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Windows Phones Getting Buried At Carriers' Stores
tripleevenfall sends in a PCMag story about how Microsoft's problems in driving Windows Phone 7 adoption stem in part from how the phones are represented to customers in carriers' stores. Quoting:
"At AT&T, the salesperson was a recent iPhone to Android convert. She was enthusiastic about WP7 devices, saying that Netflix was on WP7 and not available on her Android, and looked embarrassed when she walked me over to AT&T's unkempt WP7 display shelf. ... At a Verizon reseller kiosk, a salesman clearly tried to deter me from buying a WP7 device altogether. Not only did not he appear to know the fundamental difference between Windows Mobile and WP7, his kiosk didn't even offer WP7 devices and said you'd only find WP7 demo products at a few of Verizon's big retail stores. 'Honestly, only 1 out of 500 customers comes in here asking for a Windows phone,' he said. 'Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks until it performs better on the market.'"
Thanks for letting us know?
'Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks until it performs better on the market. . .'
. . . and it won't perform better on the market until agents have it in their hands to offer customers. Catch-22 anyone?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks until it performs better on the market."
Considering you own a very large market here in the US, it's up to you to introduce it to the market. Pitching the sale is the only way to know for sure. If you're not going to bother selling the WP7 phones, why even have them in your inventory? Does not compute.
Life is not for the lazy.
Failing because of poor sales pitches or lack of decent sales pitches because of poor sales? Either way it's a bad scenario for any manufacturer to be in.
It's always confirmation bias!
the problem is that windows mobile phones sucked THAT bad. Like Vogon poetry bad.
I know as of last month that Sprint didn't even have any WP7 on their handset roadmap, so unless they are planning to sell them retail only, they aren't really interested in them.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
You've got stock that isn't selling, so you hide it to ensure that it carries on not selling.
It's foolish to base any of your decisions on what retail cell salesmen say or do anyway. I've never been outright lied to as often as I have by someone trying to sign me up for a cell phone plan.
Well, except for someone trying to sell me a TV or laptop at BestBuy. They like to bend the truth and hide things, too.
If Caveat Emptor ever applies in life, it sure as hell does when it comes to electronic devices in a retail setting...
As much as I dislike Microsoft, this is true. I have rarely seen a Microsoft phone in any store.
Sprint did the exact same thing with WebOS. Granted, the hardware was nothing to write home about, but the operating system is great! The WebOS phones were always stuck in the back corner of the store, though.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
MS can easily fix the chicken/egg scenario.
1: Put out a new version of the ActiveSync protocol which is only licensed to the iPhone and WP7 devices.
2: Make it the the default protocol in the next Exchange version. Perhaps the only protocol, and move legacy ActiveSync (as well as IMAP and POP) to an additional charge product similar to BES.
3: Add some security features to the new ActiveSync protocol so it is the only one "blessed" by businesses under the guise of SOX, HIPAA, etc. (even when in reality, that protocol doesn't matter.)
4: Watch businesses not bother with Android and buy WP7 phones en masse over Blackberries.
5: ????
6: Profit. Exchange is the mail standard, and if a phone doesn't work with ActiveSync, it will not sell past the consumer market.
This is exactly why Apple created their stores. I do not believe they will work for MS like they do for Apple (way different companies), but do they sell the phones at their stores?
To be Linux or Mac before OSX.
Warp didn't sell because no one was buying it. No one bought it because it wasn't available in the stores. It wasn't in the stores because it wasn't selling.
After seeing how well Microsoft played with others in the computer arena, maybe they don't want to see Microsoft grow in the phone arena. Microsoft has historically not played well with others that it competes with, so keeping it in a position of limited power might be of benefit to all.
It's a shame. Microsoft could produce a phone that creates gold from air, and nobody would know about it because everybody hates Microsoft. They seriously have a problem. Nobody wants MS to have control over the mobile phone market.
Apple is doing well. Apple has good branding. Apple is stylish and trendy and slick. It sells well because people feel really good about buying them. Android has a different strategy. It's backed by Google. Google has this air of nerdiness. It's technical. It's clever. It doesn't care what people think and it's *not* Apple.
Where does Windows Mobile fit in here? Windows is not a strong brand. It's clunky and you need it because everyone else uses it. It's also late to market. Why would anyone choose that given the alternatives? It actually looks like there are some nice features on Windows Mobile. It would have to be a *lot* better than my android phone for me to want one though.
FTFA >> "Not only did not he appear to know the fundamental difference between Windows Mobile and WP7..."
He's hardly alone. One problem with MS changing their mobile strategy every five minutes is people have stopped giving a shit.
