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Charlie Kindel On Why Windows Phone Still Hasn't Taken Off
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's weak share in the mobile phone market can be attributed to its mishandling of industry politics, not inferior technology or features, according to ex-Windows Phone evangelist Charlie Kindel. Microsoft's traditional strategy of going over the heads of hardware vendors to meet the needs of consumers and application developers does not work in the phone market, says Kindel, where the handset makers and carriers have the biggest say in determining the winners (Apple is an exception). Not everybody agrees with Kindel's analysis. Old-timers may remember Kindel, who recently resigned from Microsoft, from his days as developer relations guru for COM/OLE/Active-X."
Fool me once, shame on you, lock me into an inferior OS twice, shame on the whole industry.
So having a phone that is so tightly integrated into the service holds no interest for me. Same reason I wont get another Motorola Android phone.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Wait, why is it superior?
Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t it Taken Off
ex-Windows Phone evangelist Charlie Kindel
Oh, right
Not everybody agrees with Kindel's analysis. Old-timers may remember Kindel, who recently resigned from Microsoft, from his days as developer relations guru for COM/OLE/Active-X
Is the submitter trying to imply that his judgement doesn't matter because COM/OLE/ActiveX was somehow bad?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Is doing just fine. Like Windows Mobile devices before...
http://www.xda-developers.com/category/windows_phone/
Well, let's see here...
* The delivery is about three-four years too late
* World+dog who has used Windows-based phones in the past have experience with WMP 6.5 (*shudder*)
* App developers are looking at 'safe' (marketshare-wise) platforms to write apps for. iOS and Android are among them, while WP7 is not.
* The UI tiles may be pretty, but that whole right-hand side of the screen is sitting there unused, making the whole thing look narrower, and therefore smaller
* The ads aren't quite cutting it, and tend to be (IMHO) full of snafus. For instance, the latest sends the subtle message that only whipped boyfriends willing to wear yoga tights will use a Windows Phone.
There's lots more, but those stand out immediately...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It isn't popular because it is the 3rd player in a well populated market. There is no point in getting in to all of the details as they have been gone over 100 times before... If you want a smartphone you get an iPhone, if you want an open smartphone or can't afford an iPhone you get an Android phone.
Apple turned the industry on it's head, Android is doing a good job of ensuring competition and openness (to a degree). There just isn't a place for a Microsoft phone. Doing something better isn't good enough anymore, you need to offer people something new and get a jump of 12 months of the competition when you do it.
In the mobile market people are know about their options, this isn't a beige box world where the default operating system and applications being sold are all MS based.
The consumer has moved on, and that is what will damage a company's bottom line more than anything these days if you can't keep up with what they want.
This is my sig, there are many like it but this is mine
A reasoned debate? You mean one without resorting to derogatory stereotypes, promoting a product while tearing down the other identified purely by brand, avoidance of actual evidence/references, and lame self-referential irony? You must be some microsoft loving git astroturfing for windows, as anybody could see.
Though truth be told, I'd take a windows phone . . . if it were actually cheap enough for me to afford. Same for any other smart phone.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
I am a Windows Phone developer and something of a fan, but I would bet money that you are not -- you are just a troll. Hint: It's "Windows Phone". And while we're at it, let's throw a bone to the "unshaven scraggly neckbeards" and add that it's "GNU/Linux" (I wouldn't ordinarily, but I'm having fun smacking you down). And to be fair, Android isn't trash, especially when compared to the (old) Windows Mobile, which had all the sex appeal of Windows 3.1 to bring to your 21st century mobile device. I develop for Windows Phone because it's fun and similar to the technologies I use in my day job, and I like to create things for consumers, but I carry an Android phone because I can do anything I want with it in terms of homebrew and my own geekish forms of enjoyment.
What is the audience for Windows Phone at this point?
If you want a smooth, uncomplicated user experience and don't mind lock-in with a tyrannical corporation, get an iPhone.
If you want things like freedom and openness and ethics and value and don't mind not having the "cool" phone that gets all the buzz, get an Android.
What exactly is the core audience for Windows Phone, and what are the traits that they value? I can't really think of anyone for whom Windows Phone would make more sense than either iOS or Android.
Android is the Windows of the smartphone market. Offered by multiple vendors and loaded up with crapware, must be custom-installed to be useful, etc. Not sure who the Windows Phone is supposed to be for...old corporate Windows Mobile users are probably turned off by the interface. Facebook works well enough on just about any smartphone, I can't see anyone buying a phone on FB integration at this point. Maybe 3 years ago...Microsoft, you need a time machine!
As someone very tangentially involved in the launch of the latest Windows phone this fall, I got to handle one of the latest/greatest models. The OS did seem pretty damn good, though a little too "whizzy"--too much animation, too much blinking, too much trying to show me "Hey! Look at what a sexy OS I am!", but in principle it looked really solid and worked well. MS has put a lot of thought and effort into making a mobile interface on a small touchscreen work well.
What was terrible was the Samsung hardware. It was light and plasticky and felt stupidly cheap. It's hard to value Metro as a real competitor to iOS when the phone itself feels like a disposable model, compared to my new 4S that feels solid and real.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The facts are probably that WP was:
a) Late to market
b) Lacking developer support as many had already moved to iPhone or Android or developed mobile skills on these platforms
c) Not allowing hardware manufacturers to best utilise existing hardware by being proscriptive
d) Trying to be different after the market had already led in specific directions (iPhone then Android). Lets face it, it wasn't going to be easy to get in on this without using a similar interface to iPhone or a good weight of device support (Linux)
e) Less than interesting on most of the original hardware
f) Poor Marketting
g) Leaving carriers being carriers - little value add and little gain.
h) Using the names "Microsoft" and "Windows"
Anyone think of any others? I think instead of arguing between posts I think we can just add a big list together, post it to Microsoft and see if they learn any lessons.
In 2005 my Windows Mobile device would crash three times a week. People would come over to my house to make sure that I was OK when my phone would go straight to voice mail for too long. As a consumer, they could not convince me to use on of their devices even if it was free and they paid for the service.
Superior is a matter of perspective. If one values freedom and opennes, Windows Mobile may not be best OS out there. And as a fan of Linux (but especially of GNU, which you didn't mention) by means of being a fan of freedom and openness and having a unshaven scraggly neckbeard I'm not very keen on Android either, although there are of course levels in hell and Android is merely roasting lightly over the flames well below where MS and Apple are happily dancing on the lake of fire.
Curiously, you, a volunteer end user (?) coming on here to sing praises of Windows, must really enjoy that scaly pecker of beelzebub rammed down your throat. Silly person.
going over the heads of hardware vendors to meet the needs of consumers and application developers does not work in the phone market
Say what? Hello, Apple? Seems to be working for them, last time I checked.
Bow before me, for I am root.
I tested a windows phone 7 device for my company..
We don't allow storage of corporate data on 3rd party servers so right off the bat it's web based storage system was useless..
The OS offers no USB storage options and no removable SD cards.
It had no way to upload videos from the phone other then tethering it to PC and using the MS Zune app to download the off the phone.
Overall we found the OS to be to restrictive for our needs and standardized on Android based phones.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Anyone who has used Windows Mobile knows it is a superior platform to Android.
Of course any reasoned dialog on the subject will be drowned out here on Slashdot. It's impossible to have a reasoned debate on technical issues or merits here. You have the Linux Fans drooling over their unshaven scraggly neckbeards to tear down any MS products, and promote the trash that is Android.
Stupid ass low life troll can't even get the name of the platform he's jacking off to correct. Windows "Phone" is and always will be a buggy POS OS that will die a slow and horrible death.
The Apple success in the mobile market is the success of vanity. I know kids who don't have enough money for lunch but who own a brand new iPhone because "it's cool". The price of the handset, and the unlimited voice and data plans, for a teenager? Jeez!.... Android-based handsets are cheaper, and the hardware quality is different. Now, Microsoft decided to adopt the Apple business model. However, they don't seem to realise that they target a different audience. Frankly, for the same price I would buy Apple.
When they open it to c++, all game compagnies will add WP7 to their catalogs.
Then they will take the 3rd place after Android and IOS.
I would bet on that, I don't know how much time it will take, but i'm pretty sure it will end this way.
Phones today are simply game boxes, people want to play, that's it.
It's more like: why hasn't it taken off? because it's superior.
Microsoft chose to try and mimic Apple's ability to assure consistent user experience and design and upgradability, and they haven't been coping well with the costs of those choices.
It's like MS took their usual strategy of focusing their marketing entirely on other businesses and let the consumer be damned, and pulled a complete 180 to focusing on the consumer and failing to sufficiently suck up to their carrier and device maker partners.
I hated OLE ActiveX COM so so much. It would be one the main reasons I left windows programming. I must have spent 1000's of hours fighting with those technologies either in trying to make them do something or trying to build an install package that worked. So anything this guy has to say is instantly discounted to zero. ActiveX was one of those classic silver bullet technologies that got you to 90% on the first day of development and the other 10% took months and often resulted in rebuilding whatever the ActiveX part did from scratch.
Firstly, he thinks that consumers are stupid: "They don’t know what they hate. All they know is they buy phone service from mobile carriers and/or buy a phone from a carrier. They love speeds & feeds and will generally buy anything they are told to by television ads and RSPs (Retail Sales Professionals)."
