Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Convinced That Windows 10 Will Be Its Smartphone Breakthrough
jfruh (300774) writes At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, handset manufacturers are making all the right noises about support for Windows 10, which will run on both ARM- and Intel-based phones and provide an experience very much like the desktop. But much of the same buzz surrounded Windows 8 and Windows 7 Phone. In fact, Microsoft has tried and repeatedly failed to take the mobile space by storm.
They will have more luck if they use a axe.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
They can join BlackBerry in the "any day now, we'll be on top!" movement.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
More than enough reasons to keep Win 10 off my desktop
make it so I can attach a keyboard and mouse and monitor to it, and I'll buy one. This is where things will go eventually anyway.
Company convinced of their own success, at least in their own marketing materials. News at 11.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Having three big players in the market is essential. I like the new Microsoft as well. Their platform has great ideas, just lacks the 3rd party support, which is a shame.
Open, innovative, but struggling. Google's honeymoon period is over, and they still dominate. Apple is just ... Apple.
Next Year: We have a completely new api and are going to make the old one irrelevant yet again
I don't see Microsoft claiming they expect it to be a "breakthrough" anywhere.
Clearly they expect it to be "successful" or they wouldn't be doing it, but success compared to where they are now is not that monumental a task. If they can increase their mobile share by 3-5% then it's a success for them.
Will it be the year Microsoft takes the smart phone market from Android (aka:Linux)?
This is starting to sound a lot like the year of the Linux desktop.
Microsoft long ago took over areas dominated by others with the Microsoft "diode".
Step one was the run the leader's stuff - for example their document format.
Step two was to "enhance" the support in a way that made new work incompatible with the former leader.
If they ever want people to buy their smartphones, they will have to start by running Android apps until they get to the point where Windows phone is a necessary app target, just as Apple and Android are today.
Universal apps are what might make or break Windows phone 10.
The OS really is good. It is light, intuitive, and bug free. With no apps and a requirement for developers to write to 2 different operating systems with niche market shares hurt both.
http://saveie6.com/
there are a lot of companies that like sticking it to Microsoft.
Gee, I wonder why.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
In the San Fran/Silicon Valley area, "Being on top" doesn't mean what you think it means.
2015 truly will be the year of Windows on the mobile.
"... and provide an experience very much like the desktop"
Which is exactly what people don't want.
Microsoft should finally pull their collective head out of their backside and stop making everything into a PC with Windows. A phone isn't a PC, it isn't used in the same way, so a "desktop experience" is very counterproductive on a phone.
One would think that they have learned something already ...
Microsoft was a brutal business to work with and compete against. Most companies are when they dominate because they have a desire to stay on top. They are no different than other massive corporate entity. The difference is they are very visible and attract a lot of passionate (Technology) people who all have opinions and are not shared to express them.
Google is the new Microsoft. We've exchanged on faceless behemoth for another. They only way to keep them 'honest' is competition.
Monopoly! I hope all these swine lose their jobs, from the fat cats right down to the single mom working in shipping. They ALL deserve it equally.
Point and laugh at them!
People keep asking why are they changing Windows when people like what they have? The answer is that new versions of Microsoft Windows will sell whether you like the new features or not. So they are using Windows for other goals. Specifically, they are using Windows for PC to accustom you to their Mobile offerings. That is their most logical way of making money and staying relevant. Just making you really like Windows 10 a lot doesn't really help them.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
It too me a day or so to remove the crap from Windows 8.1 to make it look like an actual desktop.
So windows 10 will, what, be just as broken as the desktop was in Windows 8.1? Or it will try to suck less and be less like a tablet experience?
At this point, I'm forced to conclude (from a week or so of running my new Windows 8.1 machine) that most of the decisions Microsoft has been making indicate they no longer know how to write a UI for a desktop, and they're entirely focused on writing only stuff for tablets.
They keep betting they're going to be successful on the phone Real Soon Now ... and they're so busy playing catch up they might need to worry someone is going to come out with the next new thing before they can put out a copy of what everyone else has had for years.
So the same experience on a Windows 10 phone as a desktop? That's based on giving you a crappy experience on the desktop.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I can see a new hilarity meme - "This is the year of the windows phone!", to go along side of "This is the year of the Linux Desktop", or "The year of Net Neutrality"..... wait, we got that one!
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
It is actually kind of sad if you know their history.
Back in the day they were competing with Palm, and had Windows CE and Pocket PC 2000. When PocketPC 2002 came out my employer switched over from Palm and I got to rewrite a bunch of tools. They did pretty good for a while with Mobile 2003, and Windows Mobile 5. It knocked Palm down several notches in the mobile market, with Palm losing value and getting bought out in 2005.
The fun thing about that era is that there were phones with PDAs in them, you can go back to "Pocket PC Phone Edition" for that. Each version of Windows Mobile supported running in phones, but they never took off.
The iPod was getting some power and some apps, but I loved that with a single CF card I could have my entire music library on my device; the Axim x51v used the same audio chipset as the iPod of the era coupled with better playback software where you could mix and such. It also offered all kinds of apps making the device useful for the other common tasks of the time like calendar, email, and web over both wifi and bluetooth.
Again you could get phones running WM5 and WM6 with all their apps, and in late 2006 they had 51% of the market. Blackberry had 37%, Palm was 9%, and Symbian at 9%.
Then came the iPhone. At the time I didn't really see the reason for the hype, when it came to processor power, memory, and even 3D graphics the iPhone was less powerful than my Windows 6 phone.
As the numbers came back, iOS rose and WM feel by the same percent; the other companies were flat in market share. By early 2007 Windows Mobile drooped to 42% and iOS was at 11%. By 2008, WM had 29% and iOS 19% and Android had entered at 2%. By 2010 Windows Mobile devices had dropped to 7% market share, Blackberry had dropped to 25%, Palm to 3%, and Symbian at 2%.
Phones running Windows Mobile continued to exist, but that's about it. Three more versions of Windows Mobile, the three editions as Windows Phone, they have never been able to get their market share back anywhere near 2006 levels.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Simple things that all the other platforms has Microsoft lacks. Trying to get a stack trace from an Unhandled exception? Nope can't do that. Want to find out what OS build you are on? Nope can't do that. While little things, the list is endless and annoying for anyone that's been doing mobile for awhile.
I've seen the title in my feed reader and thought it was published on The Onion.
So we need the Dr. Pepper of cell phones?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Just goes to show, stupid people throw money at the STATE lottery! Government taking advantage of those least able. No news there.
I thought Windows 3.12 was going to be the breakthrough?
"Microsoft has tried and repeatedly failed to take the mobile space by storm"
What Microsoft should do is - get the hardware manufacturers to pay Microsoft for each handset sold - whether they have Windows on them or not.
It needs to be a modern smartphone OS:
Modular device drivers for cell phone components so the OS can be updated without massive red tape (b-but it's proprietary!)
Removal of carriers from the update process entirely by using the Internet.
Optional curated app store. It should be possible, but not default, to be able to download and install apps just by clicking links on the Web.
Full-device encryption should be hardware-accelerated and mandatory.
Cameras that refuse to take pictures in portrait mode.
...fix the UI so it runs in something better than EGA graphics mode?
The only place I ever see Windows phones is on TV series as glaringly obvious product placement...never seen one in the wild.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
If this thing came out in a parallel universe where the iPod didn’t exist, it would be hailed as a god. No, the problem is the iPod’s head start — its catalog of music, movies, apps and accessories are ridiculously superior to the Zune’s
The Zune was cancelled shortly thereafter. The product finally became good, but it was too late. I smell the same fate for windows phone.
...provide an experience very much like the desktop...
Excellent! I always wanted my phone to BSOD in the middle of an important call!
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
2015 will be the year of Windows on the phone!
This business is really a whorehouse.
iOS is beautiful so if she doesn't do much we guys are still happy.
Android is pretty good looking and is Ohhhh so awesome with what it does. You know... open and such...
Windows is just the weirdo looking for a "customer with particular interest".
I see this sort of news couched in discussions of "What do people /really/ want?" but that has little relation to what would be a market success.
That's like asking "What kind of food do people really want?" when the reality is that people cluster around multiple options in the market.
With plenty of room for debate, there are multiple clusters of success in the mobile market today. For the sake of argument:
- safe, pretty, predictable, simple, stable, walled garden -- apple totally owns this ~20% of the market, populated mostly with 1+gen older iPhone devices
- predictable, pretty, open/powerful, cheap, with a walled garden that's easy to exit -- android devices mostly running 4.3 and prior
- powerful, predictable, pretty, walled garden that's easy to exit -- top-line android devices mostly running 4.4+
- purpose-built, totally walled, predictable, safe (and fugly), designed for easy remote mgmt by corp -- used to be owned by Blackberry
- totally walled, predictable, safe (and very pretty), designed for easy remote mgmt by corp -- top line windows mobile devices
From this view, Windows Mobile doesn't compete in or intersect much with the same success cluster as newer OR older clusters of Android. So you have to ask yourself, what does success look like for Windows mobile? Dominating the market that Blackberry/RIM dropped through their own mismanagement? Not being snide here, but I keep looking at WinOS devices, and see elegant solutions to problems that few people have or that are increasingly becoming solved by feature subsets of other clusters.
I think not...(*poof*)
Pastel colors and giant squares that cover up your entire background with "live tiles" that are less functional than widgets... There's no chance of success until they overhaul the UI.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'll bet Windows 10 will be the version that finally establishes a niche in the mobile market for microsoft.
As of last summer, Apple had about 40 percent of the smartphone market. 40% of the market is not a niche, unless you define it as "Anything I personally don't buy".
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
MS doesn't have the executive talent or cojones to make a dent in the mobile device business.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You know, after my 360 crapped out for no reason, I swore to never buy another MS product. I got one for free after mail in rebate from Cricket, so I thought I would give it a shot. Had heard good things about Cortana and it was effectively free, so I thought "why not?" Well, the damn thing crashes constantly on about 30% of the websites I go to (internet browsing is my #1 reason for owning a smartphone). If they can't get something as simple as a F&$*^#G web browser to work...well, I stand by my previous oath to never buy another MS product. From here, I won't even take one for free.
Posting from a 9 year old Mac Mini that survived a house fire. Only lost the onboard sound card. Had another older one that was right in the line of fire AND took the full brunt of firehoses and still worked after, losing only the stuff at the bottom of the case.
Microsoft should know this from their own past. It's not necessarily who is the best, but who starts early and gets the market share.
Case and point: MS-DOS
By any yardstick, DOS was a pretty mediocre operating system, even accounting for the time. But when everybody started writing software, games, drivers and hardware for it, the rest did not matter. And they carried that success through Windows 3.1 and 95. Not even OS/2 could compete.
I wish they'd stop trying to force the "phone experience" on to my damn desktop...not to mention my frickin servers.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Microsoft's convictions about what the future of tech will and will not hold is worth a warm pitcher of spit.
Zune Man!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sure they will say it is the greatest next thing. Saying "Well, we tried, but this will be average." doen't make a lot of money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Year of the Windows Smartphone? Sounds like Year of the Linux desktop! Wanna trade?
...in economics terms.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
"Schadenfreude", German for "harm-joy", is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. And that's what I feel when I see Microsoft finally slipping. I surely don't have to list all the shit they've done before, but in this specific case: their trojan horse Stephen Elop destroyed Nokia from the inside. He killed the most successful mobile platform ever (Symbian), and the one that had the most future potential (MeeGo), to push the Windows shit that no one wanted -- all for the benefit of an external party, not the one who had hired him. (how the fuck was he not sued for breach of fiduciary duty yet?)
By all means, Microsoft, keep trying! Keep wasting money on a project without future. I hope I'll live to see you crash and burn at last.
Circumcision is child abuse.
MS has been trying to break into mobile for a decade, all while Apple, Google, and (for a while) BlackBerry did.
The Windows brand is tainted, even without the debacles of Vista and 8. Windows is everywhere else, and people are either tired of it (even subconsciously) or don't consider it a thing... it's dangerously close to becoming a generic trademark like Kleenex or Band-Aid, except that no one refers to their computers by the OS, if anything they refer to them by the OEM.
MS doesn't know how to connect with consumers for anything other than XBox. Consumer purchases are driven by emotion, but MS tries to sell to consumers with the same tactics and strategy that they sell to business: dispassionate and cost-driven. Hipsters and college kids don't care about that shit.
Also, MS still seems to do product feedback only to validate their own agenda.
That Windows 10 would be a flop?
I already have an android phone. It works and I'm comfortable with it. Other people already have iPhones and feel the same way about them. They'll most likely go for the same OS next time.
MS needs to come up with something that convinces people it's worth switching!
Microsoft should try using an Android sometime, because the Windows Phone is a joke.
watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
What, again?
This time for sure!
It's finally here. Just after the year of the Linux Desktop!
Why would developers make an app that's restricted by an interface that would work on a phone and not a desktop? Essentially they would still have to write two different apps, or at least two different interfaces. Metro didn't seem to take off on the desktop so I don't think universal apps with similar interfaces will either, desktop users don't want them and writing apps that essentially only benefit a small userbase is not effective use of resources.
Twinstiq, game news
Among the people who use it, Windows Phone is already hugely popular. Every time I'm around people with iPhones or Android phones, I hear complaint after complaint about things that don't work right, underwhelming features, etc.
Everyone I know with a Windows phone loves it. Note that this was NOT true of WP7, but the latest WP8.1 phones are great! I've had a Lumia 521, Lumia 925, and now Lumia 830, and all have been excellent phones. The 521 is still my backup/travel phone.
After that, will the Coke of cell phones give us the Mr. Pibb of cell phones? Just wondering.
With the two significant platforms losing their cool appeal it becomes easier and easier to break the mold and try something different. They simply need to execute and they will gain a more than laughable marketshare. And if they do ever manage to bring the experience to where I can interchange with the desktop, I would prefer the microsoft platform. They have a ton of cash and competitive assets, but the most imortant ingredeint is that the iphone has just become a phone. Further, I think that as time goes on, more and more users will come to realize that outside of your standard file viewing and social apps, the others are useful to only a very small subset of phone users, particularly powerusers who like to tweak things and people who just like to play with thier phones. That all said, I'm really hoping Ubuntu gets it act together on phone and puts something along the previous mentioned lines that I can use along side a Debian desktop, because the future is looking less and less bright for users of proprietary systems. I also wish we get to the point, where phones are using the same architecture as the desktops, similar to the way the surface pro has gone. That opens up huge development opportunities.
2015 - the year of Linux on the desktop, and Windows on the phone.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Windows 10 not be out until the end of the year. Why would anyone buy a Windows 8.x phone this year ?
The same happened when Windows Phone 8 was announced. In that case no Windows Phone 7 phone would be upgraded to 8. Sales of WinPhone 7 collapsed and WP8 phones were not available yet. This was a low point in sales, a year later sales recovered somewhat and this was raved over as 156% growth. In fact it was just part of the trend downwards.
Also with apps: WM6.x apps could not run on WP7. WP8 changed the development yet again. Now 'Universal Apps' are different again. It is unlikely that new WP8 apps will appear so many will wait to see what W10 phones will be like before buying and will keep existing devices until then.
Mitt Romney was convinced that he was going to be the next president of the United States. He was wrong. Microsoft may be convinced that Windows 10 will be the thing that gets them back on top, too. Maybe it will and maybe it won't. The problem is that like Romney, it doesn't matter what they think, it's what the public thinks that decides such things.
They need to provide what nobody else does. We have the very restrictive, closed iPhone platform that requires a personal blessing from the High Priests of Apple to public on, and the very open but ridiculously vulnerable Android platform that gives away all our personal information to any and every app developer to poop out anything at all.
Clearly, an open platform that takes security seriously at all would be in demand. The difficulty here is that Microsoft hasn't communicated that they're making just that. Instead, it *appears* to the uninformed consumer that they're trying to make what we already have but with a different skin.
This is either a design issue or a marketing issue. Maybe if they put less effort into controlling online conversations and more effort into telling us useful stuff, that could be helped a bit. Remember the Ubuntu phone? Remember what people were excited about regarding it? Notice how it hasn't been achieved due to various business cockblocks, thus leaving the gate wide open for someone bigger to step in? Hint hint.
But what do I know? I'm going off the assumption that when consumers repeat themselves without variation for years on end, they're spelling out in the simplest possible terms what they'd just love to hand over their money to acquire. I could be wrong about that. Do consumers know what they want? We might as well ask if free will exists; that debate will never be settled.
"I see you are beating a dead horse...would you like help with that?"
If they make an Atom based phone that is running a full or mostly full version of Windows (not the semi crippled ARM port) as is current rumor, a "Surface Phone" so to speak, then that changes the game a LOT, suddenly app support is a non-issue for a bunch of things, I'm not talking about running full desktop apps on a comparatively tiny screen, but things that are sorely lacking on ARM Winphone like third party VPN clients, corporate asset management agents, in house developed (generally crappy and poorly maintained) apps, etc. Add some sort of dock or remote display capability then you have a laptop replacement for many mobile users.
App support is the issue... I had a windows phone a couple years ago, it was pretty quick for the price, and it was easy to use No support for a banking app from my bank though... and its things like that, which will make or break a platform
Here's MS' problem, there's a strong perception that they don't exist in the phone market. I was watching the news the other day and they were covering various gadgets and they had this thing which paired over bluetooth with a phone and had an app. The reviewer actually said that it supports all smartphones, both android and iPhone. Boom, there's your problem MS. No-one even knows or cares that you exist.
As a long time Linux user, it feels good that MS is getting killed because no-one is supporting their product however good it may be.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
What will make Windows Phone succeed is the same thing that will make OS X succeed and it mainly boils down to apps.
Microsoft already tried that though - they paid a lot of money to developers in order to bring many of the most popular titles to Windows phone from iOS/Android.
Even with that it will still not enough to track consumers...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"The year of Net Neutrality"..... wait, we got that one!
Don't count your chickens before they are slaughtered.
You currently have no idea of what you "got", because only FCC commissioners have read the actual regulations they will be passing...
There are 300 pages of changes ready to change the internet you know today. Good luck with that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the year for Linux on the desktop !!
The WP 8.1 update was a long awaited update that only just starts to provide the basic needs/features that any user would expect from a smart phone (e.g. separate volume control for the ring/notification tones, and for media!!!), but I think I'm sure as hell done with it now. Android and iOS are true smart phones and I won't be investing anymore into the Microsoft department any time soon.
Xbone was the way forward, into the living room, bedrooms and playrooms of the world. With Kinect2 and Voice Commands. Digital everything, massive bandwidth suckage and MSFT reaping the rewards. Those dreams are now dust.
This is that same company in the same ship of fools.
which will run on both ARM- and Intel-based phones and provide an experience very much like the desktop.
See? They can learn. After fully understanding it is stupid to slap a phone UI paradigm on desktops they have decided the right thing to do is cram the desktop UI on to the phone. Way to go Microsoft. Way to go.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Maybe W10 will allow them the regain their 3% market share. That'd be a breakthrough.
... will be the same year on Linux on desktop. I.e., it never comes :)
I worked at Microsoft for 10 years in the 90's and early 2000's.
Sometime in 2011, I experienced a momentary lapse in judgement and interviewed for a job in the Mobile division. They were a year and a half away from releasing Windows Phone 8 and they knew deep in their gut that this was the release that would forever bury the iPhone and Android.
4 years later... [crickets] [crickets] ...
Search through any of the "free" applets in the Microsoft store, and a card game wants access to you email, location information, text messages, etc. All that for an offline card game. My Lumia came with one clunky game, and nothing else worth downloading. Microsoft could take a huge lead by just having the default Windows games available on the phones.
This year will be the year of Windows Phone .... NOT :D
same year linux takes the desktop. but really microsoft IMO you have a long way to go to win the trust of users back.
Ubuntu's phone OS has one extremely attractive feature that if adopted by microsoft and working with intel could make for an absolute winner of a phone. What I want is to be able to get a functional and attractive smart phone, plug it into a dock and have a fully fledged computer, with a desktop keyboard and mouse that I can installl intel standard windows software on. It would require intel to pick up their game, but it would be awesome. Not a cut down RT nonsense windows that forces me to use a reduced catalogue of windows app, but a full blown windows OS with all the bells and whistles. Note, Apple could do this too, as I'm probably more comfortable on a mac than windows these days.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
What I read from the title:
Microsoft's Windows 10 breaking smartphones. ...what, did I lie?
will run on [...] phones and provide an experience very much like the desktop. [...] repeatedly failed to take the mobile space [...]"
Yeah, I wonder if these two could be in any way related...
MS is a design and UI fiasco and always has been. The only reason few people realize how unusable the crap is, is that we are so used to it that we don't notice anymore - until the next major update, or if you don't use it daily and then suddenly sit in front of it and wonder who the fuck came up with this stupidity.
And everyone who knows anything at all about mobile devices and usability knows that nobody on the planet wants a windows desktop experience on their smartphone. People want a smartphone experience on their smartphone, what's so difficult to understand about that?
Oh, speaking of that: People also don't want a mobile experience on their desktop. They want a desktop experience on their desktop, that's not so difficult, either.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Windows 10 will indeed rule the smartphone market and absolutely dwarf Android and iOS.
However, as 2015 is also the year of Linux on the desktop, Microsoft's total market share will remain stagnant when all devices are accounted for. :P :P :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What is nice about Windows Phones is that they give you a feeling of exclusiveness - you can claim to own something that very few other people own.
Microsoft isn't even capable to put a GUI onto Win 10 for the Pi 2...which is essentially mid grade phone / tablet hardware. That though may be more out of tactical reasons than technical reasons, otherwise masses would buy Pi 2s as that would be the least expensive Windows PC to be had. Then again, they could offer it as download only version as SD card image and charge ten bucks a pop. I'd buy it because that would match the actual value of ARM based Windows.
So Windows 8 was about enforcing tablet usage onto desktop computers and Windows 10 will do the same for phones?
I weep for the desktop...
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife