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Microsoft To Abandon Windows Phone?
symbolset writes "Microsoft has had some trouble as of late getting adoption of their mobile products. Even Bill Gates has said it was inadequate. Despite rave reviews of Windows Phone in the press it has failed to get double digit share of the smartphone market. Now comes reports from WMPoweruser that WP8 will lose mainstream support in July 2014."
Er, that likely means they'll be on WP9. How long will Google update Android 3.x or even 4.0?
Trololol samzenpuss, trololol.
Ridiculous headline title. All this means is they're going to be moving onto the next version of the OS by then (WP9?). Speculating that they're going to leave the phone market entirely is a little far-fetched at present.
Yes, WP8 will be abandoned... for WP8.5 or WP9.
Microsoft is still dealing with the fact that their flagship products throughout the 1990's are almost universally associated with crashes, poor performance, and overhyped marketing. It bit them with the Zune, and now it's biting them with the phones. You know why XBox is so big? It doesn't have the word 'Windows' or 'Microsoft' in its name, and it had (still has?) its own business unit with its own management structure not tied to Windows.
The article said they would be updated the system to a new version and that the new version would be pushed to all windows phones. That system would get security updates for 18 months. It sounds like they just want people to upgrade to me.
This posting looks like FUD, if you read the article it says.
All window 8 phone devices will get new version of OS, which will have a 18 month support window.
No you deserve -42 for believing a /. headline about Microsoft.
The article says the following at the bottom, "On the other hand the OS support date is reset with any never version of the OS, so a Windows Phone 8.5 or 9 update in November 2013 would bring along its own 18 month of security updates. Microsoft has already promised all current Windows Phone 8 handsets will receive the next major version of the operating system."
oh christ was my first thought to that....
I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft but I do feel for Nokia and the bus that their staff were thrown under.
I'd be kinda surprised if this is true though, Microsoft are known for flaunting failed products for years to save face. This would be another reason to add to the list for why metro sucks ... it's pretty sad that the whole windows ecosystem was imho designed from the mobile up rather than an extension of the desktop.
This sounds like FUD though and for once it's not coming out of Redmond.
The article discusses dates on which Microsoft will end support for its current product, which is designed to be superseded on (at least) an annual basis. It doesn't mean that Microsoft plans to get out of the phone business, or will delegate software development to Nokia or Google, etc.
it's just part of the push to release everything quicker, more often, and more detriment to the consumer who must constantly re-purchase everything.
I know Microsoft shafted their customers over windows Phone 7 [and earlier versions] sacrificing a 10% smartphone marketshare for 2%, but you can only do so for so long. That 2% they have now they can expect to drop [to nothing] if they continue to abuse its customer base.
Yes, WP8 will be abandoned... for WP8.5 or WP9.
Yes, WP8 customerswill be abandoned... for WP8.5 or WP9.
Fixed it for you...they will call it Windows phone 8.8, which they will day is the same as 9 :)
Microsoft is still dealing with the fact that their flagship products throughout the 1990's are almost universally associated with crashes, poor performance, and overhyped marketing. It bit them with the Zune, and now it's biting them with the phones. You know why XBox is so big?
Except the reality is Windows Phone [was] is not very good, [125 REASONS NOT TO BUY A WINDOWS PHONE 7.5 http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44034%5D. The harsh truth is it was never a serious competitor which will hurt Microsoft in the future, as its potential customers continue to get burnt....it will end up like the Zune.
"If you want updates, buy Nexus." Is there a problem with that rule of thumb, other than that U.S. prepaid carriers tend not to carry Nexus phones?
Er did you just criticize iOS over Android for update availability?
For someone who professes to know of business models, you are pretty out of it.
Not going to believe it until/unless they stop selling the phones (and w/o a new version being offered).
All said, Microsoft likely makes enough money from the Great Android Extortion, so even if they stopped distributing WP8 tomorrow morning, they'd still make money hand-over-fist.
(OTOH, how would you think Nokia would react if such a thing happened?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
There is sensationalistic journalism, and then there is blatantly misleading journalism. This is the latter.
Assuming /. wants to be taken seriously, someone's wrist should be slapped for this and/or the headline updated.
While WP7 is different from WP8, WP8 is based on the common architecture of NT 6.2 which will be used as the basis of current and future Windows OSs. So while WP8 may have broken compatibility w/ 7, the same need not necessarily be true of WP 9 and beyond.
I do agree that Microsoft should have had a way to upgrade WP7 phones w/ WP8. Although I wonder to what extent the carriers or OEMs (like Nokia) might have to say about that. For the OEMs, such an ability would simply mean that new phones not be bought, while for the carriers, it could involve unlocking the phones (which in the US would mean that a carrier, having financed a phone, now has to eat the costs while that phone can be used to switch to a competitor).
...the year of Windows on the smartphone.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Pretty much so. They continued with the clunky, sluggish and buggy Symbian for waaay to long.
Uh, no. As someone who actually USED a Symbian phone and wrote code for Symbian phones (for longer that I wanted to), the problem wasn't bugginess. The problem was that it was terrible to write code for. It took C++ and decided to spin it around and around until it made you want to throw up. They had their own notation, for pete's sake. But as far as bugginess goes? Android is FAR buggier and FAR more insecure than even Symbian circa 2006.
Not like this mattered much in regards to the top level story anyway, Nokia's CEO was desperate to push Nokia back into the US market again (they had always been solid in Europe), and figured teaming up with a very US-ish company like Microsoft would give them a market edge (as if they adopted Android, they'd be just another Android blah blah phone manufacturer competing with the rest of them...and Google itself). It turned out to be a bad call...Windows Phone is the latest in a fairly tainted line of mobile OSs and that taint still haunts all of the children of WinCE to this day. Every new regurgitation has something wrong with it that drives its users up the wall. Microsoft just never "got" mobile. And when it was too late, they started paying off bloggers to write good press about their stuff. Instead of doing what Apple and Google did...basically, imitating and building on the successful points and user interaction flow of previous mobile OSs, Microsoft was transfixed on making its users enjoy their own generally jarringly different user experience and flow. They always had to have things work their way, even if their way wasn't very practical. Mobile client OS design isn't easier than desktop client OS design, and there are way too many people at Microsoft that didn't understand this.
That said, if Microsoft decided to drop mobile, their shareholders would be furious. They'd lose a lot of stock value. The press would be terrible, PR damage control would be too much to deal with. They will continue to count on that handful of very headstrong people, typically older people, who have been using Windows for 20 years, refuse to ask anyone else's advice, and just conclude that Windows Phone would be the easiest for them to use. Then they get frustrated and complain about it at me. They may continue to ride that 10% of the market for the next 10 years if they have to, because quitting for them would cost them more than losing cash on it for the next 10 years. Just ask Meg Whitman over at HP about that one.
Even the article says that WP8.Next would have its own cycle......so a WP8.5 or WP9 would still get at least 18 months of support. The summary is just FUD. There was nothing in the article and nothing in their source saying that Microsoft was abandoning Windows Phone as a platform......just that the OS support has a time limit.
if what you said was true, no one would be stuck on a win 7 phone....but there they are.
Redmond is the FUD factory
Wow, I didn't think Slashdot could go lower but it just managed to do that.
Next headline: MS to abandon Windows, because Windows XP support Ends April 8, 2014?
Microsoft will make Windows Phone 9, in fact they even have people working on testing it.
http://msftkitchen.com/windows-phone-9-testing-begins-also-windows-9-gets-a-mention-from-microsoft
And Windows Phone 8 phones will be upgradeable.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp
And Windows Phone is growing marketshare:
http://wmpoweruser.com/italy-shows-their-windows-phone-strength-already-15-of-windows-phone-market/
http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-has-a-16-3-market-share-in-poland-one-of-the-highest-in-the-world/
http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/analyst-windows-phone-sees-strong-growth-uk-and-italy/2013-01-23
http://www.wpcentral.com/long-queues-china-nokia-lumia-920-sells-out-two-hours [And yes, that's actually picture of people queuing for Windows Phone)
And yet we have this bullshit FUD summary, headline and article? No wonder Slashdot is losing readership fast, with barely a few comments for stories compared to earlier.
The partyline biased moderation, calling people with alternate viewpoints shills and chasing them away into karma hell can only last so long before the echo chamber gets tired of listening to itself and packs it up.
Reminds me of this story http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7
Even the mainstream tech media noticed that. Interesting read: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm/
I doubt any one would care now, with most people having written off Slashdot as the hiding place of anti-Microsoft trolls and zealots living in their alternate reality. Posters like bmo, symbolset, tuple666, Zero__Kelvin, LordLimeCat, Jeremiah Cornelius, UnknowingFool, rtfa-troll, binarylarry, MightyMartian, drinkypoo, pieroxy and a whole bunch of others have ruined Slashdot beyond repair and seem to suffer from this affliction: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/linus-calls-microsoft-hatred-a-disease
This place was always anti-MS but reasonable and informative comments used to get modded up a few years ago, not anymore.There are enough things to bash Microsoft with, why make up lies and spread FUD?
Of course, the real blame is on moderators for modding up these kind of posts and marking others rebutting replies to them as troll and flamebait.
Last one out, switch off lights.
As near as I can divine, Microsoft is no longer going to ship service packs like they did with Vista and prior. Windows 7 is probably only getting service pack 1. Windows 8 basically is SP2. Windows 9 will be SP3. They are on an incremental release cycle, like Apple's OSX, and all those Windows 8 phones might possibly be running Windows Phone 10 by 2015.
Now, they will be nickel-and-diming you for the desktop OS ($40 CHEAP!), but it might not be the case with phones, especially subsidized phones on contract where all the licensing is handled by the carrier. Also something I'm keen to see, Microsoft does not have a great track record with delivering incremental upgrades that don't crater *recent* old hardware, so it'll be interesting to see if they change their ways in that respect.
But the headline and summary is just a FUD encounter of the fourth kind: FUDabduction.
Microsoft has already stated that they are moving towards a faster update cycle for all of their software products. All this means is that there will be no new OS updates for WP8.0 after July 2014. They will have 8.5 or 9.0 out before that date.
BTW, Google has the EXACT same upgrade/support cycle for each version of Android (18 months).
I expect more than this from the Slashdot editors!!! After all, they are supposed to at least understand the tech industry which includes software update/support cycles.....
Wow, I didn't think Slashdot could go lower but it just managed to do that.
Next headline: MS to abandon Windows, because Windows XP support Ends April 8, 2014?
Microsoft will make Windows Phone 9, in fact they even have people working on testing it.
http://msftkitchen.com/windows-phone-9-testing-begins-also-windows-9-gets-a-mention-from-microsoft
And Windows Phone 8 phones will be upgradeable.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416002,00.asp
And Windows Phone is growing marketshare:
http://wmpoweruser.com/italy-shows-their-windows-phone-strength-already-15-of-windows-phone-market/
http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-has-a-16-3-market-share-in-poland-one-of-the-highest-in-the-world/
http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/analyst-windows-phone-sees-strong-growth-uk-and-italy/2013-01-23
http://www.wpcentral.com/long-queues-china-nokia-lumia-920-sells-out-two-hours [And yes, that's actually picture of people queuing for Windows Phone)
Picking up some loyal users who seem to like it :
http://wmpoweruser.com/pcmag-readers-choice-awards-2013-windows-phone-wins-mobile-os-category/
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/01/customer-satisfaction-of-windows-phone-on-the-rise-according-to-survey/
And winning some awards
http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-lumia-920-struts-its-stuff-and-takes-prestigious-innovative-handset-award-2013
http://wmpoweruser.com/nokia-lumia-920-wins-engadget-smartphone-of-2012-user-vote/
And yet we have this bullshit FUD summary, headline and article? No wonder Slashdot is losing readership fast, with barely a few comments for stories compared to earlier.
The partyline biased moderation, calling people with alternate viewpoints shills and chasing them away into karma hell can only last so long before the echo chamber gets tired of listening to itself and packs it up.
Reminds me of this story http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7
Even the mainstream tech media noticed that. Interesting read: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm/
I doubt any one would care now, with most people having written off Slashdot as the hiding place of anti-Microsoft trolls and zealots living in their alternate reality. Posters like bmo, symbolset, tuple666, Zero__Kelvin, LordLimeCat, Jeremiah Cornelius, UnknowingFool, rtfa-troll, binarylarry, MightyMartian, drinkypoo, pieroxy and a whole bunch of others have ruined Slashdot beyond repair and seem to suffer from this affliction: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/linus-calls-microsoft-hatred-a-disease
No wonder Slashdot is losing readership fast, with barely a few comments for stories compared to earlier.
This is absurd. Slashdot's growing at an astounding rate in both the troll and fanboi demographics.
The summary is wrong, but I don't think it's FUD. It's more like trolling to get the clicks of all the Microsoft bashers and haters.
You know, windows phone doesn't need articles in crappy tech blogs to inspire FUD.
Windows 8 is a market place dud. Like WebOS before it. No matter how much tech bloggers like you, if the market doesn't like you, pack it up. It would be one thing if they had a niche and made money. Problem is, they're not making money on windows phone. Microsoft cant afford to keep flushing cash away.
How many windows 8s can they afford? They're not a well oiled machine like Apple, nor are they like Amazon or Google and use other lines of business to keep themselves afloat while they try things in other markets.
The major problem Microsoft faces is that outside of enterprise, who *needs* Microsoft?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
They aren't abandoning windows phone. If the story poster had read the story, he would of seen they are stopping support for windows phone 8 in 2014, but considering windows 9 will be coming out fairly soon, that is hardly a problem. Does this guy think that Microsoft has abandoned windows because they stopped support for XP?
Rocket Surgeon.
Microsoft Corporation Data Mining Analyst, Senior - ADS
Online Advertising is one of the fastest growing businesses on the Internet today, with $40 billion of a $600 billion advertising market already online. Microsoft is innovating rapidly to grow its share of this market by providing the advertising industry with a world-class online advertising platform and service. The Microsoft Ads Research & Development team is one of the most strategic and growing teams at Microsoft.
As part of a software company with powerful innovations and part media company with global properties, at Microsoft Ads we bring both our technical and creative side to the table. Through incisive analytics, we know who cares - both when and where. We understand how to get in front of the right people at the strongest point of influence. Above all, we love data and excel at interpreting it for our partners. Collecting valuable information from every campaign and mining it for insights
http://washington.jobs/bellevue-wa/data-mining-analyst-senior-ads-817244-job/32762254/job/
I can always choose not to use Google, but where do I turn when my own computer OS is data-mining my privacy back to Redmond?
Linux.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun