Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Phone Maker ZTE Turns Down WP7
An anonymous reader writes "Chinese smartphone maker ZTE, fifth largest in the world, has publicly criticized Microsoft for the lackluster market reaction to its Windows Phone 7 operating system and said that ZTE has no plans to develop a WP7-powered phone. That's bad news for Microsoft for its well-regarded but not well-received mobile OS."
Good. I don't have WP7, but that's because I owned WM6.5. In order to import contacts you HAD TO HAVE Outlook. You couldn't import from a text file. A simple list of names and phone numbers required a full install of Outlook. FU
if you don't know by now, Microsoft spends lots of money( billions ) getting people to use their stuff and get some market share. I've seen the Chinese government play games with Microsoft a few times declaring Windows as the "standard" for this, that, or the other thing and the deal includes big cash incentives for doing this. I have little doubt that this company has executives who know Microsoft is spending billions buying resellers of their rehash of a Windows phone OS and are just holding out for more money. They will most likely ship some WP7 phone eventually and get paid well for doing so. We'll see if they are smart enough to not tie the money to sales figures for the phone.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I have found the OS to be fairly well engineered,
So are bricks, which is all your phone'll be useful for after their next update...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
You're confused or uninformed (or misinformed).
The updates you refer to in (1) and (2) are the same update. They had some issues getting out the door and getting the update train running. Hopefully that's all smoothed out now.
And the first "real" update is scheduled for next week. It includes copy/paste, faster app launching, and a few other features.
A major update is scheduled for next fall, that includes a lot of new features, from multi-tasking to IE9/HTML5 support, etc. So yes, they DO have a plan to 'catch up', and in fact have been pretty clear in communicating it (they've showed off the fall update recently, demonstrating many of its new features).
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I know this is a story about mobile phones, but why's that guy have such a comically oversized bluetooth headset? Stupid slashdot icons.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
One thing you've got to remeber is, while you as a developer may love wp7 that means nothing at all to the people that buy phones.
This is an excellent point. Microsoft is accustomed to having huge market share and trying to woo developers to their platforms (and away from other platforms) by making reasonable developer tools (which don't produce cross-platform binaries). In this case how easy it is to develop for WP7 is almost totally irrelevant right now, because developers aren't going to want to spend resources writing non-portable applications for WP7 if nobody is buying the phones.
Not to be obtuse, but where exactly is WP7 "well-regarded" beyond, say, WP7 commercials? I read a lot of reviews when it came out, and the most favorable ones seemed to view it as a passable mobile OS but short of features it'd need to really compete with the others. Saying "meh" or calling something mediocre doesn't strike me as regarding it well.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Because it's backed by MS and everyone likes to kiss some Microsoft butt in hopes of making big money. It's probably just a negotiation ploy to get Redmond to sweeten the deal for them. They know that MS is going to have to open the wallet and spend big to get back in the mobile game against the droids, berries, and iphones.
I thinks it's pretty simple if you think about it. Consumers all around the world don't see Microsoft as a true innovator in the technology business. What does this mean? It means that people does not see Microsoft products as "must-have" because of innovation, features or overall coolness.
Microsoft products become "must-have" only when they become the only platform available to run something the consumer wants.
Windows (Windows applications), Office (Office documments) and X-Box (X-Box games) are the main successful Microsoft products and all three follow this lock-in scenario.
Any other products, platforms or services they created (that don't depend on external content or software) were soon taken over by superior alternatives.
It's going to take a while to find traction.
That's a problem. If you can't show strong sales out of the gate (which both iPhone and Android did) then after a few months, developers start to realize that there is no market for WP7 apps and they put their efforts for the platform on hold indefinitely. Then you have a platform lacking in users and applications, and the users are waiting on the apps while the app developers are waiting on the users.
Worse yet, the phone manufacturers do the same thing -- if few people are buying WP7 phones then it makes no sense to pour R&D money into producing many different models with new features etc., and on top of that the Nokia deal has already said to all other manufacturers that they're second class customers. I assume here that Microsoft hopes Nokia will produce first class WP7 hardware in order to offset this, but the hardware by itself isn't sufficient, and the other manufactuers' business logic is sound -- if you continue to dump your money into R&D for a platform that nobody is buying, you're ultimately going to sink your operation. Or to put it another way, WP7 better not be a "slow burn" or else Nokia is going to have to defect to Android or exit the market, and either outcome would put a pretty serious pall on Microsoft's platform.
The problem with WM7 for manufacturers is that with the fear of fragmentation Microsoft went ahead and :
1 Dictated the hardware, so as manufacturer don't have much say on how the device going to look, no small screen with dedicated keyboard or such designs, so in essence no real distinction between one manufacturer’s phone to another. This would not be a problem if it was not for the second point.
2 Manufacturers are not allowed to change the UI to place there own “look & feel” to the phone. So end of the day one WM7 phone is exactly like the other.
We all know a HTC (Android), Apple (iOS), or Motorola (Android) phone just by looking at it. But all the WM7 phones look and feel the same. For some people that is selling point but for a manufacturer it not. How can you make someone buy your WM7 phone and not your competitions.
I do think that ZTE will sell WM7 phones they just want a cash incentive to do so.
Personally I don't like the WM7 blocky interface or the half words that break to show that there is a next screen, and I do think Microsoft did a bad thing aiming something that you cant really customize to gamers 1st (Xbox Live). They should have targeted a market that hates customization – the work place, in other words they should have build better Office/ Exhange/ Sharepoint integration instead, cause that is where they can seriously 1 up the competition.
+1 for this one; got a genuine giggle from that!
Having been involved on the fringes of a microsoft-backed WP7 project (sub-contractor to the sub-contractor to the sub-contractor kinda deal), I can say the OS, ok it's not iOS, but it's a lot better than what you'd expect from a Microsoft mobile effort. But the hardware-software interlink is awful, shoddy and downright crap, it has NOTHING on the iPhone experience, and where it really, really falls down is the fact that, MS-backed (financed) projects aside, not much is being made because it's almost as easy as iOS to write for, with no actual plus points; no community, no customers, no hype, no nothing.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
Who would have purchased an android phone 6 months after launch? Who would have predicted that Android market share would outpace iphone market share as quickly as it has?
Ummm anyone who was watching the market. There was clear signs that Android would be the next Sybian when the Open Alliance formed back in 2007 made up of many mobile device and chipset manufacturers. Then there were clearer signs in 2008 when another 14 companies joined the alliance which now pretty much included every handset manufacturer except Nokia. This very site has been praising the platform ever since it was announced that it would be open source and based of the 2.6 kernel.
The parent was right, given what we know about WP7 who would buy it? 6.5 was UI disaster of epic proportions, 6.0 was an inconsistent slow buggy mess which spent more time with an hourglass on the screen then it did making calls. On top of that, up until Nokia joined the Windows camp the only major handset provider pushing windows 7 phones was HTC, and even they are selling at glacial pace, and few manufacturers are pushing the platform.
Not to mention that the ads Microsoft push as of late are not only crap in quality, but also testing new waters such as at the start of Youtube videos providing them not with positive advertising, but instead a stigma of "the company who helped ruin youtube" and not just youtube. The only place I've seen microsoft ads is where I don't expect them, and haven't previously seen advertising.
"There was clear signs that Android would be the next Sybian"
I know some people love their phones, but that's getting into Jerry Springer territory.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The trouble with the Zune? They (a) put wifi in (b) didn't put a web browser in. They could have had the iPod Touch beaten by six months and made everyone realise they could have a full working Internet in their pocket! ... and they just didn't. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Not to mention that the ads Microsoft push as of late are not only crap in quality, but also testing new waters such as at the start of Youtube videos providing them not with positive advertising, but instead a stigma of "the company who helped ruin youtube" and not just youtube. The only place I've seen microsoft ads is where I don't expect them, and haven't previously seen advertising.
Microsoft's ad problems are a whole 'nother issue - I have a friend who's a copywriter and has recently worked for Microsoft. Even after the disastrous ad campaigns of the past decade, they still require broad consensus before approving a new ad. Even worse, their division heads often co-opt the process altogether - basically rejecting the professional ad copy and then writing their own.
It's something I see with faculty at my university a lot - because they are smart in one specific area, they seem to think that makes them experts on all topics, no matter how diverse from their actual area of expertise.
#DeleteChrome
You are aware that the techies don't see ads on the internet, don't watch ad blocks on the tv and have an mp3 player in their car?
Who exactly are they advertising to? The late late late adopters?
The problem is also from my own experiences is that people who are at the lower end of the market tend to have bad windows experiences. They don't have a choice for their desktop OS but are hardly going to want their phone to be as malware riddled as their desktops.
MS just doesn't have a rep.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Second time in two days that meme has surfaced. To be fair, though, there does seem to be a pattern to these things
1: News story breaks impacting on Microsoft in some way
2: Story gets posted to Slashdot.
3: A thoughtful, well-written and strongly pro-Microsoft comment gets quickly posted and rapidly modded up to +5
4: The rest of slashdot gets to read the article, and it quickly becomes apparent that the early post isn't at all representative of the majority opinion on Slashdot.
This seems to happen fairly consistently. which tends to suggest that Microsoft advocacy on this board is very well organised. So it's not unreasonable to assume that some degree of astroturfing is going on.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I can say the OS, ok it's not iOS, but it's a lot better than what you'd expect from a Microsoft mobile effort.
They could use that in their adverts.
"WP7: It's a lot better than you'd expect from a Microsoft mobile effort."
Add a little end of advert jingle and it's a winner.
After a couple of weeks using product A, it replaced product B as my primary device. It is a brand of shampoo above product B in every respect.
It's not even subtle. A better shill comment would be:
I really liked product B, but I found feature X to be a bit cumbersome to use and I really missed feature Y. Product A has some faults, but feature X is a lot easier to use, and it has feature Y.
An ever better shill comment would be expanding on one of these points, for example explaining that using feature X on product B required this sequence of actions, while on product A it only required a shorter sequence, and explaining why anyone should care about feature Y. Of course, at this point, you're getting dangerously close to giving an honest review, which may not be what your corporate overlords are looking for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News