Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Fool me once, shame on you, lock me into an inferior OS twice, shame on the whole industry.
Damn right. My last smart phone was an HTC XV6800 running Windows Mobile 6.0 and it was the biggest piece of shit I've ever had in my life.
Never again...
I'm not a user of Windows Phone, but I did just port an Android app I've written to WP7, and in doing so, I learned quite a bit about it... From my point of view (been an Android developer before the first phones were released), it seems like WP8 will be very nice, but WP7 is still lacking in a lot of ways. A few things I noticed:
- there's not a whole lot of useful multitasking you can do right now, so complex apps that use background services are right out.
- you can't disable the on-screen keyboard from activating when a text box is focused, so if you have a box that the user can select text from or position the cursor in, you always get the OSK covering half of your UI
- the screen layout designer is difficult to work with, and doesn't seem like it has many features for supporting different resolutions, MS sure does love their absolute-positioning grid layouts
- there doesn't seem to be a debug log viewer available in the development tools... or maybe the OS has no logging at all?
I suspect an end user won't really notice a lot of my complaints, but they're there, and the whole experience was a bit disappointing to me, despite my preference for C# over Java.
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.
Maybe it isn't inferior, I don't actually know*. I think Microsoft's problem right now is that they've become the embarrassing uncle of the tech world. Look at their 'impromptu' dancing in the Windows Stores (search for it on youtube and prepare to die a little). Look at the 'Windows 7 party pack' video they made (just thinking about it makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry), the Seinfeld thing, and there are dozens more examples (including just the other week, four white girls rapping about Windows Phone -- I saw that, and decided right there I'd never get a Windows).
I'm not really an image conscious kind of a guy, but even Microsoft are way too un-cool for me. Imagine what the kids must think :)
It's really weird that I haven't used it -- or even seen a single person using it -- I don't know anybody who does has a Windows Phone, which is surprising given I'm a .Net programmer, and most of my friends are too. I have no intention of buying a £500 Lumia 800 just to try it out. Maybe it's more popular in the states.
SMALL DEVICES is simply not something that Microsoft can do! There was a time when they could, but it just doesn't seem possible any longer. The bloat has made them so fat and heavy they can't move without a quad core and 8GB RAM. Yes, please disagree with me. I know you want to..
I will disagree with you, because you're being idiotic. This is not Windows on the desktop we are talking about here (and not even Windows Mobile, which wasn't really that sluggish anyways), this is Windows Phone. Have you used it for more than 30 seconds? You should have noticed that the UI and interactions are pretty silky and smooth, quick, not much lag, etc. Did you notice the hardware the phone was using? Hmm, seems quite last-gen compared to the latest Android phones .... hmmmmm.
Actually, I can't think of any "small devices" MS has made that were bloated. Their desktop OS might qualify as bloated, but you're just showing your ignorance of MS' "small devices" here.
focusing on "how can we get marketshare" shows a complete and utter misunderstanding of the entire market and asking the wrong question. The first question should be "how can we make a great phone with a great experience". Not "why aren't people buying this"?
Bingo.
And that is why Apple could break the rules and get away with it. They knew the original iPhone would sell to a select audience. They were not concerned with market share. And yet they had Nokia running scared the moment it hit the shelves.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.