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.'"

Comments

Windows Mobile

[leon.gandalf]

the problem is that windows mobile phones sucked THAT bad. Like Vogon poetry bad.

Re:Windows Mobile

[tripleevenfall]

They not only have a reputation problem because of Windows in general, and because of the atrocious previous versions of Windows on the phone, but they are also 4 years behind the curve in the mobile space. The iPhone came out in 2007.

Microsoft is fourth to market with a fourth rate product. Why WOULD any consumer come in asking for it?

My guess is that MSFT will start giving the phones away to get some market penetration.

Re:Windows Mobile

[MightyMartian]

It's laughable, really. Redmond has spent the last twenty years waging the war of the desktop, even as, in the last five years, the desktop has faded in consumers' eyes. Heck, even in the business/corporate world, smartphones and tablets are beginning to show substantial inroads (Blackberry has got to be credited for that, even if it looks like another example of an early producer being unable to keep up to its newer competition).

At some point, you think Redmond marketers would have noticed that the enemy combatants weren't even bothering fielding a lot of soldiers any more. It was clear three years ago that Apple had seen the promised land and had put a huge amount of effort into the iPhone line. If that didn't send the message, the fact that Google began dumping huge resources into the Android operating system and was in fact getting some pretty sweet manufacturing deals should have suggested to these guys that maybe things weren't what they had been. But no, Microsoft was caught in the Vista drama and in promoting Windows 7 as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The nightmare is coming, too. Blackberry was the first out of the gate with products that integrated with Microsoft's enterprise offerings, but everyone else was quick to the punch. Microsoft is increasingly faced with the possibility that it's twin product lines of Windows and Office/Exchange are about to be split apart. And once you've replaced Office and Outlook as the forward facing apps, how much longer before the drive to producing new back end offerings finally cuts the heart out of Microsoft's business? Just about everything else Microsoft does loses money, so they have got to be shitting themselves right now. Without Windows/Office/Exchange, in the long term, they are well and truly fucked.

Re:Windows Mobile

[iluvcapra]

I remember this slightly differently -- the iPhone I got that first day in 2007 never crashed (like my Treo and Nokia), never crashed during phone calls (Treo), never pocket dialed (Treo and Moto), and was never stranded with a years-old OS while the carrier dragged their heels (Treo). It also lasted all day on a charge, and the battery door never fell off when I dropped it, and dust never clogged the SD slot on account of the lost the little blank that was supposed to cover it (Treo).

Also, when the touchscreen became unresponsive two weeks after I bought it, I was able to bring it to a store and get it replaced in 10 minutes, and backup restore worked perfectly. I never had to ship my phone somewhere and be phoneless for a week, only to get the phone back and be told that the techs in Arizona couldn't reproduce my problem (Nokia). It also had a web browser, maps app, and video player that was actually usable and didn't destroy the battery. It also had the nice Visual Voicemail thing.

It did not run apps. But the other stuff far outweighed the apps issue. Frankly if iPhones didn't have native apps TODAY I'd probably still be using the things. No Android manufacturer can match Apple's hardware service, or even tries to. All the apps in the world aren't worth having to wait a week to get a phone fixed through the mail.

Re:Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks. . .

[Gerald]

'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?

...unless Microsoft is desperate enough to pay Verizon to promote WP7. For Verizon it's not a Catch-22. It's a catch-several-million-dollars-by-doing-nothing.

Windows Mobile vs. WP7

[Picass0]

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.

Failing because microosft isn't advertising?

[BagOBones]

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?

Re:MS can fix that easily...

[johnlcallaway]

7 ... Get sued for non-competitive practices, have millions of current Android owners get pissed off, see small businesses everywhere turn to Google mail, and loose profit.

Re:Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks. . .

[tripleevenfall]

the Verizon rep's job is to get a subscription, matching the customer with a device that most closely meets their needs and makes them want to buy. Their job is not to push particular handsets off onto consumers in the same proportions as they have them in stock.

Since no one comes into a store asking for a Windows phone handset, what is there that would make someone recommend it to a customer? At this point, nothing.

Re:Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks. . .

[robertl234]

The product that Verizon is selling is a monthly data plan contract. It doesn't matter what the phone attached to it is.

Re:Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks. . .

[oever]

But you don't have to live in either. There's a whole life out there where you do not need them.

Re:Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks. . .

[jawtheshark]

Verizon rep's job is to get a subscription, matching the customer with a device that most closely meets their needs

Which for 95% of all customers would be an iPhone. Don't mistake me for an Apple fanboi, we have 4 Apple products in our household of which only two were purchased within the last year and none of those are mine: an iMac 27" and a spanking brand new white iPhone. Both belong to my wife. (The other two products are a 1st gen iPod Shuffle, which is mine and a 2nd gen iPod Mini which belongs to my wife.... Neither of those get much use anymore).

I'm a nerd, I admit that and proud of it. My wife, however is at the other side of the spectrum. You pretty much can't get less tech inclined as her and for people her generation (born in the eighties) that is still very common. As a matter of fact, she used to have a Windows computer and it was always "jts, can you do this for me, jts can you do that for me, ad infinitum". It's not that I don't love my wife, but if you've been married for a while that really gets on your nerves. So we bought an iMac. Now there is the occasional question, but much less trouble. I set her up an iTunes account so she could buy music. She never did.

What does this all have to do with the iPhone? Simple. A few month ago her trusty old Samsung cellphone died. Being the cheapskate I am, I bought her a new touchscreen HTC. Not the highest end, because if I'd go high end I could just as well buy an iPhone, right? She agreed with me: don't spend too much money on a stupid phone. The thing is: She was completely unable to use the phone. Calls went off without her wanting it, writing SMSes was hard (We use at least 3 languages on a daily base, so the typical T9 needs to be disabled and the on-screen keyboard needs to work well, including accentuation and stuff like that) I didn't believe her, I thought it would just be a matter of her getting used to it. Not so... After a good month and a half she was still struggling.

Again, as married guys know, having a wife complaining about the same thing over and over gets fast quick. Just to get rid of the complaints, I decided to get her an iPhone... I set it up to use our wireless, connected it to her iTunes account and registered it with her iMac and imported her iTunes music (which I ripped from CD years ago when she was still using Windows).

I got basically no questions, she managed to type SMSes (in all languages) and to do her calls and it didn't call accidentally when she didn't want it to. Within a day she started to send emails with pictures to her friends (she'd never done that on a computer AFAIK) Within two days, she had found how to download apps (mostly books apps and to my utter stupefaction she had bought a few music albums. The third day, we sit in a pub with a friend of her. She asks me to take a picture of them. I do, give her back the phone and she sends is immediately to the email of said friend. Not even thinking twice that she was now using 3G instead of the Wifi at home.

That is what the iPhone does... It enables the non-tech user to use technology. It's utterly amazing. Actually, I expected this to happen when she switched computers to the iMac, but that was not where the big "enabling" happened. The iPhone did, and if you ask me... Instead of having bought that huge-ass iMac, I should have bought her an iPad. Would have been much cheaper.

I do realize that I am comparing a cheaper phone with an iPhone and that I'm sure that the touch screen is the major reason of her inability to use the HTC. I've taken the HTC into use now. It' ok... I got "used to it", but is that really what we want? The user to "get used to it"? If the iPhone weren't so friggin expensive, I'd consider one for myself but one 50€ plan per month in this family is enough.

If the task of the salesperson is to meet the users needs, then I'd bet money on it that the iPhone fits the needs of normal (non-geek) people best.