No: consumers ask their friends. Their friends are Slashdot readers. They know full-well what a phone Market dominated by Microsoft would look like, they know how Microsoft has behaved. Repeatedly. And they are not going to recommend a MS phone to anyone: friends don't screw friends. They all know it's just about protecting the desktop market, and the moment that MS has achieved that objective they'll screw the user. The clue is in the name: 'Windows Phone'.
Secondly: "My hypothesis is that it also enables too much fragmentation that will eventually drive end users nuts." I guess that's how it's worked out for x86 choice in the face of the Apple desktop monoculture. Nope? It turns out that we value openness. It's one of the variables we play with when making a choice between systems: given all else equal, we'll choose the system that's more open. Advantages of openness far outweigh the disadvantages like fragmentation. So all that Google has to do is keep Android at rough parity with Apple in terms of UI/features. But they are doing better than parity - it's cheaper for better.
Thirdly: Carriers know full well what happens to companies who partner with Microsoft. And so do device manufacturers. I guess some companies (cough, Nokia, cough), like the idea of handing their future to Microsoft, but it turns out that most think that's a bad idea. Sendo, anyone?
Then I'm sure we can find a bunch of people who will dispute that WP is the best technically. Form an orderly queue in the replies please.
But finally, even if you were to consider that WP was technically the best, the idea that the best tech is the winner has been roundly disproved again and again. Everyone, including Charlie Kindel, knows it's about the whole package. We all know that MS on the desktop isn't the best technically (it can't be - it has to satisfy everyone) but it is the best at the whole package.
It's decent, but unfortunately that "other" OS has some things better thought out. For example switching tabs is just cumbersome. (I only use a smartphone for browsing and email btw)
...Apple is an exception...
I think that sums up the story.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The reason why Windows Phone failed - I use the past tense very deliberately - is because Windows Phone is shit. Politics is irrelevant to its failure. It failed because it's shit. Politics might have stifled it if it were a good product, but it's not. It's shit.
1) Microsoft has backstabbed almost every "partner" it has had, which means it only gets voluntary partners that are: a) stupid, or b) greedy.
2) Microsoft could go over the heads of the carriers, just like Apple, if it actually had something compelling for consumers. Instead, they used their default strategy of pushing carriers around while assuming that consumers would be drawn in by the fact that "It's Windows!". They didn't want to stand on the boat, and they didn't want to stand on the dock, so they ended up in the water. Windows 8 may be an attempt to get on the (consumer) boat, or it might turn out to be an attempt to stand on both the boat and dock in which case they will also end up in the water again.
The only MS products I buy are ones that I feel I have to - a copy of Windows (for gaming) and a copy of Office (like it or not, it is something of a standard). Other than that I don't HAVE to have and certainly don't WANT anything from Microsoft -- especially not a smartphone OS.
Sorry, but face the facts. WinCE is a terrible OS, and it always has been. If you have a decent product you don't need to change the name every few years.
If customers just did what they were told Android wouldn't be popular.
Superior platform?
I've used it a few times, open minded... and found the interface to be terrible!!!
To be fair, the OS was quick and snappy and the functionality was decent, but the UI was so irritating that I just would never buy one. Yuk.
It felt like something I would buy for grandma, who would probably never leave the home screen "tiles", but I found it annoying and limiting.
From Kindel's blog: "Remember that end users just do what they are told (by advertising and RSPs). "
Yeah? Really? Screw you, Charlie, and all the devices you flogged. Go on, TELL me to buy a Windows phone. Go on. I'm listening. What? Louder. Ok, I hear you. I understand the instruction. The answer is NO.
Arrgh!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Apple is an exception
The real question is: Why isn't Microsoft?
"My better competitor is an exception" is a cop-out. Find out what makes them the exception, why they could break the rules and not only get away with it, but be successful doing so. Just saying "they're an exception" is on the same order as "these are not the droids you are looking for" - if you're not a Jedi, it just makes you look stupid. Because you didn't explain anything, and least of all the failure you're trying to cover up.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
well,
it's superior because techwise it does less than series 40.
it's superior because it's less extensible than bada.
it's superior because it's less nerdy than meego.
it's superior because it's got less choice than blackberries.
it's superior because it's more expensive to release sw for than symbian.
it's superior because it has less coding options than mophun devices had.
it's superior because there's no dual sim model to confuse you.
it's superior because the memory card is glued in.
it's superior because 2 year old and fresh phones have the same tech, for the same price.
it's superior because you'll need to sign up to be a developer and pay.
it's superior because you can't port mplayer over and watch everything you want without converting.
it's superior because there's no task manager, because nobody wants to alt-tab.
it's superior because there's no model with proper gaming buttons.
it's superior because you can't tweak anything.
it's superior because porting doom is harder than porting doom for brew.
it's superior because it does less for less people - apparently. oh and the guy has a very, very american centric view on things. essentially the whole writeup is just bitching about carriers being power hungry and customers being stupid sheeple. well laadidaa fucker, most people in the world don't buy carrier locked and customized phones - if you can't make it on unlocked markets you can't make it anywhere. and apple has cut the manufacturer out? what-the-fuck? even if apple doesn't run their own factories they're still the manufacturer brand on iphone. they'd be same as saying that nokia had also cut off the manufacturer before joining ms - which would sound _insane_. what also reeks is that actually right now ms and nokia are hard at work doing carrier customizations, someone is hard at work selling carriers consulting services for creating live tiles for them etc, in fact they're bending over as fast as they can and on a second branch making wp7 more like android and ios, because right now calling it a smartphone system is a travesty. it's a "great" os to have on your third or _fourth_ mobile device, you know, like keeping a separate phone for when you go out to drink, not something you'd keep as your "backup laptop" because it just doesn't rise to the occasion if need be - in that way it's less of a smartphone than fucking nokia communicators from fucking 2006. quite a few analysts etc however do point out how good it's office integration is(or "will be"), which is an easy mistake to make if you just forget that IT'S A FUCKING ZUNE WITHOUT HD WITH A FUCKING PHONE CHIP SOLDERED ON, making it a featurephone with a fancy menu. if I wanted a fucking feature phone I'd buy a fucking nokia 303, oh wait that does more for less money while still sporting 1ghz - not that anyone cares, but it's got touchscreen and a qwerty and you could get two for the price of one wp7. I guess I meant some even cheaper touch-n-type of which one could get 4. bottom line is that wp7 tries to be a sucker deal for carriers and consumers - by keeping it simple and "fluid" looking while actually doing shit nothing and keeping the phones looking expensive and labelling them as smartphones to get top tier(or rather, middle) pricing out of them while using bargain bin parts.
how the hell is a windows mobile application to run interpreted shit with a fancy menu superior to a real operating system though beats me as well. I mean, if ms wasn't douches they could do port their stupid .net system to android and do their own appstore and launcher on android, instantly giving the developers who have chosen their system ten fold increase in possible users.
also funny shit hearing about fragmentation from an ex-ms guy. you know what ms did with windows mobile? or windows for pocketpc's? or windows mobile smartphone edition? they fragmented it on PURPOSE on their own - and didn't fix the mobile centric apis for several releases while doing so(bluetooth was teh sux, media
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This is exactly the type of press release that you get from movie producers after a very expensive dud. The idea is to direct attention from the crappiness of the product and to, well, anything else. The genre is dead. They didn't cast leads with enough star power. Improper marketing. Just anything other than the hard fact that they produced a product that nobody wanted. (Extra points for accusing the consumer of not being sophisticated enough to "get it".)
Charlie appears to think that following the lead of the absolute most popular smartphone on the planet (locking down the hardware and limiting what freedom the carriers had with the product) is what caused his product to place in the rear of the pack.
The problem with this picture is that (a) Microsoft was last to market with a viable touch screen smartphone, and (b) previous versions of Windows Mobile sucked so violently that it harmed the brand. And so, Windows Phone 7 had a double uphill battle -- trying to enter a market long crowded with reasonably decent products, and trying to shed the bad taste in consumer's mouths from the debacle that was Windows Mobile 6. And 5. That they also pissed off their vendors probably didn't help, but it was not the whole of the problem.
And by the way, Kindel, Windows Phone 7 is *not* "superior", unless you mean, to Windows Mobile 6, and I don't think you do. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
How is Apple an exception? Apple became a hardware manufacturer rather than trying to dictate to hardware manufacturers, and Apple has done quite a lot to work with carriers, at least in the U.S. market.
Sure, once the iPhone was in high demand, Apple had more power in those negotiations, but I can't see that they are an exception.
The UI is horrible.
It's not open source.
No one is making apps for it because it is dead in the market.
You can't develop for it on OS X or Unix.
You are forced to use Microsoft's shitty developer tools.
But, hey!, it has connectivity with Microsoft's piece of shit last place console!
LOL, fail.
1. You may dislike the UI, but a lot of people love it because of the minimalism.
2. Yes it's not Open Source.
3. Sorry on this point, it just crossed 50,000 apps and the growth is accelerating http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-marketplace-hits-50000-apps
4. Yes no dev on OS X and Linux
5. Microsoft's developer tools are no where close to shitty, they're simply the best in the industry (YMMV).
6. The last point proves that you're a troll. XBox 360 is nowhere close to last place. It just had a record Thanksgiving beating all other consoles and they're flying off shelves thanks to Kinect and the new media features. Also, they're top on the biggest metric, the amount people spend money on, buying games.
This space for rent.
The reason I'd never buy one is simply because its a Microsoft product.
Microsoft have a long history of screwing their customers. I don't trust Microsoft or Ballmer especially to ever put small users interests first. Simple as that.
1. You may dislike the UI, but a lot of people love it because of the minimalism.
2. Yes it's not Open Source.
3. Sorry on this point, it just crossed 50,000 apps and the growth is accelerating http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-marketplace-hits-50000-apps
4. Yes no dev on OS X and Linux
5. Microsoft's developer tools are no where close to shitty, they're simply the best in the industry (YMMV).
6. The last point proves that you're a troll. XBox 360 is nowhere close to last place. It just had a record Thanksgiving beating all other consoles and they're flying off shelves thanks to Kinect and the new media features. Also, they're top on the biggest metric, the amount people spend money on, buying games.
Actually, the 360 is pretty much on par with the PlayStation 3 for 2nd place. The PlayStation 3 will eventually surpass it (it sells more in Asia and Europe and will likely outlast the 360 in the marketplace for 6 months - 1 year). So, he's right, it will end up dead last eventually. As for 1st place, well that would be the Wii.
They don't want to touch WP7 as they can't run their existing C++/OpenGL ES codebases (from Android+iOS) on it. And even if a complete C# rewrite of a game is justifiable, performance just plain sucks compared to native code. Look at how smoothly Angry Birds runs on iOS or Android compared to the WP7 version, on similar underlying hardware!
Why the fuck are you calling it "Windows" or "Phone" or "7"?
People associate "Windows" with uncool corporate dilbert crap. Phone is OK, but what are you going to call your pathetic excuse for a tablet, Windows Phone 8.5 For A Thing That Isn't A Phone?
And why 7, just reminds people how much 1 through 6 sucked. If it's totally different, and it is, you need to change people's feelings and not just the fucking api.
They don't advertise for shit, and they have fuck all for hardware.
Why is Apple successful? In everything they do, they advertise like no one's business. They make you want their product to the point where you just start calling every smart phone and iPhone, every tablet an iPad, and every MP3 player an iPod. It's like "Xerox" or "Kleenex" and it's friggin working.
Why is Android successful? It has all the features of the above player, sometimes more, but can be found EVERYWHERE, all over the WORLD, on EVERY CARRIER. It is easily hacked and has a loyal following of not only things it can do, but things you can MAKE it do easily. You can't go into any store, looking for a phone, and not see 18 different androids sitting there, begging for attention. AND it has some pretty good marketing backing from people like Verizon.
Why is WP7 losing? It does none of the above. Verizon, the nation's LARGEST CARRIER, has ONE FUCKING PHONE that itself is a year old. They have NO ADVERTISING. And, unlike the Kinect in which they have wholly embraced the hacking community, they have completely ignored it on the phone side of things.
MS, get your shit together. This is an easy fucking win.
This is nothing new for Microsoft. They were in both the Tablet PC and Smartphone markets very early, but kept bringing the "Windows Experience" to platforms on which it seemed dubious at best. So with WP7 (a stupid name, IMHO) they were playing catchup - and at the same time alienating a good portion of their existing (small) development base. Most consumers (myself included) were burned by successive failures (Windows Mobile 2003 SE, Windows Mobile 5.0, Windows Mobile 6.5) and have simply got sick and tired of the crappy/sluggish experience, the dropped calls and the relatively poor battery life (often caused by software bugs). Now, it looks like they actually have develped something half decent (I've beta tested WP7 pre-Mango), but as stated, no one is (rightly) willing to go near the thing when better alternatives are at hand.
2. Not open source means no cyanogenmod. Lolfail.
3. 50,000 trash apps. I have an HD 7. The windows phone market is garbage. IOS has the best market and android has many more good apps than windows phone due to sheer size.
4. What a joke. I can develop for android on any platform. For free. Including the os.
5. Ms dev tools aren't shitty only because all large development environments suck. Eclipse sucks, xcode sucks, and vs2010 sucks. All slow bloated crap.
6. How many Xbox games can you play on your windows phone? Not a damn one.
That also makes the Xbox market more focused though. The PS3 is heavily reliant on the Japanese audience, and numerous Japanese games that do not get released outside of Japan. That doesn't help European or American customers much, which get stuck with a console with a somewhat uninspired games library. That is even more prevalent with the PSP - which is widely regarded a failure in the west, but does quite well in Japan.
Yeah, I could go ahead and state I'm a fairly succesful app developer who'se apps have grossed into the millions, that I've had several run-ins with CK and that every time I do I think he's a complete retard, but you could just follow his twitter account yourself, and experience the sadness.
It's hard to believe this guy was ever a developer relations guru - because if there's one thing this guy does not understand, its developer relations. He has singlehandedly alienated more WM/WP developers than most (rightly titled) developer relations gurus would ever herd.
"Microsoft's traditional strategy of going over the heads of hardware vendors to meet the needs of consumers and application developers does not work in the phone market"
WTF ? With WP7, they have pretty much pissed off and/or drove out of business at least half of the succesful WM app vendors. How is that a strategy to meet the needs of application developers? WP7 was far more restrictive than needed, and all the really succesful WM apps were killed in WP. I can probably forward you over 100.000 email requests asking for specific apps to be ported from WM to WP7 but are impossible to port. How is that meeting either app devs or consumers?
The funny thing is, for version 8, they seem to be slowly undoing most of the damage they caused with WP7. Those same things everybody screamed about to not change in the first place. Typical.
And you replied to it by being even more rude and insulted the poster without evidence. WOW Its like a chain of parody here.
Oh you mean like how Slashdot claims Linux is superior? or when Linux users, developers, funders claim its superior?
Right.. Oops.
Microsoft faced a similar problem in automotive systems. At one point, Microsoft wanted to control the in-car entertainment and navigation system market. The problem was that they wanted to have a direct relationship with the car buyer. (Think "OnStar, by Microsoft"). This did not go over with the auto companies. (A QNX sales rep once told me that an auto exec went through the roof when shown a demo with the Microsoft logo appearing on screen when the car was started.) Microsoft remains active in that sector, but has neither a dominant position nor control over the auto companies.
What would you do if you were the head of a corporation, or, more to the point, if you were the chief bean counter?
Do you let the employees pay for their own phones so its of of your books altogether or do you pay to supply phones to your staff, with all of the supply and replacement problems that entails?
If its the employees own phones, it costs you NOTHING.
And I thought Microsoft was smart enough to know that they're not dealing with OEMs with vendor lock anymore... Oh well...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Charlie Kindel was once a Windows Phone evangelist, and he thinks that inferior features or user experience are not the reason why Windows Mobile isn't capturing the market. To me, these are two solid pieces of evidence that he's never actually USED a Windows Mobile device!
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The essential problem with WP is that, no matter how much the total app count is, it lacks many useful apps. For example, it's the only smartphone platform (other than the dying Symbian) that still lacks Skype.
...and Direct3D is still the universally supported 3D API that every wise programmer wants to use.
It looks like Microsoft has achieved something that dogs have unsuccessfully been trying to do for centuries: it bit its own tail!
Embracing Android by Paul Thurrot.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
> (other than the dying Symbian)
Shows what you know...Symbian has Skype too. Is it really so hard to check that fact?
Of course, it can't be long before WP gets it too, now that Skype has been purchased.
Max.
Visual Studio's debugger is pretty shitty... That is, if you've used windbg.
I have owned many phones. I have played with hundreds of phones (through my previous job) and what I can say about iPhone (being an iPhone 4 addict myself) is that it is a "Does everything passably well or better phone". Sony has tried so hard to make a "Game Phone" or a "Walkman Phone". Nokia tries to make "Music phones" or "Ovi Phones". Blackberry tries to make "Messenger phones". HTC tries to make "movie phones"
iPhone tries to make a phone that plays music well, plays films well, reads mail well, runs games well, interacts with the Apple stores well etc... In short, they make phones that do a little of this and a little of that and while it doesn't do any one thing particularly awesome like those specialized phones do, it does each one of the things it does... well.
iPhone is a marketing miracle. Apple converted itself from a tech company to a fashion company. They don't try to make cheap phones so everyone can afford one. They focus on making the phone do the things they want it to do and then they sell it to people who can afford them. I am 100% locked into Apple products. I have purchased tons of stuff on the Apple stores and make use of iCloud for phone books and everything. The personal cost to switch away from them would require me to replaced 3 iPads, 4 iPhones and an Apple TV. I have ditched my person iPad recently as I never used it for more than watching films and now I have a Windows 8 Tablet (Series 7 Slate), and from there I can run iTunes... the full version.
This is a new era of telephones. We should stop categorizing phones as smart phones and instead categorize the ones which don't run Android, iOS or Windows Phone (yeh... tried BlackBerry... recently... not really in the same category) as junk phones or tossers. It is just plain stupid to call a Android Phone with a 66Mhz processor and 32megs of RAM a smart phone and yet, they sell by the millions.
Windows Phone is pretty nice. I would seriously consider using a Windows Phone for a year. But as I said, I'm locked into iPhone. Which is ok... at least it's a phone from a a bunch of crooks that know they're a bunch of crooks. Google is a truly scary bunch of crooks because they don't realize they are crooks. And Microsoft well... they're actually much better than ever before. They almost seem honest in comparison these days.
I really don't want Apple, Microsoft or Google to crush one another... I like having options. Now if Office Live 365 works on Android devices... Android might even be pretty good if they ever make it to a real laptop. Apple really needs to make iDevices be able to switch between iOS and OS X. Microsoft is on the right track... but they'l have to fight for it. I'm pretty sure... Microsoft's future is going to be based on people using their mobile phones as their PC and simply docking it with a mouse, screen an keyboard. So, as opposed to getting people to switch to Windows Phone, it's more of an issue of making Windows Phone as good as possible so that when PCs are small enough to be used as phones, they'll be ready.
5. Microsoft's developer tools are no where close to shitty, they're simply the best in the industry (YMMV).
HAHAHAHAHA!!! =D
THat made my day, v,funny sir, v.funneh indeedee
What I will say is that, if Microsoft thinks its product is good then it should stick to its guns, not expect instant success and keep pushing their interface and features. If it drops this then they are admitting they got it wrong AGAIN. I can't see people every buying products from those who keep getting it wrong repeatedly (unless there is a 20 year old legacy product driving the market they they cannot sensibly move away from).
Its a new market for Microsoft and it has to recognise that it has to be the best product for end users, most attractive to developers and carriers and best able to integrate to come out on top. It can't win this by Marketting alone.
It was late to market as the #3 contender.
* It is unclear to the user what WP7 offers over the 'safe' bets.
* Why should application developers support WP7?
It gives users the worst of both worlds compared to iOS/Android:
* Multiple device vendors so updates and support can be variable and fractioned
* Extremely limited device support effectively locking device vendors out from doing any practical differentiation. (I.e. all devices must have same resolution, same CPU family same peripherals), effectively reducing the user choice to the same device (only cosmetic differences)
In the long term WP7 and iOS will have severe growing pains as they have both tried to leverage a hardware 'monoculture' to optimize end user experience. As technology developes Apple and MS will suffer severe pains as new hardware breaks or renders obsolete existing development work, and subsequently will need to be delayed to the end user. Apple have allready been there having to do a resolution x4 jump on the display, they likely can't do that once more, and while Apple is foremost a hardware company with experience in driving hardware development ahead of the curve, microsoft will be limited by the general availability of new components.
Android have a benefit in the long term in that it was made with support for diverse hardware in mind. This caused confusion and criticism initially, but is likely starting to pay off now.
Looking at computer history we can draw the parallel to the development of the x86 wintel platform vs. a handful of vertical oriented competitors (Amiga, Atari ST, Mac). The Wintel platform was not the prettiest, nor the friendliest, but it was the only one placed to leverage the enormous momentum in ever improving hardware. Amiga and Atari died, mac survived after a fashion, but not without scrapping everything and starting over. (Kudos to apple for pulling that off, but they very nearly broke their backs doing it)
WP7 main problem is a political one.
For starters people don't see any future on the platform because Microsoft has chosen to have several distinct OSes across different devices.
Its WP7 for phone. Windows 8 for tablets and desktops, Windows CE for embed devices. And another version for consoles.
Apple and Google are pushing a one OS across different form factors. People know that when they buy that Android or iOS app it will probably work on future devices they buy that support that OS.
The second main reason is that Microsoft wants us to buy a device with a closed OS. Yes Apple did it but Apple was the first of a new type of mobile OSes (touch interface, great UI, app store idea, ipod+phone and so on)
Google was able to gain support for an OS that even less than a year ago didn't provide an end user experience as good as Apple.
What's the secret? Options+open. Many different kinds of devices coupled with one of the most open OSes in the mobile arena. If a company chooses it may distribute their app outside the Android Market.
IF people want they can buy a device that supports custom ROMS. Applications like VNC player, Firefox, Flash and so on are available on Android because Google choose to be less of a policy maker and more like a provider.
IF Microsoft wants people to buy their WP7 devices they need to understand that people have options and their not willing to compromise their freedom of what they can do on their device just to be in the "microsoft ecosystem".
To Microsoft management I have only one advice to give. Get your acts together or you may loose the consumer market entirely. From mobile to desktop. And once the consumer market is controlled they'll move to the enterprise market.
Google and Apple are doing to Microsoft, what Microsoft did to the Mac and later on Linux and Unix systems back in the day.
The biggest mistake Microsoft did was to completely abandon Windows Mobile, leaving no migration path whatsoever for their loyal customer base. Countless of IT-departments had to scrap tons of work. The number of projects made by third party solution vendors that had standardized on Windows Mobile is staggering. Most of them to the death loyal to Microsoft, still all they got was a knife in the back. They now has to support an abandoned mobile platform for years to come because many companies has mission critical stuff on Windows Mobile and phasing it out will take time and money. This above is the best explanation for why Windows Mobile bleeds customers at an alarming rate, but none of them seems to pickup Windows Phone. They turn to other places instead or have learned their lessons and aim for platform agnostic solutions, making Windows Phone just another client amongst all the others.
Windows Phone also do not bring anything better than iOS or Android. Its "snappiness" comes from the fact that nothing else is running on the phone because it lacks multitasking. Throw in a bunch of demanding apps in the background and no amount of programming can cram more cycles out of the CPU than is avaliable from the start.
Windows Phone is an also-ran that lacks stuff the other platforms has. Its interface is hyped to the sky but is easy because its crude and lacks many features that other UI has. Once it gets those it will be a pita to use because those things was not integrated from the start but bolted on afterwards.
To compete with the leaders, it has to offer something the others dont have. Right now there is no benefits whatsoever in a WP7 phone.
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Does anyone else make a Windows phone? If not, and if the only Windows phone vendor is Nokia, then the reason it hasn't taken off could have as much to do w/ Nokia as it has to do w/ Microsoft.
The big problem I see with WP7 is that it forces the user into its paradigm in order to use it. How is that a problem? Well, let's look at the facts shall we?
WP6.5 was the "big thing". It succeeded because it was Windows and had a Corporate lock-in that was extremely successful. I mean, you look at most large corporations and they are big on using Exchange... right there was all the evidence most people needed to get a Windows Phone. Its paradigm was about the same as the desktop metaphor that Microsoft had ridden since the 80's and thus people were accustomed to it.
Along came iPhone. Now here was something different; it's well known that the way the iOS interface became developed was that Apple looked at the way people wanted to work and the way non-technical people functioned within a touch-screen based environment. Apple looked at the people first and designed the phone around that, though with a touch of Steve Jobs arrogance thrown in for good measure. Of course, one of Jobs' big assets was that he did see the people part of the equation very clearly, and some of the edicts that he passed down to his phone developers, like no stylus, led to what the iPhone became. It is a phone that fits with what people want to do with a mobile device, and an interface that's designed around the flow of the way people work on a phone and thus fits in with the way people think about a phone. Yes, in some ways it's still tied to the desktop metaphor because that's what became intensely popular within computing.
Android then came along and rode on Apple's coat-tails. Like it or not a lot of what Android has become was because of iOS and its design paradigm. The pre-iOS versions of Android were very much a Blackberry clone with some Palm ideas thrown in for good measure. The only thing that Android really bought to the table was the open platform idea which really only appeals to technical people. However, precisely because of that it attracted developers. That and the fact that development is mostly Java based, and seriously; during the boom years of 1995 through even the late 00's (08 or so) there were millions of people who learned Java because it was an extremely marketable skill and could attract a decent wage. Even with the dot com bust, Java continued to gain popularity because of its ties to "the web". Particularly since the economic meltdown, this has led to a huge number of Java developers out of work who are now finding work either working for themselves or some other corporation developing apps for Android devices. This is not going to disappear or slow down any time soon because it has gained enough traction that it's right up there with iOS in terms of market and mind share.
Now along comes WP7. Late to the game but bringing a new paradigm; Metro. But the fundamental flaw of Metro is that although it does do a great job of integrating social networks into a single "pane of glass" (which was ostensibly the point of Metro), that's not the way people think. It's also at odds with the way most of the social network providers WANT you to think; they want you to know you're communicating with people via Facebook, or Meebo, or LinkedIn or whatever. They don't want that abstraction... they don't want Microsoft to be the gatekeeper to all of your contacts because it destroys mind share. As a result, the Facebook integration for example looks great on the first pane but as soon as you go into anything to do anything, Facebook has to scream out "I am here!" at the top of its lungs to make sure you know what's happening. This breaks the flow of the entire interface and results in users going right back to the desktop metaphor idea that they had before; that they have just pushed a live button to launch an app. In other words precisely what Metro was designed to abstract.
The problem then becomes that WP7 is inconsistent in its flow. Users can't grok the Metro paradigm because even Metro is inconsistent in the way it presents it. And this is not a fault of Metro but rather a fault of the way that the
"Mishandling of industry politics" my arse.
It didn't sell because its a POS, from a POS Corporation with a long history of POS OS's.
Android and iOS got there first. Just give it up and go find something else to do. This endless "market chasing, 5 years after the fact" strategy isn't going to work.
Ever.
My advice - stick to gaming platforms - you're brilliant at that.
While I would hope that Blackwater has changed its operational standards and ethics after all its negative publicity, I am not holding my breath. However, in the case of Windows Phone, I have personally experienced the difference -- the part that matters is a total rewrite, and it provides a fantastic development framework. I develop professionally for Android and iOS too, so I have a pretty reasonable frame of reference to evaluate this.
Microsoft should provide a free Windows phone to past and future users of devices with Windows to combat Android and iOS adoption. http://www.trendslate.com/2011/12/28/windows-should-include-phone
The inability to connect to a non-broadcasting wireless SSID is a serious flaw.
..because it allows any reasonably competent programmer to automate MS Office tools via C++ or .Net. Need to fill in an Excel Sheet automatically or generate a Powerpoint Presentation programmatically ? COM will allow you to do that with very little effort in a robust way.
COM is a core technology which makes the PC a useful platform and I don't see it go away soon.