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Microsoft Reportedly Working On Its Own Smartphone
According to a (paywalled) report in the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is experimenting with its own smartphone design. "Officials at some of Microsoft's parts suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Redmond, Wash.-based company is testing a smartphone design but isn't sure if a product will go into mass production." The article continues:
"If Microsoft pushes ahead with its mobile phone, it would underscore how far Microsoft has moved away from its long-standing practice of making software and leaving decisions about design, features and marketing of the computing hardware to partners such as Hewlett-Packard or Samsung Electronics. ... As it does so, Microsoft pulls from a modified playbook of Apple—whose hardware-plus-software approach Microsoft officials long have scorned. ... Smartphones running Microsoft's two-year-old Windows Phone operating software for cellphones haven't sold well, and Microsoft may want to leave itself an option to test whether its own phone would spur sales."
That's terrible for Nokia. The few chances for its survival, IMO, now are gone :-S
I can hardly wait to buy a Microsoft vapor-phone, please tell me where to line up now so I can be first!
The case will be a pleasant earthy-brown color.
Before the first unit ships, it will damage the market for Windows Phone handsets due to the anticipation. It's an old move in the tech business to destroy a market with vaporware: usually, though, companies do it to destroy markets where they're not getting an income.
Go on, pledge your allegiance by throwing dirt at your favorite villain before they even come out with the phone. The irony is that Apple is 10 times the scum Microsoft ever was.
Mod me down all you want, someone has to call you out.
I am sure MS is capable of creating a smartphone design that "works well" for what that's worth, but it's pretty evident that this category is led by devices that are functional and aesthetically pleasing. I don't think MS is painted in a corner to have to make a Microsoft iPhone (Apple will probably try to sue them in any case) but in playing "offense" it would be great for Microsoft to focus on elevating or evolving the smartphone category and not try to be a "me too" device.
If they can pull this off, which would be done through a combination of intuitive/simple interface, unique features, and a robust app system they can compete. I own an Xbox and am pleasantly surprised they've been able to create a good user experience on Live.
Can they compete with a smartphone design? Sure but I wouldn't bet money on it.
Can't wait to read about the earthy brown Microsoft Phune on my next Android mobile. :P
The reasons Microsoft built Surface were:
1. MS felt the OEM Win8 tablets not upto the mark with iPad.
2. There is no dedicated OEM working on Win8 tablet.
3. MS thinks there isn't OEM with market perception comparable to Apple in tablet space.
All these issues aren't present in WP8 space, as Nokia has history of marking amazing phones, it is dedicated to WP8 and market perception of Nokia isn't bad in phone space. So it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to make their own phone.
LG is profitable again after dumping windows and focusing on Android.
Asus have also having good fortune from Android Tablets.
Sony after dumping Ericsson is profitable again with Android.
Nokia gets burnt once with Windows Phone 8 incompatibilities
Nokia gets thrown under a bus with the Surface tablet
Nokia gets B*******d new Microsoft Phone
Now I'm not saying Nokia should have gone Android...just that Android has a 75% share , and Nokia has well a share of what 2%
I used a Win8 tablet prototype a couple months ago, I find it hard to believe nobody has announced one yet.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The two phones MS made a couple years ago that sold ridiculously poorly and were pulled from the carrier (Verizon, I think) after only a few weeks. Yeah, a Microsoft phone will change everything.
When you have an OS that is specifically created for a specific hardware set you control, *everything* becomes simpler and easier.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/10/03/1643235/microsoft-reportedly-launching-its-own-windows-phone-smartphone
There can be no better proof that MS is irrelevant and dying. If they had any balls, they'd reinvent the PC, create something new that people might want, but instead they opt for imitating their competitors, a continuing spiral into failure.
MS employees must be thinking about new careers.
No the team QUIT after being fed up with having to deal with the morons in Microsoft project management.
This story is weeks old already.
M$ is once again the scorpion to Nokia's frog, and this will do them a lot of good with the European competition directorate ... NOT
MFG, omb
Not everything Apple does is a smart move. In fact, Android's success came from copying the style of the Microsoft Wuindows openess.
Truthfully, if a better MS Office and Exchange clone appeared, MS would be gone. MS should be focusing on lowering prices for Windows upgrades, and Office. As it is right now, their only competitive edge is their business software. If RIM releases a free QNX PC OS (with support for windows hardware drivers), plus a bug free BES and office suite, MS could cease to exist.
one by one their PC partners are showing major losses and some, like IBM, abandoned the PC segment, while others like HP are teetering and others showing major losses. So what is Microsoft to do but start using their massive profits and cash and get building their own hardware. Who knows how long they'll turn into the only one of a few selling Microsoft hardware.
I believe a forked, mainline-incompatible Linux kernel runs on 75% of Smartphones :)
FTFY
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
(Quite comical!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRLRjKCGHek
Two of the three founders of Danger were still there. They quit and went to work for Andy after Microsoft demonstrated how clueless they were (and are) about the mobile product space. MSFT bought Danger, ignored what the staff said, and just built what they were going to build before buying them, and failed miserably.
GOOOOOOOO MICROSOFT!!!!!!!
I used to think Apple had an unfair testing advantage because they only had 4 hardware platforms. Given that Safari crashes ONCE EVERY SECOND PAGE VISIT on my 1st gen iPad I'm starting to think Apple is full of morons and dipshits with no code best practice to be seen.
I want Microsoft in this space. Their software WORKS.
I don't see what the big deal about Surface tablets/phones is for OEM's. It's the Windows Phone equivalent of the Nexus: quick updates and no programs added by the OEM. I don't see Samsung or HTC getting mad that they aren't making the Nexus 4. This is the exact same thing.
The patents are mostly crap, I'm looking forward to when they get squashed when we finally wake up to how bad they are for the industry. I wonder if MS will be mostly patent troll by then?
Microsoft could probably make a good packaged phone, but the technology that is ideal is something they don't work on. For the Surface they sourced their materials, put it into an elegant and pretty package, and shipped it.
For a phone they need a better camera (Nokia has the edge on everybody here), they need good QA testing due to its usage (again, Nokia excels here), they need to have carrier relationships (they don't), they need to understand the market (they don't -- it's interwoven with the carriers), and they need to have displays they work on that exceed what's out there.
If anything, Nokia *is* the "MS Phone". While the ecosystem is going to need time, the hardware of the Lumia 920 (and more specifically the camera/durability) is why I'm buying one. The apps I need are already there. And a lot of people are in that boat. I don't want to carry around a DSLR when I can get pretty good pictures with my phone, and only Nokia truly allows for that. It's something an MS Phone won't be able to do, and there's nothing really that makes them stand out in this arena beyond what Nokia is already doing.
If anything... I'd say MS purchases Nokia and uses them to make their phone, in the same way Google purchased Moto.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Stephen Elop will eternally be remembered - as the man who taught Nokia, once world's grandest mobile phone maker, the trick of pissing in the pants to get warmth in icy cold weather in it's literal sense.
Microsoft (Ballmer?) has been suffering from a case of Apple envy ever since the days of iPods (Microsoft's response: Zune).
It is only in recent times, this envy has intensified (Surface, KIN, pop-up stores, ads and marketing materials, obsession with an App Store).
Very interesting times lie ahead.
Did you happen to see Windows Phone 8 Having Trouble Attracting Developers on /. just about three days ago? What kind of huge developer base is that? MS is not being very developer friendly, considering that last week, /. featured
"Trouble For Microsoft Developers With the Windows Store" . Maybe they are letting WPhone7 applications run on 8 and that's what they're counting as part of that "huge developer base."
We don't need more damn phones. Phones suck. All of them. It's time for someone to make a data-only device. Voice - sure - just not POTS. POTS must die.
I suggest you read this before making such incredibly inaccurate statements.
I see what you did there. You're a 10 digit Slashdot ID sent back from the future by the Society of Meme Preservation as part of their MMC Centennial retrospective.
Microsoft was good at something once upon a time. It was akin to charging a man a fee to have sex with your own wife, but let's not go there. It was a cool place to work (if you had a high tolerance for stomach meds) because one morning you would wake up and the tooth fairy would have replaced your non-vested shares with a vintage Jaguar and wood paneled yacht. This was before Steve Jobs redefined coolness as a black turtleneck sweater. Then one day the Microsoft tooth fairy retired to the great Ponzi Valhala. The company had become too big and hidebound for the share price to double every other year. Increasingly they had to compensate the best talent with the best salary. This rapidly compounded their downturn.
Word went around "you know, a man shouldn't have to pay a tax to Microsoft in order to have sex with his own wife". Governments woke up and decided they shouldn't have the entirety of their electronic work product locked up in undocumented file formats. The old adversaries they could bully were long gone. They were now locked in combat with Sony in the living room, Apple in the den, LAMP in the server farm, Oracle in the back office, Firefox/Apache on the cloud, RIM/Nokia in mobile, IBM/Peoplesoft in the boardroom. The last bastion to fall was Exchange Server. Exchange Server was Bill's parting gift to Steve Ballmer bearing the inscription "Sorry I tampered with the videotape. -- Bill"
Worst of all, newlyweds stopped having sex every 15 minutes. The PC platform had matured, and the old upgrade cycles were not as rapid as they had once been.
If I've properly understood any book I've ever read written by a lost soul possessed of an MBA, no sane business person would risk sacrificing one of the fattest cash cows in the history of business on the altar of transformation leadership.
Steve Jobs honed his knackers in the school of looming foreclosure. You remember that don't you. They teach it in Meme Preservation 501, do they not, on cloud campus Courseratops? No wait, that's cross-listed with the graduate degree program. Perhaps you've yet to enroll.