It's Apple vs. Android for the market share. MS is too late to join the party.
I see Apple iPhone ads almost ever other commercial break. Direct ones from apple, and carrier branded ones.. They are on constantly... I see giant Android signs up in malls.
Where is the MS Windows Phone Marketing?
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
their heavy hand in the desktop/laptop market has angered many many people and the resentment goes a long ways in what people offer and recommend, they don't want what happened in the PC market to happen to the cellphone market too
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
No consumers want them, so why would they display them prominently? They're going to showcase the items that users are actually looking for.
I actually think WP7 will fail much worse than Vista. Vista was a bit sluggish but it run the old applications. WP7 can't, and that will be fatal. All the Windows Mobile users will move to Android where their apps already work. People who already have an Android or iOS device are very unlikely to switch to WP7. All the ISVs will end up on Android and/or iOS because it's easier to port an app to a platform where you can use C/C++ and native code than one where the whole thing needs to be in C# and Silverlight or XNA. Even Angry Birds needs a C physics library. In fact even if Microsoft allow C and native code I doubt the ISVs that used to support Windows Mobile will come back because the platforms already bad market share is dropping quickly.
E.g. Pleco - a Chinese dictionary - moved to iOS and (soon) to Android. They've dropped Windows Mobile and won't ever support WP7. When they dropped Windows Mobile the iOS version was outselling WinMo 10:1. They have core code in C/C++ which they can run on both iOS and Android (also on WinMo). No chance of it working on WP7 without rewriting in C#. And no chance of getting their handwriting and OCR libraries from third parties ported either.
Opera have dropped Windows Mobile and won't support WP7. Once again they have C/C++ code with a few third party libraries in native ARM. It would be almost impossible to port to WP7 and even if they did Microsoft have apparently said they won't allow alternative browsers in their app store.
In a sense WP7 is more like a console than a phone. Worse actually since XBoxes support native code as far as I know. Maybe they'll pick up games from the XBox ecosystem but I don't think that will make up for not having things like Opera and Pleco though. They've apparently offered Adobe the possibility of native code to get Flash ported and possibly will do the same for titles like Angry Birds. Still that's not really enough - Adobe haven't announced a ship date and Roxio, the Angry Birds publisher, have publicly contradicted Microsoft when Microsoft implied they had committed to porting. I.e. handing out native code passes for key applications is not enough to get people to support a platform which is obviously doomed.
Picture Vista with no back compatibility following on from XP which had 1/3 the market share of OSX. Imagine that all the software already worked on iOS. That's the situation WP7 is in - it's actually easier to run the apps you used on Windows Mobile on Android than on WP7. Even the IHVs like HTC prefer Android because it's free to them and there are no limits on things like the Sense UI. WP7 has ridiculous limits on how much value they can add and they need to rewrite all their WinMo software in C# to make it work.
I think the market share will drop rapidly and Microsoft will kill it. Just like Kin and Zune, both of which used the same software.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The iPhone may have taken off quickly, but it took Android a little while to get moving. It wasn't until around version 2 (and the Motorola Droid) that it really took off.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Carriers' should not have Stores you should be able to go a cell phone store and pick the Carrier you want with out the voice and data plan lock-in + insane roaming rates.
The Windows Phone OS really is a great piece of software. It doesn't have all of the same features as Android and iOS (the important remaining ones are going in the fall) but it has - in my opinion - a much nicer interface. IMO, it's visually attractive, aesthetically consistent, and works very well.
Unfortunately, there aren't many attractive phones supporting it; the Samsung Focus wasn't bad, but that's only for one carrier. Otherwise, consumers are flooded with a bunch of (again, IMO) unattractive and cheaply-made HTC phones. Unlike the OS, the almost all of the phones aren't devices that can garner an "ooh" every time they're taken out, unlike the iPhone or Galaxy S II.
With WP7 crashing, and Nokia committing to WP7 in a big way, I wonder if WP7 would take Nokia down with it...
Same issue when I was looking for a Palm Pre Plus... So I bought it online. Palm's .. err HPs new phones (right now just the Veer) are likely just as buried. This is a hard market to get into. In fact the one Palm phone I was able to get access to in the store didn't seem to work.
I ended up getting a Palm Pre Plus and really like it and highly recommend it (well actually at this point you should get the Veer or Pre3). It's not all open source but they respect (read donate hardware too) their homebrew community.
http://bryanquigley.com/uncategorized/hppalms-webos
I don't see a reason why we should care that Windows Phones aren't getting "fair" time in the market, they have an unfair enough advantage in other markets. I also would much rather WebOS take off.
First, I love having options. Second, I hate any one company dominating a market. I got a chance to play with a Windows Phone 7, and I will have to admit that the GUI, operation, and general way the phone works is a brilliant design. Everyone else is trying to make small little app icons, while MS tried a whole different approach, and it really works.
I had about the same result as the person writing this article at an AT&T store. All the iPhones and Android units were up front in clear site, while the MS phones were in back, almost as an afterthought.
Microsoft, get smart! Open stores and get a really good PR person in charge of your marketing! Sell phones that anyone can program without taking 30% of each sale, and 30% of each subscription.
I think the author of the article overlooked something extremely important: The salespeople for the carriers (or third-party retailers) are actually consumers of these devices too. Total shocker, I know.
Why was the Windows Phone 7 platform not being recommended? Perhaps because the salespeople couldn't bring themselves to suggest such an undeveloped, poorly performing platform as WP7 to potential customers. Keep in mind, these people work on commission. In a vast majority of retailers, if a customer buys a phone and then returns it, the salesperson loses that commission. They don't want to push bad devices (and platforms) onto customers when there is a chance the customer will be unsatisfied and return the device.
Or, perhaps these people are even more human than we're giving them credit for, and actually are making personal recommendations from one consumer to another. If I were a salesperson, I would never, ever recommend a WP7 device to a consumer. I know, I'd probably make a terrible salesperson. But I could never sleep at night if I had to actually recommend the platform to people. To me, it sounds like these salespeople are pushing iOS and Android because: Suprise! They're better platforms with better devices! Sorry, Microsoft. You're a few years late to the modern smartphone OS party, and nobody is going to hold your hand and introduce you to all the guests. You have to introduce yourself.
Not open as in open source, but they can't lock these things down. I can download .cab files to do anything I want and there's no way they can really stop it. I don't have to go through any store or such nonsense. I'm not sure if WP7 is as open, but i'm hard pressed to let go of my 6.5 phone. It does everything I would want it to - for free.
The problem with Windows Phone 7 is the commercials, they are boring and forgettable. On top of that, the message of the commercials are people who spend time on their smartphones are losers which is the opposite message you should be sending to early adopters who you need to grab first.
Damned right there is a bias. After getting short shrift on support & software from MS on their mobile platform, going back to WinCE 2.11, I'll never use another WinMo phone again. I'm no Apple fanboy, but thank goodness that Jobs released the iPhone and changed the game, overthrowing the staid incumbents once and for all. I currently have an Evo and love it. I prefer Android, can appreciate the Apple devices, and will never again support MS due to their horrible customer service and support when they supplanted Palm. MS earned the bias against them.
She visited four stores - one from each of the big providers. Had she come to my local AT&T store, she would have seen the giant Windows Mobile display with several working demos, not to mention a sales guy who wouldn't shut up about Xbox Live or Netflix. I'm not saying that WM7 isn't being as hotly promoted as the other platforms, but it would be nice if she were drawing this kind of conclusion from a slightly larger sample set.
A market that hopefully will drive Microsoft's absolute shit products out!! HIP HIP HOORAY! HIP HIP HOORAY! =D
I was under the impression that since Microsoft only announced Windows Phone 7 in February 2010, that a shipping product would be at least another 18 months away.
I'm speechless!
So you see her anecdotal evidence and raise yours to match it?
Wait a minute. I'm not sure Microsoft has made a usage case for Windows on a phone. Seems a little heavy if you ask me. I can VPN from my Android phone into a Windows system. It runs fine. Why do I need Windows on the phone?
(Tongue firmly in cheek.)
Dude... You just argued against anecdotal evidence with more anecdotal evidence. huh?? Your sample set is ONE!!!
The biggest issue is that the advertisments for WP7 are stressing functionality and operability, when the majority of consumers just want "cool". If they advertised this based on the cool apps and games like Apple and Google are, and oh by the way it runs your important stuff too, then they may have some people walking into stores asking for it.
1. receive millions from MS
2. drop non-revenue-producing MeeGo devs
3. MeeGo continues development, so all they have to do is write drivers
4. WP7 tanks
5. MS bails
6. hire new, cheaper MeeGo devs
7. ????
8. PROFIT!!!!
"You won't waste as much time on your smartphone because you'll just hate using it that much".
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
And maybe it's time someone questioned the "positioning" dogma in marketing? Pricing an inferior new product the same as your competition, when the competition makes a product that doesn't need marketing to sell, is completely out of touch.
