiered-pricing models back then as well. And if you wanted users to be able to "share" work, that cost more. And you had to keep paying yearly to "rent" your software.
You reallty think MS invented that kind of "rape your customers" approach? No, if they had, at least *that* would have been innovative. But sadly, it's just another aspect that they "borrowed" from the existing high-end market -- especially if you were trying to do broadcast-quality graphics back then.
The late 80's were filled with spinning chrome logos, mostly produced on very expensive SGI equipment (Although there was a $20,000 Difinicon board that worked with the IBM PC. It had it's own 68030 CPU for rendering and essentially just used the PC as a big power supply), but it was the software-models from that time that MS copied into NT Workstation and Server.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Yes, I do know someone who got the phone, he loves it and has been raving on facebook about it...
Also, it's "me neither"...
Yeah, I have a friend that works in Redmond too.
Well, they brand a pretty good mouse. They also brand the best ergonomic keyboard I've used. Maybe they should brand an OS, and a phone, and a browser? :)
Please don't read my sig.
It "might" help if T-mobile actually advertised it on their own home page. I see no mention of it at all on t-mobile.com.
The top-line SE phone is the X10 - and will soon be the X12. Both run Android. Thank you for playing!
Hmm... comparing launch day, to launch weekend, to 6 months sales figures? What's that all about?!
While I'm sure it's safe to say both Android and iOS are significantly outselling WP7, these numbers listed give little sense of how much. The only figure that gives some semblance of perspective is the text of the article pointing to Google's clocking 200,000 activations per day.
Granted, there are not extended sales figures as this product has just been released. Just the same, boo on poor journalism in not comparing apples to androids (launch day sales).
The fact that Apple are generally better products then M$ is not a sign, maybe people do not want to have a blue screen of death in the middle of an important conversation!
Developers! Developers! Developers! Oh, but they can only program in one language - C#. Just rewrite your codebases of hundreds of thousands of lines so you can port your apps to WP7! It'll be a lot of fun! Both iOS and Android support C / C++, and Android had to release a whole separate NDK to allow that. But yet they still released the importance of supporting one of the most prolific languages of all time.
This reminds me of Sony, where they have so many conflicting interests that they can't do anything well. Why can't Sony DVD players play DivX*? Because Sony also makes movies, and DivX is the leading choice for distributing movies over the internet.
So in this case MS has a programming language to push, a Silverlight platform to push, etc, etc. So it's C# only, to the detriment of WP7, in hopes that it will increase the popularity of C#.
*Perhaps they have models that play DivX now? I haven't looked in the last few years.
Better known as 318230.
All I've see is a lot of promos trying to get students to develop stuff for it by offering some prizes such as going to Vegas and the like. From what I've seen only the 'certified' fanboys are the ones who know how the heck the .net mobile platform is supposed to work but I have seen none of them with one of the phones.
Looks like it's just gonna be another Zune (for good.)
I've been holding off getting an iPhone 4 (I had a 3GS) until WP7 was released and I could have a play...
So, a few days ago, when my contract allowed, I got them to send me the Samsung Omnia 7 (a UK variant of the phone, I think they dropped the ball a LOT by having such a confusing array of manufacturers and devices around the world, they could easily have rationalised that).
My options are...
1/ Use it, replacing the 3GS and sell that on eBay probably buying an iPod Touch Gen4 to cover the few features I'll be missing for the first 6 months while 3rd party devs catch up.
2/ Sell it on eBay and buy an iPhone 4
3 days of usage in, I'm veering towards keeping the WP7 though it's a very close call...
There are problems (listed at the end), but most of them are either just annoyances, things I miss from the iPhone or software which can, and I believe will, be fixed. The economics of avoiding the iPhone are hard to argue. Over 18 months (the length of contract), this is going to cost me about £450. The iPhone minimum contract was 24 months and would have cost me well in excess of £1100 with worse inclusions in the contract. Of course, the eBay route all but negates that but still...
Positives and negatives. For what it's worth, I don't view 3rd party multitasking as a positive feature, it's introduction to the iPhone in it's current form is an unmitigated disaster. That said, the jailbreak software, "Backgrounder" was a pretty good implementation...
Samsung Omnia 7 Fundemental Problems
Custom data/power socket. This is just Samsung's fault, they do this for all their phones and it's annoying. I guess the HTC doesn't have that problem.
No external mute switch - Just a nice feature from the iPhone, it's probably patented.
