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.

Comments

If You're Late to the Party

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[KiloByte]

You are assuming that WP8 will magically be a success, with, as you say, "25% of the market". What are the reasons to think that? It's not like WP7 is the first or second of Microsoft's forays into phones -- just look at the aptly named WinCE or the recent Microsoft Kin flop.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[MemoryDragon]

Yes really hardly surprising, and I was hoping for it, not because I wish Microsoft evil, but after years of dreadful ies on the desktop at least in the emerging mobile sektor webkit and its html5 implementation has become more or less the current defacto standard, so people finally can settle for a decent webapp programming experience. And then wham 3 years late Microsoft comes with its newest version of the os and tries to shove IE7 down the web developers throats. I have yet to meet a single web developer who was excited about the browser in WinMobile 7.
If Microsoft had gotten its way then we would have had ie6 all over again in the mobile sector, where a significant portion had a browser which had the latest standards in and stubborn Microsoft users wanted to see the latest whizbang features on their rotten browser without even thinking about installing an alternative. We have been there the last 10 years, and I really do not want history to repeat itself!

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[ducomputergeek]

It depends, what is the long game? US companies have the unhealthy opinion of "What do you do for me next quarter?", but if the strategy is "Where do I want to be in 15 years?" (Europe) or "Where do I want to be in 50 years?" (Asia), then those losses are short term. And if you think the future is going to be some kind of media appliance over the next 10 - 15 years, yeah, you've lost a bunch of money on the first two generations, but the experience they've gained for the next 5 generations is invaluable.

I recently bought a 360. I used to play at my friends house, but as we've gotten older and they've gotten married/had kids or moved elsewhere...

Why did I buy a 360 over a Wii or PS3? Because that's what my friends had. Most of the people I know who bought Wii's seemed to have lost interest in the machines. Most use it more to stream Netflix than play games these days. And very few of my friends had a PS3 and most who did also had a 360.

Now I know those numbers don't hold up on a global scale. Xbox has not been that popular outside of the US.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[WrongSizeGlass]

You better bring something that no one else has.

Exactly. You can't release a new phone that lacks device encryption for secure Exchange connections, static IP for WiFi, multitasking, cut and paste, and Flash support in the current market. Two or three years ago? Sure. But not now.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[Jugalator]

You better bring something that no one else has.

Yup... and especially not LESS.

WP7 doesn't do multitasking with third party apps (only Microsoft's own apps has this advantage, go figure...), and doesn't even support encrypted Exchange connections. Yes, yes, Microsoft wrote Exchange, and even Windows Mobile 6.5 supported this! This will effectively shut out many enterprise users from using this phone if their servers reject unencrypted connections (and rightly so, in my opinion).

It's funny when iPhone has support for encrypted Exchange connections in built-in software on both OS X (Mail) and iOS, and MS in neither Windows 7, nor Windows Phone 7. No, not even Windows Live Mail supports true Exchange connections -- it has to be set up to serve as an IMAP server. And Exchange is a behemoth in the enterprise market.

Go go Ballmer with your strategic decisions.

Or maybe it's their shareholders that need to go "strategic" on Ballmer...

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[mibe]

Or, those with a ton of money can afford to take chances and bring something new and cool to us. I like to think that Google (and Apple, whether you like them or not) does more of this, but just because Microsoft hasn't, doesn't mean "capitalism" is broken.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[Andy Dodd]

WM5/WM6 didn't really have significant lockdown, but as I understand it, the differences are:
WP7 - Adds a shiny UI
WP7 - Removes quite a few features/capabilities present in WM5/WM6 (see above regarding encrypted Exchange connections as an example)
WP7 - Adds iPhone-style lockdown
WP7 - Removes cut and paste (present in 5/6)
WP7 - Removes multitasking (present in 5/6)

The question is - how much of this crippling was an intentional design decision, and how much of it is Microsoft pulling a KDE 4?

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[beelsebob]

The thing is, they're comparing 1 day of W7 phones to 2 days of iPhone sales, and to 180 days of android sales.