Back last fall, I was looking for something to replace my Tilt2. I was toying with another windows device, or switching to Android. Nothing against iPhone, it's a great device, but doesn't suit my needs. I like to TINKER! Kind of hard to do with an iphone. I went with an android device. Whereas with my 3 previous windows device, I had to either dump the carrier rom, put an hour into tweaking settings, deleting this, adding that, even though my Android device came with 1.6, it was a REFRESHING change. All I had to do was set up my gmail account, and boom! Every contact & phone number ported. No lock ups or anything. Then, in December I updated to 2.2 and its like having a new phone. Even on a carrier rom! Unless a manufacturer comes out with a larger than 4.5" screen, I'll stick with my 5" dell streak running android.
Umm, yes? Your point is silly. She presented anectdotal evidence, so he did as well. Hers is thereby nullified. Now, if he claimed Windows WM7 is therefore massively promoted, you might have a point.
I don't think I'd ever own one simply because Windows doesn't belong on a phone in my mind. Seriously their marketing team must be sitting around going "Well, we're Microsoft and we make Windows so that's in. Also, it's a phone so that's a good word and we just put out Windows 7 so that's a great version. I got it! Let's call it Windows Phone 7!"
Who in their right mind makes a marketing campaign based on a product that's losing traction?
Yeah, because vendors like losing money because they're biased against a product. It's not that WP7 phones are junk that nobody wants so they're de-emphasized; no, the WHOLE WORLD is out to get Microsoft and their superior products! It's a conspiracy.
why is this on slashdot ??
Had she come to my local AT&T store, she would have seen the giant Windows Mobile display with several working demos, not to mention a sales guy who wouldn't shut up about Xbox Live or Netflix.
I know what you mean - I live in Seattle area, as well ~
WP 7 phones would start selling if they played Android apps. Barring that, they are only good for those "replace at no charge" things the carriers try pushing on customers of lower IQ's.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I have a friend who works in an independently owned Telus store in Alberta. WP7 handsets were selling so poorly (ie. not at all) that the boss paid the restocking fee on a bunch of them and sent them back to the supplier. Having said that, the store primarily caters to businesses (oilfield companies) rather than joe/jane consumers, so take this with a grain of salt.
*clap, clap, clap*
Windows phones have pretty much been the bottom of the heap. They can't build a big pile of "fertilizer" and try to sell it like roses. Even if WP7 edges in better then their previous offers, they are prettymuch flailing in the market, and if anyone DOES by a windows phone, everyone they know will undoubtedly ask them WHY? so much that they'll stop showing it to anyone.
It's amazing that someone, ANYONE was suprised by this.
Wow, that's a steaming pile of...
In terms of SDK capability, WinMo and Android are the most similar, but that certainly doesn't mean that WinMo apps (developed against Windows APIs) are going to port even slightly well to Android (Java and POSIX APIs). Then there's the WinMo apps that were already written in managed code, where everything except the UI will move across directly.
Why is developing in C easier than in C#? The majority of Android apps use Java/Dalvik, not C/C++. Application development is faster in managed code, and development speed is where the money is these days (especially in the mobile space). I've heard lots of complaints about WP7, but nobody has said its development tools are too hard to use.
Claiming that Angry Birds "needs a C physics library" is such complete BS that it pretty much invalidates your whole post. Angry Birds has been written in Javascript as a web app - you don't get much further from C in syntactically similar languages than that! There are already Angry Birds clones on WP7 - have been for months, actually - and they get by just fine without C. The problem with Angry Birds on WP7 is purely political; claiming the existence of a technical problem is proof that you have no understanding of the technical issues at all.
For the record, there are already "alternative" browsers on WP7's marketplace, Xbox supports native code in much the same way that WP7 does (native SDK exists for big-name partners but the public SDK is all managed), and WP7's market share is growing (Windows Mobile's is shrinking, but so is XP's, that doesn't mean Win7 is doomed).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Nokia is going to have less money to invest in future technology every year that passes. As this cycle accelerates even their non-smartphone offerings will be passed by featurewise by other vendors selling better phones for less.
Windows 7 phones are _the best smart phones on the market_. They exceed far beyond the capabilities of the iphone or any android device.
Bing it yourself if you don't believe me.
Microsoft's business model is a push through the enterprise. I/T specifies the accepted configuration and that's what's permitted. The Windows Phone 7 will have all the necessary structure to fit into enterprise's infrastructure which will make that work. Thus Microsoft will only have to convince I/T, for which they already have a finely honed machine.
And their only competitor in this space is RIM -- the iPhone etc have limited support for that stuff and don't any effort to market to the same customer base.
But
Times are changing. It's pretty common now (sometimes under duress applied to I/T) for companies to allow people to use whatever phone they want. Plus Microsoft has tried to build more of a consumer brand (with some success). But most of their profits still come from big enterprises.
So I suspect that in the short term the situation described in this article will be invisible to MS since their channel will take the product, and their own DNA will make it hard for them to adapt and recognize problem. This is despite the fact that the company is quite aware of the problem and is trying to change. It will be too hard to argue with a sales team that is "making the numbers" and with a Wall Street that will evaluate based on the model that brought them to where they are today.
Marketing gold.
How about the Palm/WebOS based phones? Silent launches, put in display cases with the keyboard slider closed and the phone left off, sales people who had no clue....both Verizon and AT&T could have sold quite a few Palm Pre Plus phones(which are and were vastly improved over the original Palm Pre). Manufacturers can NOT count on the carriers to actually SELL phones, unless they are a flagship device that is exclusive to that carrier. Now, a big source of the problem is the way both Verizon and AT&T obsess about a single device, and everything else means nothing. For Verizon, the Droid branded devices are the only ones that Verizon sales reps would even encourage people to buy, and AT&T was so busy getting blown by Steve Jobs that you couldn't find an AT&T employee who cared about anything besides an iPhone.
Things have changed a LITTLE, but it really feels like the only way to get Verizon or AT&T sales people to sell a phone is to put huge incentives in place for the individual employees.
we are aruldy in a 4 way fight for the mobile os. ios androide webos and even linux in a few cases are fighting to be nu ber 1 and windows comes in years later saying they whant a pice of the mobile market. yea not going to happon. and they deserv it when this fad started with netbook they did nothing but spred fud saying they will never sell you cant use are os etc. of course when they sgtarted flying of the shelvs even linux powerd that fud came to a abrupt end then they had to scatter to make some sort of mobile os that was not the epic fail 10 times over windows mobile was. and it took them way to long to get anything out the door.
I'm in aphorism heaven - what goes around comes around, you reap what you sow, do unto others what you would have them do to you, it all comes full circle ...
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Netflix on WP7 phone on AT&T? How fast do you want to burn through your 5 GB allowance? T-Mobile and Sprint officially have Netflix on the Nexus One, G2, Nexus S, and Evo 4G (2.2) and unofficially on many other Android phones. T-mobile will supposedly throttle you after 5 GB and Sprint allows unlimited. But at least no overages like AT&T.
Just look at the news. It is already taking it down with it.
All it takes is one to prove a theory false.
We have an MS Store near my house. It is full of WP7 products .... that nobody looks at.
The store is always pack ... with people sitting in the confi chairs and the MS "geeks" yaping at the back corner. The multiple times I being there, nobody is paying any attention to anything. Mostly old people sitting (they have lots of sofas).
WinPho7 is just not selling because most people find the UI ugly and .... "LeapFroggy" looking
So now we should expect all vertical surfaces around US cities to be again covered with ads implying (but never stating directly) that Windows phones are UMPCs, so they will run all Windows applications? Last time around I couldn't board a subway without that infuriating crap being shoved in my face at every station!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
My company is an ISV that makes communication software between external peripherals (mostly serial devices) and mobile phones/computers/tablets. As of right now, and even the upcoming WP7 "Mango" update, there is no Bluetooth Serial Port Profile support, or even Bluetooth HID for one-way comms to a WP7 phone, so the platform is completely useless for us. We don't even get many prospects asking about it - maybe one in a hundred, but when they do ask, there's nothing but bad news for them - it just doesn't work.
Can't handle a taste of your own medicine? Even better... from the people who should be SELLING your software.
Mixing Ozzy and Adam Osbo(u)rne: "STOP! Don't buy our shiny model 7 smartphone!
NO! Not one of the competition either, you fool!
Wait until we come out with our even newerer model 7.5 Microkia smartphone later this year or next year-ish, or I'll bite your head off! "
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Look, if you had a choice of a pace maker running Android X, or Windows X which would you choose?
I'm sure that your local AT&T store (through the insight or planning of that store's manager or employees) may be making an effort to try to sell WM7 devices. But that seems generally like an exception rather than the rule. At this point they need something that improves upon the current Apple and Android offerings. Otherwise why even bother?
My wife and I stopped by the Microsoft store in Bellevue (near Redmond) and checked out WP7. The Samsung phone was extremely light and the screen was bright. It was almost magical! I felt there was some trick, but apparently not. While I plan to get an Android next, my wife wants a Windows phone now. She likes the active tiles and the Samsung phone.
However, when we went to the AT&T in the same mall, the sales rep told us "Windows is no good" as soon as we looked at them. She was actively trying to talk us out of them. The phones were even in the front slot in the store! She was off-putting in her aggressive push to an HTC android near the middle of the store.
Just thought it was unusual.
P.S. Yes, I know I made up the word "anectdotally."