Freaking huge - It's bigger than the iPhones
No RDS on radio. Apparently the chip is likely to support this, maybe the API will some day so this could be software...
Third Party Problems (I believe these will all be resolved)
No Satellite Navigation
No Runkeeper/MapMyRun
Limited facebook integration and not great Facebook app. The interesting thing about this one is that I think the app fails due to it's compliance with the WP7 application styles. It just doesn't work very well for a more complicated app.
UI Problems
No cut and paste (They've promised this soon)
Too easy to mis-press send button ( I hope they notice this, but it's right beside the space button)
No spaces allowed in Exchange usernames (dumb, exchange and Windows allows it)
No navigation when in IE landscape (odd!)
marketplace is rubbish - especially search (this is pretty unforgiveable, I think it will be resolved though)
Can't change windows live account - (silly design bug I assume, they will hopefully resolve it)
No lock timeout setting - I want my phone to lock, but preferably after I've not used it for 10 mins, not instantly
Radio interface pretty rubbish (I'm writing my own as we speak)
I prefer the UI to the iPhone one. The iPhone was the first to become really responsive but they've not moved forward from there very much. This UI looks great at the moment and has NEVER been anything but slick and stable.
Great multiple file selection for delete/move. It's a small thing, but I get a lot of spam and it's nice being able to quickly select it all and delete it all.
It has an FM radio - OK, no big thing but it is a nice to have.
Which brings me to the numero uno, most important, most spectacular feature. I don't have to buy a £1000 computer in order to be a
When I worked at Microsoft, I knew one or two people who had the previous generation. Most people I saw had iphones. Now I've got a friend working on the Win7 team now and he's got one, although he still has his iphone....
I think the way MS does stuff is just so weird, they buy up everything thing that looks like a good idea, try to smash it all together, and then throw 90% of it away. And there's often some really good ideas in that 90%, but all it takes is one spooked exec or manager to chuck it all out...
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/24/xbox-goes-profitable-almost-like-a-grown-up-business/
I'm not saying overall they are ahead, but I wasn't sure what you meant by your post.
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
If they only sold 40,000 on the first day, that could add up to a lot of phones... I wouldn't mind selling even 20,000 of something a day. You give that a six month run, you get 3,600,000 units. Kind of dwarfs a million and a half G1 Android phones in six months.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Surely it's "me neither" or more correctly "neither do I" ?
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-income-by-division-2010-2
"Entertainment and devices" has been positive and negative over the years, shows as positive at the moment.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But the interface looks fresh and nice, and I think the advertising spin is innovative (get in--get out---get back to your life).
I know someone who has a WP7 phone. They brought it into the office and showed it around. It was very fast and a few of the 3D games were impressive. I wouldn't get one myself but it did not suck.
Okay first of all to post after a product is released and use mixed standards to hate on something is wrong. The orignal post uses some weak comparison of Apple sales to prove a product didn't take off and it's therefore no good. If that's the case lets talk about the HTC HD2 Windows 6v when it came out. The first day in 4 hours it SOLD OUT in the US, gone. They released it again and within the first week, SOLD OUT, not 400k plus or millions, or numbers, Gone, sold out. So according to those bias standards you using for Apple. Apple has been defeated before Win7 phone came out. Now, lets talk about Windows 7 phone. Windows is just now trying to get back to full swing smartphone sales. People are a little skiddish of a new product. They want to see how it does so there not rushing in. Look, I Love Linux and I like Windows very much. Don't make rage about Apple's newest release Iphone 4 and the plethora of epic failures yet people keep buying the phone just because it has apps, really? I mean I can get a Boost phone with Apps. I'm interested in the Windows 7 myself, I'm slowly, cautiously researching this before/if I get it. However, don't rage against one product so biased. Can you name a few innovative products from MS? Really, I mean really? Would you like to know the first time in years Apple's stock had a sudden spike in it's stock %6? It's when Apple started dual booting into Windows. Get over it. MS has issues, I don't agree with a lot of things they do, but they are the biggest target on the market. Unlike, Steveo that gets pissed like a little child when he tries to take ninja throwing stars onto a plane in Japan and pitches a fit for being told no. Then tries to cover it up, playing the he said, she said game. Microsoft has issues, and so does Apple. Leave the unspoken holy war, raging, out okay.
The entertainment division has been showing a profit ever since they threw their Mac development into the entertainment division.
It's really hard for me to believe a device with a 60% failure rate is showing any sort of profit, but I could be wrong.
Qxe4
Who would have thought.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1) I haven't seen one yet. Not on the BART, not in the bars, not on the streets, not around work. Is it out ? 2) All of the ads I have seen show people using phones so obsessively interesting that they miss out on some real life around them. Microsoft promises to make a phone that doesn't grab the attention of the user the same way. How many people are really looking for a less interesting phone ?
These numbers could be VERY inflated due the MS employee WP7 phone program. I have it on good knowledge that employees are instructed to go out to a retail outlet and buy their phone. Then expense it. Pretty easy way to pad your stats.
Wow. Just like that it's already in the bargain bin. They didn't even wait a week. Sales must be absolutely dismal.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
ha-ha-only-serious.
I am surrounded by gadget geeks. I personally have an iPhone, a blackberry, and a G2. I used to have a Sidekick. I have friends who swear by the Pre, and friends who have gotten three iPhones so far, and I wrote some code for an OpenMoko at one point. I regularly see people who aren't even Mac users discussing the benefits and problems of new Mac models, or iPods. When someone announces a new device which has a CPU in it and some kind of display or network connection, I normally know someone who's planning to get it within the first week. ... and while I knew MS was doing a Windows Phone at some point, I haven't heard a thing about it. No one cares. No one wants one. People who compulsively buy extra computers (like me), people who go to at least one electronics store per day on their lunch break, are not even aware of the release date.
Now, there's probably still a market for it, but hell, even the Zune is more popular than this, I think I know someone who has one. So I think this is a pretty good indicator of a product which has not found a receptive audience.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
They're already in the bargain bin.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This is a new thing, and not aimed squarely at techies like Android was, so it may take some time. I guess the lack of a stellar turn out was a fail in light of the $100,000,000 or whatever they're spending on Windows Phone Ads.
In the Bad Way, a Windows Phone is like anything else in tech -- "civilian" buyers are apprehensive, just because it's a new thing they haven't seen before. Techies are apprehensive because it's really Windows Phone OS 1.0, and will need a few service packs before it's at all acceptable. Or at least, that's what you have to expect. And perhaps, we recall the crazy impact Microsoft made with the Zune, or how Windows Mobile has been hemorrhaging market share, or what a boondoggle the Kin was.
And then, outside of certainly reality distortion fields, phones are worse than other tech items. Most people who want to buy a new mobile phone have an old one... and won't buy a new one until they're off contract. Windows Phone has the additional liability of being sold only directly against the iPhone 4... only AT&T has them now. That'll keep people who don't want AT&T away as well. And of course, there's the two models... the unit with speakers. Really? Did they have to launch with a silly gimmick. People in the know, at least, understand that in a few months, there will be more models (unless this completely tanks, ala Kin) and maybe even other carriers signed up.
Apple is a special case, too. The bar they set for "New iPhone Day" will never be met by anyone else. Apple's cultivated this for years. They only do one new iPhone per year, they always release it in June. Savvy people who want the iPhone (assuming that's not an oxymoron) stop buying in late winter or early spring, and wait for the new model. Users who want to upgrade do too, or they're already on the update-in-June schedule, with their subsidized cell contract. There's no hope or concern of a better model coming out next month (next week, tommorrow) as there is in the Android world. So Apple creates an event that can never be matched in one day or one weekend by anyone else.
That's not a terrible thing, either. It means that, for other phones, there's no boom in June, but no dry season either. You might get spots of that... I'll probably be waiting to see about what Motorola does or doesn't do on a Droid 3 before I trade up from my Droid next year, but there are plenty of other models that are completely acceptable already.
-Dave Haynie
MS will have to wait 2 years for everyone's current smartphone contract to expire and be eligible for a new subsidized phone from their carrier. At which point they'll be lucky to grab 20% of the people seeking new phones.
The only chance MS really has is to totally shake up the cell phone business model, the way Google tried and failed with the Nexus One. Sell the phone, unlocked, for under $200 and figure out a way to get cell carriers to accept calls from it. Then it will be a hit.
Queue the Apple and Google circle jerk.
I see them as being in one of the best positions to challenge RIM ( I wish to $diety SOMEONE would.
If Microsoft is the challenger then they're going to fail. EAS sucks, and WP7 doesn't support encrypted Exchange connections... this "series" of phones aren't business devices. I couldn't use it at work where an encrypted connection is required for Exchange (where an iPhone would). Perhaps the Blackberry competitor you're looking for is the Droid Pro? Or maybe it's the iPhone, which does 95% of everything a BB can do, and plenty more (Apps). It sure as hell isn't any of the WP7 series.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Let me put this into context for you: This web-site shows you what the launch of the iphone vs. the palm pre looked like. The palm pre sold about 50,000 units in its first two days. People like you were saying then that the launch looked like a success even though there were supply problems. Fast forward 11 months, and people started calling it a complete flop. So, you say it's too soon to tell, I say, history is my guide. You can't topple giants with slack starts.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
...shut the airports and go to red alert!
xbox has been profitable since 2008.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/24/xbox-goes-profitable-almost-like-a-grown-up-business/
Uhh ohh we can bash Microsoft, lets flood the page! The new Phone gets good reviews everywhere, and not without reason. It's an overall good os. It would be loved by Slashdot. But it's Microsoft => Bash it to hell. Great work, as usual.
The macintosh business unit is part of "Entertainment and devices" to hide the losses.
to not have the business side (Exchange, mainly) dead solid perfect at launch is really mind-boggling.
Is its name: Both iOS and Android are ubiquitous and multipurpose, WP7 will never get even close in market share and you won't see TVs running Windows 7 any-time soon.
I bet that particular "feature" can be chalked up the the general craptitude of the .NET Compact Framework they've chosen to ship with. It probably uses too much memory, deadlocks, can't relinquish devices or otherwise does nasty things which assume only one running instance.
I love how a comment containing abject speculation based on absolutely *no* evidence gets modded up insightful. I mean, really, mods? Are you *that* fucking stupid?
As a developer, this phone is great
The product's fate is sealed in 1 or 2 days of it's existence? Great journalistic ability there.
How can it not be successful when it fights crime too?
http://windowsphonethoughts.com/news/show/101114/hawaii-five-o-windows-phone-7-bing-product-placement.html
That alone is quite something. I also read iPhones sell at about 200,000 per day and android phones outsell iPhone 2:1 in the latest report. It's not the fault of how good or bad the W7 phone is, there simply aren't enough smartphone totting hipstsers to buy them.
The market demand is being met by a huge range of phones, even if W7P was stellar, it'd have a tough job converting folk. iPhone users are difficult to pry away from their gadgets, Android technically speaking is so far ahead of the compeitition it's not funny and the pace of development is outpacing what proprietary OS could achieve.
Also, bare in mind Symbian based phones still have more market shre than either iOS or Android, and still sell well. This is kind of missed by the press somehow.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Yes, there I know plenty of people with one.
How fucking dare anyone pick on Microsoft after all she's been through! She loves her Vista. She went through anti-monopoly trials. She's had a bunch of fucking operating systems. She thinks all her users are cheaters and now she's going through a custodial union battle. All you people care about are cell phones and ebook readers, not about making money for her investors! She's inhuman!
What you don't realize is that Microsoft is making all this money with vendor lock-in, anti-competitive tactics, and dirty tricks. Yet all you do is buy a bunch of crap software from her. Her software hasn't performed up to expectations in years. Her company motto is "Give me More!" for a reason because all she wants is more more more more more!
Leave her alone! You're lucky any of her software ever worked for you bastards. Leave Microsoft alone! Please!
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Nope and I bet most of the 40,000 units were bought by Microsoft employees to bolster their stock options or by company mandate. The rest were bought by those bitches that hang from steve "bumblefuck" ballmer's cock like micheal dell or what ever cunt they hired to run HP this week.
Me neither.
Xbox may not be lifetime in the black, yet, but they have been consistently revenue positive for a good number of quarters now.
So yes, Xbox is definitely profitable. They may not have paid off the initial investment, yet, but they are not losing money and haven't been for a while.
Its too early to say it bombed, 3 day Android sale was 100,000 so a first day sale of 40,000 (even if it may not be correct) is actually a good sale. Lets wait for official numbers. I have the Samsung Focus WP7 device, and would recommend folks to play with it for 10minutes before making any opinions. It may be difficult to point single most differentiating factor, but overall it has a much better experience than iPhone or Android. The future updates will close all the minor issues, same like iPhone and Android For me - 1) UI is very unique to both Android and iPhone, instead of a crowded grid lock.. and application oriented UI.. the UI is activity oriented. The most common things are single click away, and well implemented. The concept of Tiles and scrolling Pivots is very functional. e.g. Emails are pre-grouped under pivots for Urgent, Unread, etc. so just a quick swipe and you have a filtered view. This is consistent across all applications. Enterprise users will like it, once they get past the bad memories of earlier versions.. this is a totally new experience 2) Phone is snappy, the hardware acceleration works well. The roll-over effect, and touch distortion of text is very nice. 3) Instead of jumping in and out of applications, the tiles bring together common activities. Click on people hub, and you have updates from Outlook, Live, Facebook accessible at a glance. Same with Pictures hub, or the music hub. It is very functional and clean 4) Comparing no. of applications in 1st week is not a good way to judge future numbers. But even still, with 2000 application in 1st week is better than what Android or iPhone had. The core applications are already in, or about to be in coming months. The toolset and large no. of developers will ensure that. 5) Instead of predicting WP7 future, based on hate make your own opinion after using it. The platform is too good to die, on the contrary it will be one of the top 3 with iPhone and Android for sure
Ask Grandma if she has heard of the iPhone, then ask her if she heard of the Windows Phone 7.
just look at the aptly named WinCE
Pretty much all the world's consumer GPS devices run as dedicated apps with custom skins on a WinCE backend. It's not a total disaster.
Da Blog
Yawn... Sure, I can't compare an Omnia 1 with a Droid 2. It wouldn't be fair to MS, but, the Omnia was so disappointing. About once every 6 months, it magically forgot how to connect to the internet, and "Hard reset" (the equivalent of "wipe your hard drive and reinstall") was the only answer tech support could provide. The phone crashed on me once a month.
The icons were so small that you had to use a stylus. It hadn't quite outgrown its' PDA roots. Windows Media player Mobile was almost as bad (the play/pause, fast forward, and rewind buttons are right on top of each other. I wrote a really awful-looking skin that at least separated these buttons enough so that you could pause a podcast without hitting the "next button" at the same time).
And there are very few good apps for it. WinMo is one of the least restrictive platforms out there, and I don't need an "app store", but there is just so much more cool stuff for Android. (And a key difference is that with WinMo, you can write your own app to replace the broken crap that comes with it. With Android, it's less likely to be broken, and other people have already done it for you).
So is it possible that one factor in the lack of excitement for WinMo7 is their experience with WinMo6? My three main criteria, after leaving the Omnia were
I haven't looked back.
1995's 3D Movie Maker - Nice UI, impressively fast realtime rendering, machinima... you know, for kids.
1995 also had MS VChat, which if you had a machine fast enough not to choke on it, gave you that whole Second Life avatar-ish vibe a decade early.
Da Blog
Pretty sure games like Age of Empires and such were profitable. It wouldn't surprise me if Encarta was too, back before the Web became widely available. MS has produced a ton of software, not just the big things that have 90%+ market penetration.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
As mentioned by another poster, MS, XBox and other entertainment properties have been operating in the black for about 2-3 years now. Now that likely hasn't made up for the capital investment/losses over the first 6-7 years of the platform, but I suspect MS is fine writing that off as a startup expense, if they continue to operate in the black.
With new console revs at least a couple of years away (all major players have said this gen will last longer than the last one and no prototypes are on the horizon), MS's entertainment should be in pretty good place to stay in the black and increase its profit (if not revenue) for the foreseeable future.
Its also worth noting that MS is driving significant integration with its install base, that they hope to leverage beyond traditional gaming markets. MS is making a lot of residuals now by helping push things like Netflix and ESPN.
That being said MS isn't unique in these things. Sony and Nintendo are banking on many of the same things. It would however be disingenuous to say that MS is losing big on the XBox and associated assets.
Saw my first commercial for it 2 DAYS ago, why would it be a success already? And besides from the commercial advertising "Windows phone" there wasn't much else being pimped to make me want one. It's got to have a "killer something".
These numbers could be VERY inflated due the MS employee WP7 phone program. I have it on good knowledge that employees are instructed to go out to a retail outlet and buy their phone. Then expense it.
This is true, but the employees are only able to do so after November 18 - earlier purchases are not reimbursed. The official explanation is that this is so that employees don't rapidly deplete the stock. So, this does not include the current figures.
Desperate to stay competitive against iPhone and Android mobile devices, Microsoft has released a two-pound lump of actual cow faeces that they claim constitutes a phone.