Normalised:
W7: 40k
iPhone: 300k
Android: 8k

Of course, I'm not suggesting that the distribution will actually be even, but this is *way* closer to the numbers than comparing 1 days sales to 6 months of sales.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[zippthorne]

They're not selling a phone, at least, not according to the ads. They're selling an excuse. Otherwise, how can it be "the phone for people who want to do other stuff than be using the phone."

They practically come right out and imply that it's going to be as buggy as an un-patched windows 95 machine...

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[UnknowingFool]

No, WP7 is not backwards compatible. WP7 has also followed Apple's walled garden approach in that you must get your apps (all brand new) from MS Zune Marketplace in this case. WP7 is focused heavily on the consumer market of smart phones and lacks many enterprise features like on-device encryption, static IP, remote wipe, etc.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[MemoryDragon]

I will bother, because it is a fact that mobile ie in Windows mobile 7 is in the core an ie7 with some bugfixing backports from ie8, so slightly better than ie7 but worse than ie8 with probably a different error behavior in many issues between both versions. And I am not making this up, this is the official statement from Microsoft!
Believe it or not but you can read that up in the blogs of Microsofts mobile division!
Microsoft has done that in the past as well, mobile ie 6.5 was in fact an ie 5.5 engine with some ie6 backports, needless to say this browser was a desaster bugwise, different bugs than both ie 5.5 and ie6 with some carried over from ie6 and some from 5.5 and add to that a bunch of its own bugs.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[bigredradio]

Is it an iPhone? If it's not an iPhone why would I want it? I want the one with the bigger GBs and the WiFis.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[pegisys]

Wouldn't that be the 9th iteration?

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[bonch]

WP7 doesn't even have a sockets API. You're expected to use HTTP for everything.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[pyser]

So you get the hardware out there and then release incremental software improvements as you develop them, slowly but surely catching up to the cutting edge.

Hey, it worked with the Zune, didn't it? Oh, wait...

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[UnknowingFool]

all you need is a dedicated user base that can you can grow. Microsoft is doing the right thing here, they've got the money to play a long game.

What dedicated user base? Remember the past user base for Windows Mobile was primarily business users. WP7 is not backwards compatible and WM6 was hardly loved by its users. For business users like me, I was forced to get WM6 by the company, and I hated it. With WP7 focused on the consumer market and missing many enterprise features, it is highly unlikely that our company would recommend much less purchase WP7 phones at the moment. New business users might as well get a BlackBerry as it seems to be the only purely business smart phone left. iPhone and Android are both adding enterprise features with each release so at the moment, they are more likely to be adopted by businesses than WP7.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[rabbit994]

There is no reason for IT departments to ask for it. It supports very small subset of ActiveSync policies but doesn't support turning off certain hardware features (like the camera) or encrypting all email/contacts/calendars on the device. I personally thought they should have targeted RIM and brought a usable phone that supports full range of ActiveSync security. If they had done that, IT departments would have loved to pitch Blackberries out the windows and replaced them with WP7 devices.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[UnknowingFool]

Uh... developers? No seriously - if MS can get corporate IT staff developing business applications for mobile devices, that's a completely untapped market. Android would be the closest to that today, but MS could seal that deal quick if they play this right.

Considering that the WP7 is primarily geared to be a consumer phone, it is highly unlikely that corporate environments will recommend it much less purchase it until it gets more enterprise features. Until then, why would they even bother developing corporate business applications for it. Even if they did right now, MS has not devised a corporate deployment model as Apple has probably because this is a consumer smartphone.

Every .NET developer out there has the potential to be a WM7 dev.

True every .NET developer can develop for this phone, but right now they have to be focused on consumer applications. However WP7 must be done in the Silverlight, XNA, or the .NET Compact Framework 4.

Every iPhone developer out there had to hold their nose and code objective-c and hope that the app store accepted their product. Full disclosure - I'm a .NET dev professionally, but own a second hand iPhone 3G.

WP7 follows the same model as Apple's walled garden approach so WP7 developers will have to hold their nose and hopes that MS approves their app as well. As for Objective-C, it's about the same kind of transition. They only difference is where you started. If you started on the pure C++ side, you're going to have to learn something new anyways. If you started on C# then there isn't really a transition.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[DrXym]

WP7 doesn't do multitasking with third party apps (only Microsoft's own apps has this advantage, go figure...),

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.

All the 1st party apps are native, so they're not affected. 3rd party apps are expected to use the runtime so they are. Assuming the APIs that apps run against define a sensible life cycle I don't see any reason they couldn't fix it.

But it does highlight how immature Windows Phone 7 is despite its glossy UI. Other red flags are things like it's inability to deal with removable storage as well as various things that were in 6.5 but not 7. Clearly these things can be (re)implemented but until they are, I would advise anyone thinking of picking up one of these phones to run a mile.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[phantomfive]

It's worse than that, it doesn't allow you to open a socket. The best you can do is query a web service. Ouch.

It also doesn't let you run native code, you have to write games in XNA, so no hope for good graphics on the thing (unless you're EA or something).

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[GodfatherofSoul]

Microsoft was never late. They showed up 1/2 hour after the doors opened, sat in a corner, and alternately berated or ignored other party goers. Now, after alienating the whole room, they've gone home, put on a new dress, and come back thinking that no one will remember who they were. Sorry, bitch, I don't want to talk to you anymore.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[arb phd slp]

I've seen the ads, but in classic Microsoft fashion they're marketing the operating system with little to no emphasis on what phone you'd buy to get it or what carriers' retail stores will stock it. Say what you want about Apple, but no one was ever confused about what an iPhone was or where to get one.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[not already in use]

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.

Let me start by saying I have used iPhones pretty extensively, iPhone 4 included and had owned a Nexus One since it launched up until I got my WP7 phone yesterday. I am extremely impressed. What is unique about it? I think it is an evolutionary step in the right direction in regards to user interaction and the general workflow of dealing with this relatively new form factor (that being touch-screen only). The tiles motif is extremely informative and looks surprisingly good considering how simple and basic it is. The tiles can animate and they seem to use this in a practical manner, not making things appear too busy on the home screen.

As far as UI responsiveness, it equals the iPhone and absolutely destroys Android, especially when it comes to the keyboard. Even with all the fancy auto text-correcting options turned on, there is no perceivable jitter. It is smooth as butter.

It takes from WebOS the concept of reconciling like-data into a universal hub. Personally, I really like this. The one thing I don't like about it, is the fact that every one of my facebook friends show up in my address book. I would like to see a feature to disable that aspect of it. Otherwise, it does a great job of integrating the social networking capabilities of various services into a single, cohesive interface that does the job extremely well.

The last thing I'll say, since I've only been using it a day and can't yet offer a comprehensive review, is that it inherits the Zune player, which is absolutely awesome. If you have a zune pass it is by far the best music service available on any portable device.

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?

You are clearly not very business savvy. Are you saying the Xbox was a bad idea because it wasn't instantly profitable? The only system *ever* to pull that off was the Wii, which was a rebranded GameCube. They went from total underdog with the original Xbox to market leader of next-gen consoles (I am NOT including Wii, because I don't consider it next gen and don't know anyone who actually plays theirs). So, to use an example of a highly successful Microsoft product to illustrate why they shouldn't do it all over again with a different product is a bit puzzling.

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.

Again, you don't understand big business. Sometimes you gotta lose money to make money. There are only two major players in the smartphone market and there is certainly room for a third. To say that this is a dumb move on Microsoft is absurd, especially considering how strong of a product they have launched.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[Christianfreak]

I see some MS-Bot came and marked you troll. But you're absolutely right. The commercials make no sense at all. Wouldn't a mobile device maker (and the carriers that carry it) want you to use the phone more?

Hey guys we have this great phone that you won't use like all the other phones out there!

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[KarmaMB84]

Sockets are supposed to come in an OS update which will come from MS without carrier or hardware vendor involvement so we can be pretty sure every phone will get it. I'd assume it'll end up rolled in with either the copy and paste update (early 2011) or the multi-tasking update. I'm pretty sure it was a security policy issue preventing use of sockets on the WP7 .NET runtime.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[not already in use]

what's wrong with the way iOS 4 (and now WP7) does multitasking?

Nothing, really. It's just something for neckbeards to scream about.

Re:If You're Late to the Party

[David Gerard]

That turns out not to be the case - you can get Opera for the iPhone.

While I agree it's not as good as...

[Pojut]

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.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[wvmarle]

No matter how you look at it 40,000 is still 40,000. That's a significant number of phones. The iPhone and Google's phones were hyped badly before launch; highly anticipated; no wonder they sold well.

More fair would be to compare it to say a new Nokia or Sony Ericsson top-line model. I bet those companies would be quite happy to sell that number in the first day of sales. A not hyped, "yet another" kind of phone, that's what this is and that's what it should be compared to.

But of course Apple's iPhone is the de-facto reference smartphone these days. No matter what you do, release a smartphone and it'll be compared to the iPhone first.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[dc29A]

The iPhone and Google's phones were hyped badly before launch; highly anticipated; no wonder they sold well.

Exactly. There was no hype at all around Windows Phone 7. None. Nada. Zilch. That explains all those TV commercials, launch parties, paid shills like Paul Thurrott and Co. touting Windows 7 Phone as the second coming of Zeus.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[jittles]

I think it's not fair to make the comparison just because AT&T didn't bother to supply their stores with anything. I have a friend who took the day off work to wait in line and buy one. He had called the store and asked them if he needed to get in early and they told them they had plenty of phones in stock and that he could come in any time and buy one. He got there an hour before the store opened and found out that the AT&T corporate store had 2 phones in stock. That's right. 2. Now maybe that's all the demand they thought they'd get but that store was sold out the second the store opened.

I don't think AT&T has any interest in offering serious competition to the iPhone. That's why all their android phones are pretty crappy compared to T-Mobile, Sprint or Verizon.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[dkleinsc]

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I'm also not one to judge a technology on its first day or first week of sales. For one very specific reason - nobody's used it for any significant length of time yet.

It takes a while to determine if some technology is really really nice, or a complete piece of crap. If you base your judgment on a slick demo plus 5 minutes of use, you're in fact no better than the infamous PHB who decides to use some horrible technology due to a really good sales pitch. Admins generally need a good 6 months to figure out whether something is really easy to manage, and consumers generally take a while to discover the nooks and crannies of a phone or software or anything else.

And this goes both for the good and the bad. For instance, users might be pleasantly surprised to find out that the developers actually knew about some rare but possible situation and had done the right thing (the Nethack dev team is notorious for doing just that). They might also find out that something that they actually do a lot was more annoying than they thought.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[je ne sais quoi]

I disagree, I don't believe 40,000 is a "okay" day. I don't know anything about the number of these phones that are out there, but I what I could find briefly is for distributors so far are AT&T, the same company that is providing service for the iphone, amazon, the world's largest on-line distributor, AND Best Buy a huge brick-and-mortar chain of stores. Between them, they sold 40,000 units whereas the iphone sold 270,000 for the same period, almost SEVEN times as many and just from Apple and AT&T stores/on-line.

You can argue that sales will pick up after Verizon starts carrying it next year and once natural turnover will force people to buy new phones, but I'd put it as 50-50 that this is the highest rate of sales that they'll ever see with this OS and that from here on out it's downhill. While I don't think this will be another Kin that will get pulled from the shelves in a few months, they haven't made nearly the impression they need to in order to get any sort of widespread awareness of the public that this is a useful thing to buy.

For the record, I don't own an iphone, nor do I text, nor to I patronize the apple store with any regular frequency.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[falldeaf]

Those tv commercials are so awful, they make no sense. I think they're saying people are too fascinated and in love with their phone, and win7 phones are going to fix that for you.... wait, what? And launch parties?... Like that travesty for windows vista? I thought Microsoft was supposed to be a juggernaut of advertising, maybe their strength is advertising to corporate types.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[je ne sais quoi]

One thing that I forgot: As far as I can tell, these numbers neglect pre-orders. For the iphone, if you include pre-orders I think it will only increase the gap because they're surely above the one million mark.

I think if you want to make a penetration into a crowded market, you've got not just do as well as the competition, you've got to do a lot better than the competition. Remember: cell phones and mp3 players were supposedly a "crowded market" too when Apple released theirs.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[wvmarle]

[P]eople are too fascinated and in love with their phone, and win7 phones are going to fix that for you.... wait, what?

Somehow I don't see that as a way to sell your product, when you tell it'll make you hate your phone.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[Tom]

touting Windows 7 Phone as the second coming of Zune.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[je ne sais quoi]

I think it's not fair to make the comparison just because AT&T didn't bother to supply their stores with anything.

Google says it's activating 200,000 androids a day and Apple sold 270,000 iphones on it's first day plus 600,000 pre-orders. At this rate, MS will NEVER CATCH UP. No, they won't. All the excuses you all are making for MS fail to make up for the basic math here and the reasons for why this happened are irrelevant. The bottom line is that the $100 million ad campaign MS just bought will not make the phone profitable, selling the product will. MS is not selling anywhere near enough of their product to make a dent in the market share, not even a divot.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[amiga3D]

Microsoft never really needed for it's advertising to be effective. When they operated out of a virtual monopoly they just spent advertising dollars to brag on themselves. Their idea seemed to be that the masses were going to have to buy it anyway, all they had to do was pat themselves on the back. This stuff of having to compete with aggressive competitors is all new to them.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[Missing.Matter]

Yes, those are all very impressive numbers (except the 14.1 million iPhone 4 numbers, which are mostly current customers with old iPhones, not new customers). However, this doesn't change the fact that you're extracting a conclusion based on one point of data. Many people have already commented that many stores only had 5-10 phones total, leaving a long waitlist of customers.

without bringing any new functionality

This is your opinion. For me, windows phone 7 integrates better with my devices, has a better user interface, better sync software, offers unique services like Zune Pass, and has more desirable hardware. The question is if there is a sizable amount of people who side with my opinion. You can't divine that from a single data point.

Re:While I agree it's not as good as...

[adisakp]

Those tv commercials are so awful, they make no sense. I think they're saying people are too fascinated and in love with their phone, and win7 phones are going to fix that for you.... wait, what? .

Exactly, you're gonna have Win Phone 7 so much you won't want to use your phone.
If a phone actually got you in and out of social apps and done with messages quicker, all it would do is enable the thumb-typing generation to send *MORE* messages in the same amount of time, not spend less time on their phhones. It's possible that they would spend even more time on the phone since it would be more convenient than before.

Far too early to say

[MrHanky]

At this moment, declaring Windows Phone 7 a flop is just FUD.

Re:Far too early to say

[segedunum]

Why would it be 'evidently' true? The previous versions of Windows Phone were flops and this new one has sold far less than all its major rivals in the same time period. How is it likely not to be a flop? Why would that be FUD - unless of course somone just doesn't like the facts as they stand?

Re:Far too early to say

[MrHanky]

The "facts", as they were presented in the story, were based on comparing an opening day (a Monday) to a launch weekend (incidentally a time when people have more time for shopping, if you didn't know) and a launch month. It is evident that this proves nothing.

Re:Yet another MS flop

[colmore]

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.

Wait, we're comparing one *day* to six months?

[JSBiff]

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.

Re:Wait, we're comparing one *day* to six months?

[UnknowingFool]

Well a few things to put into perspective. 40,000 is the reported number by a third party. That number may not be correct. The actual number may be higher or lower.

The second thing is that the G1 was one model from one manufacturer. By reports, there were 9 WP7 phones from several different manufacturers. Initially there were reports that some places were "sold out". If the number is correct then there was not a large initial supply. With 9 different models, it's hard to believe the manufacturers released less than 6,000 units per model.

The discrepancy might be that MS has reserved one for every one of its employees. So that 90,000 additional and may have created an artificial scarcity not driven by consumer demand.

Me either.

[Threni]

Neither?

Well...

[nametaken]

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.

Not enough units

[TheBiGW]

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.

Re:Not enough units

[spd_rcr]

We bought my wife's at Costco, where they were only given 5 of the Samsung Focus' for launch and we stood in line to get it. Costco is definitely the place to buy one 'tho, best prices, they waive the activation fees, and throw in some extras (mostly junk, but it did include a car charger).
I'm just itching to see what the second round of hardware is going to offer, but after watching my wife play with hers for the last 3 days, I'm definitely trading in my iphone, the ads to not do the phone justice. I'm not a big microsoft fanboy, but I really hate getting lumped in with the turtle-neck-wearing holier-than-'tho douchebags every time I pull out my iphone.

Failed launch

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Failed launch

[ColdWetDog]

Whatever phone you get next, make sure that it has a shift key.

I reluctantly admit it looks pretty fine..

[delire]

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).

Science, I say Science again!

[dwightk]

I love the comparison of First day :: Launch Weekend :: First 6 Months

Re:Science, I say Science again!

[dwightk]

oh my, what do the other numbers break down to?

180 days, 1.5M units = 8,333.3 units per day

Who cares? I think it'd be funny if WP7 went the way of the kin, but the article and summary were poorly written.

Steve Ballmer's last chance

[Yuioup]

He's on it like Donkey Kong.

Re:Steve Ballmer's last chance

[ginbot462]

He's moved onto barrels now?

Oh, and does that mean he has a hairy back? Eh... excuse me while I vomit into my coffee.

I still want it in PDA form.

[DdJ]

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).

Re:I don't understand it

[dc29A]

They were very innovative in the 90s

Can you name a few innovative products from MS?

That's because people remember the past versions

[plastick]

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.

My buying experience

[plasmana]

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.

Re:My buying experience

[Eponymous Coward]

This is not your typical Microsoft version 1 product

Does everybody have amnesia? Microsoft has been making smartphones for a long time now. Calling this a version one product would be like calling Vista a version 1 product. It's significantly different from it's ancestors, but it has ancestors. I would hope they learned something along the way.

Re:My buying experience

[saleenS281]

It's a complete re-write from scratch. It is indeed a 1.0 product. You might as well say Windows 1.0 wasn't 1.0 because they had previously been making DOS. The two platforms share nearly nothing in common beyond the "Windows" branding.

Re:My buying experience

[cbhacking]

Um, no, it is a v1 product. It comes from a company that has previously shipped products meant for the same class of task (OS for a phone), but that doesn't mean it has ancestors. The UI is totally new, built from scratch. That's what people are seeing and responding to.

You have to go clear down to the kernel to find anything much in common with WinMo, and even there it's received a huge degree of improvement. Would you call the first Android phones not a "v1" product just because Google obviously took lessons from the iPhone? That's about the degree of relation between WinMo and WP7; another existing but very different product in the marketplace.

Also, MS has not been making smartphones. Technically they didn't even make WP7 phones, but they did lay out the hardware specs. They didn't do that for WinMo, and just as with Android, that came back to bite them. This is a new approach, between the complete stack of Apple devices and the free-wheeling world of commodity PCs.

The only thing I want to know is...

[xtracto]

The only thing I want to know is: Does Windows 7 Mobile allows me to squirt my pals?

Re:Actually yes...

[jimicus]

Thing is, there are still companies that are as near as dammit 100% Microsoft shops (or at least are for anything that matters) - though they're becoming a lot thinner on the ground than they were five years ago.

There are also quite a few companies that *think* they're 100% Microsoft shops. (These are the companies where technology isn't core to their business, and the management think that if they're running Windows on their desktop PC, everything else must be Windows as well - after all, you can't get a computer from IBM to talk to one from Fujitsu now[1], can you?). Well and good if you're selling your phone to management at such companies.

But I don't think that's what Microsoft aim to do. The iPhone was probably the first smartphone with real consumer appeal, and if you walk into any UK phone store today you'll see that 80% of the phones they're really pushing are, to a greater or lesser extent, smartphones. Plain old mobile phones without all the smart functionality are being pushed almost exclusively onto Pay as you Go customers and those on a very low budget - two years from now, I reckon a non-smartphone will be as easy to find on the high street as a non-cameraphone is today. My guess is that Microsoft want a piece of that market.

[1] Note for younger /.'ers : Way back in the mists of time, interoperability between computer systems was almost unheard of. You bought the computer from Company X, who also sold you a bunch of other peripherals which connected using proprietary interfaces. Even if you could somehow hook the tape drive from one manufacturer's computer up to another, you'd likely have a hell of a job getting useful data out of it. If you had any sort of networking, it also was proprietary. Standards? What are they?

It's not about initial sales

[grasshoppa]

...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 ).

Big marketing mistake...

[at_slashdot]

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.

Yes to your closing question

[lwright84]

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.

key differentiators

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

They have a key differentiator: built in theft prevention - nobody wants to touch it

Re:key differentiators

[Grishnakh]

I left my Windows Phone 7 in my unlocked car yesterday, with the windows rolled down, hoping someone would steal it. When I came back to my car, someone had left a second Windows Phone 7 next to it!

I'll be brave and fess up....

[Bad Mamba Jamba]

I own one of those 40k units - a Samsung Focus to be specific. I've waited a year for MS to get Win7 out so I could compare iOS, Android, and Win7 before upgrading my phone. I have to say, after 2 days so far I love Win7. I will also say that feature wise it is still behind iOS and Android on some pretty basic features. More on that in a sec.

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?

• First and foremost Win7 was really easy to learn and figure out. Navigation was a little mystifying at first, but after a few minutes I had it figured out. Within a couple of hours I had the whole phone explored and setup. And setup was also MEGA easy.
• One word - ZUNE. Unlike iTunes it was easy to setup, let me import anything I want, and I love the subscription service. I had Zune on my PC before I had any kind of mobile Zune player. Unlike iTunes, I get my music through Zune in MP3 format, and I'm free to use it how I want. I'll also add it's visually a nice experience. The experience translates to the Win7 phone just as well. Oh and that setup problem I had with iTunes. Zune was more than happy to adjust itself to my music library on my new NAS without bitching. I'll also add the Zune SW multitasks better - iTunes tends to get sluggish and freeze up if you're importing movies or a lot of music. Zune seamlessly handles it in the background.
• WIRELESS SYNC - something Apple has continually blocked. I'm happy to say if my phone is plugged in for 10 minutes on AC power and sees my Zune server it will sync over 802.11.
• Mobile Office - an essential for me as my biz is an MS shop. Online versions of office are available through Windows Live so you don't even have to buy a PC version of Office if you don't want to. No clue if it will work on Mac tho.
• 4" AMOLED - actually more the phone than Win7 but I'll say Win7 makes full use of the this gorgeous screen
• It works well as a phone.
• Voice commands - I feel silly talking to my phone but when I'm driving and I want to find a Starbucks or something it actually works well. Disclaimer - I am an American, and I speak with a "Hollywood accent" which is to say most people would say I don't have an accent.
• Support for my work calendar off Exchange, AND a Windows Live calendar so I can keep my personal and work lives separate. Not necessarily unique to Win7 but they did a beautiul job integrating everything together.
• Free development tools that work really well. I did C/C++ development for many years, then I did Java for a few years, and I've been doing C# for a while now. When I can just download the free tools and write an simple application in a few minutes that speaks volumes. As far as I'm concerned MS still makes the best develop

Re:I'll be brave and fess up....

[Missing.Matter]

I own a Zune HD and I've been wanting a Windows Phone since I learned they would be using the same interface. I also own an iPad, and I am constantly frustrated with iTunes compared to the Zune software. Zune pass, Zune software, wireless sync, metro UI, office integration, and xbox integration are the main reasons I am in the market for WP7.

You guys think it's an uncrackable market?

[HerculesMO]

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.

C / C++

[Dan East]

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.

Re:Yet another MS flop

[Lectoid]

Actually I thought the Xbox has been profitable for the past few years

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.

MS Employee phones - buying retail and expensing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.