Windows Mobile 7, in development for several years, strips the mobile telephone down to its fundamental essence: futility, annoyance, malfunction, inconvenience and a socially unacceptable odour. Confounding analyst expectations, the turd is in fact shined.
US mobile carriers hailed the turd as the perfect physical complement to their world-famous customer service. "This powerful product will promote our growth!" said John Harrobin of Verizon Wireless. "We're marketing them as edible."
"We think we can really work the brand equity," said Steve Ballmer, modelling the optional shoulder-length rubber gloves. "Everyone works with our stuff all day every day. They know who Microsoft is and what we do."
"How about making our customers actually swallow our bullshit physically?" said John Harrobin. "Windows Mobile 7 was my idea."
Illustration: Steve Ballmer overjoyed at Windows Mobile 7 sales figures.
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The thing is not backwards compatible - so it loses the awesome three points of share that WinMo had. Those were people who had LOB phone apps that aren't going to fall into the same trap twice.
To build a user base you need developers. These numbers aren't going to draw them. To fund ad-paid apps you need a lot of eyeballs to sell, and this level of acceptance isn't going to be profitable for anybody.
So yeah - Microsoft can dump a billion dollars a year more on their mobile bonfire forever. That isn't going to make the phones good, or popular, or make the stock go up.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You pointed out WinCE and Kin. Kin was a little special as it was sort-of a telephone entry. But Windows CE was never what I'd call an entry to the telephone market. It was a terrible disaster of what happens when you try and turn a PDA operating system into a phone operating system simply by adding a dialing application.
The WinCE thing was more of a misguided belief that what people really wanted was actually to be able to make calls from their PDA. They tried hundreds of ways to make it more telephony, but it was Apple who actually figured out that what users really wanted was a way to run computer programs on their phone.
Symbian was the same as WinCE, but they covered up so much of the PDA features that eventually all that was left was a phone with some games. The idea of adding applications was a "nice to have" kind of thing.
Palm... well I haven't even seen a Palm or a Blackberry in years. There's a huge store selling Blackberries out here in Oslo, but I've never seen anyone in there. I think it's mostly lawyer and other scary people who shop there. But either way, from what I've read and seen, Blackberry for most users is actually just an ideal SMS platform.
But, back to the initial point. Windows Phone 7 is the first time that Microsoft made a telephone offering. Everything up until now has been "Windows... With Phone" where this is "Windows Phone". Unfortunately for them, they spent all these years absolutely destroying their reputation as a phone company by doing it backwards. This time, they'll start off slow, build up buzz, work their way into the market, and do whatever they can to avoid getting creamed by the other two players (yes there's only two other players right now).
Microsoft's absolute biggest mistake during this release has been to place it as an iPhone/Android competitor. That's a huge mistake. They made all the buzz about it competing with platforms that have been shipping for years and have already build up market places. This will make whatever Microsoft comes to market with a huge disappointment.
IF Microsoft however takes their entire XBox development muscle and starts producing titles for the platform AND they build a strong applications unit, producing Microsoft titles and builds a strong Microsoft offering. Well, they'll be the ideal business phone for perfect integration with the Microsoft dominated office. They'll be the perfect platform for gamers (think Halo on the phone).
Fact is, if Microsoft does it right... and they damn well should be able to, (One trick is, don't let Steve Ballmer near marketing it, he's just not cool enough to sell cool) they can have the richest app store in no time. I don't mean the most populated, I mean the richest. They can have a higher average quality of content than anyone else.
The employee phone program hasn't started yet...
I suspect their plan was to poop this out, and get by on corporate sales due to being Microsoft. At least for the first year.
So business sales will likely keep it from being an abject failure like the consumer-focused Kin, and Microsoft will at least be in the space while they work on a more-relevant product.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I have a PS3 to play Rock Band 3 with a pal online, but I just found out that the custom (not made by Sony) songs for Rock Band (ie those on the Rock Band Network) can only be directly uploaded for the XBox 360, and Sony only ports some over to PS3 and Wii as and when they feel like it.
As my regular gaming is almost exclusively Rock Band (OK, and Tekken 5 on my PS2 as Tekken 6 on the PS3 sucks so much), that's one more XBox 360 purchase right there...
A win for MS there, I wonder why?
I also don't know anyone with an iPhone who doesn't sound like a crack addict when talking about their phone. (Note: not a good thing)
No, seriously.
Epic Fail.
A Zune on steroids.
It has gone to meet it's maker.
It is running at Ring Zero.
It is an ex-marketing ploy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --