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.

Comments

Breakthrough?

[Flavianoep]

They will have more luck if they use a axe.

Re:Breakthrough?

[sycodon]

This will also be the year I win the lottery!

Come on 123456!

Re:Breakthrough?

[Anonymous Coward]

This will also be the year I win the lottery!

Come on 123456!

Who told you my password?!

Re:Breakthrough?

[sycodon]

You have the password to the Lottery?????

Re:Breakthrough?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, just his luggage.

Hail Scroob!

Re:Breakthrough?

[butchersong]

Windows is doing a lot of stuff right recently. I have a secondary phone ($40 dollar nokia 635) that is Windows 10 and it is a slick little OS. When it comes to very inexpensive smart phones Windows is more pervasive than you would think. Combine Windows 10 with HoloLens and other cool projects that are actually pretty close to being commercial products and I think it would be foolish to count them out.

Re:Breakthrough?

[FuegoFuerte]

How many models of phone does Microsoft make? Add to that, how many models of phones are available from other manufacturers running the Windows Phone OS?

How many models of phone does Apple make?

I don't think Microsoft is losing in the mobile space because of giving customers too few options.

Re:Breakthrough?

[sycodon]

When the lottery reaches over a hundred mill, it's fun to get a ticket and day dream. And probably a better use of a few dollars than getting a burger and fries.

I call it, "paying the idiot tax".

Re:Breakthrough?

[JanneM]

Smart article yes, but it's still incredibly stupid to buy a lottery ticket.

Unless you think it's fun to play. Idle daydreaming about what you'd do if you won; the excitement as the numbers are called; the rollercoaster of emotion as you realize you may win - no you won't - oh but you did get a small price.

It's only stupid if you see it as an investment. See it as entertainment and it's no more dumb than paying to watch a movie.

Re:Breakthrough?

[Dr. Evil]

The impact to your life is far greater earlier in life, so buy all 40 years of tickets when you're in your early 20's.

If you win in your 60's, the real cost is 40 years of unnecessary labour + $2,080.

Re:Breakthrough?

[Dutch Gun]

Yeah, Windows has some penetration on low-end devices, but you know that's not where they really want to be.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft is now in the same position on the phone as Linux is on the desktop. They have an extremely competent offering, but they can't seem to really break though to make significant gains in the market. As we've seen time and time again with Linux, it's not enough to offer something "almost as good" to get someone to switch. You can't even compete with "just as good". You need to provide something that's significantly better than the competition in some fashion - some significant advantage that will compel people to move from Android or iOS to Windows phones.

In the article, Microsoft stated that a Microsoft phone would provide a "more consistent experience across smartphones, tablets, and PCs". Interestingly, that was exactly why I hated Windows 8 so much, because it was obviously a mobile UI bolted rather clumsily on top of my desktop. Windows 10 is unfortunately using the same "modern fugly" visual design, but is at least fixing the usability and integration problems. So, in theory, a cross-platform app store could end up being a win for them. If you can buy an app and run it on all three of those platforms, I could see that as being attractive for consumers.

Another possibility is if they provide businesses some great tools to help manage mobile corporate devices. Apple has been notoriously bad at this - not sure how easy it is with Android. But for consumers? I don't know. At the moment, I just don't really see how they're going to crack into this extremely competitive market.

Re: Breakthrough?

[swimboy]

Let me give you a hint: take statistics.

Blackberry

[MightyMartian]

They can join BlackBerry in the "any day now, we'll be on top!" movement.

Re:Blackberry

[geoskd]

They can join BlackBerry in the "any day now, we'll be on top!" movement.

The difference between microsoft and blackberry is:

Microsoft is hoping for a better tomorrow

Blackberry is still hoping yesterday will get better.

Re:Blackberry

[phantomfive]

Blackberry is still hoping yesterday will get better.

I don't know, have you seen the latest blackberry offerings? Also, they run Android apps, so that's something more than you get with WP10.

Though frankly I don't see much changing for either company.

Re:Blackberry

[jellomizer]

Microsoft has to prove that they won't mess up the smartphone like they did with the desktop. Consumers who use Windows do so because they have to not because they want to. Microsoft never was able to get a strong foothold in the mobile market, because there was too much bad feeling about having to use Windows on their PC. With the problems that were prevalent during the mid-late 1990's still sticks in people head.

Blackberry biggest mistake was not being more developer friendly. Once apple allowed for custom Apps, and Exchange compatibility, that started to put a nail in blackberry dominance.

Sounds like

[rossdee]

More than enough reasons to keep Win 10 off my desktop

This just in

[Kjella]

Company convinced of their own success, at least in their own marketing materials. News at 11.

Re:MS needs to succeed

[geoskd]

Apple is just ... Apple.

Apple: the 800 Lb niche player...

If it can run some win 10 apps

[Billly Gates]

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.

Re:I hope they suceeed

[geoskd]

there are a lot of companies that like sticking it to Microsoft.

Gee, I wonder why.

They still don't get it

[janoc]

"... 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 ...

Re:They still don't get it

[narcc]

Which is exactly what people don't want.

Speak for yourself.

The more "PC" like my mobile devices get, the happier I am. A Surface Pro is far more in-line with the wants and needs of the average user than is a Kindle Fire or an iPad. I would hope that this would extend in mobile phones as well. They're one of the few companies with an offering that could make me give up my BlackBerry.

The computer in my pocket should be a computer. Android, while popular here, can't even handle simple task-switching.

Re:They still don't get it

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Which is exactly what people don't want.

Speak for yourself.

The more "PC" like my mobile devices get, the happier I am. A Surface Pro is far more in-line with the wants and needs of the average user than is a Kindle Fire or an iPad. I would hope that this would extend in mobile phones as well. They're one of the few companies with an offering that could make me give up my BlackBerry.

The computer in my pocket should be a computer. Android, while popular here, can't even handle simple task-switching.

Speak for yourself. The average user wants a device that "just works". Something one can pull out of a pocket or back, press a button and have it do what they need done (looking something up on the internet, read the message from their grandmother, see their next meeting, what have you. A technical user might want to have the power of installing Adobe Flash or tweaking their registry to allow focus-follows-mouse or three versions of Firefox or an ssh client or vim or what have you.

If I want the power of a PC, I use a laptop or desktop. I want my phone to just work and not require constant maintenance.

Indeed. Remember "back in the day" when a Personal computer was a complicated, almost workstation like machine requiring high maintenance, but very powerful. As well there were "home computers" which were less powerful, but much easier to use: Slide the program cartridge in, turn it on, have fun.

Eventually home computers disappeared, and every Luddite and their mother had a PC. Then the calls started flooding in. The inability to do basic tasks, being easily tricked by malware, etc.

Mobile platforms bring back simple, straight forward approach that many users need. For many people all they need to be able to do is surf the web, check their email, and check facebook. Platforms such as iOS and Android excel at this. All the better for those users to use those machines, as long as higher performance PC's (Windows/OSX/Linux) exist for heavy lifting.

More and more on trips I pack my Android tablet and leave my laptop at home. Easier to fire up at the airport departure lounge, on the plane to watch a movie, or in the hotel: laptops usually involve hauling out all the accessories, cords, wait for it to boot, etc, while a tablet will immediately wake from sleep and sip battery. Smartphones also excel at being able to last all day on a charge, yet alert you instantly when you have a new email or other notification. That said I'd be at a loss without my i5 desktop at home.

Define 'desktop' ...

[gstoddart]

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.

Did A Comedy Central Piece hit /.?

[Gr8Apes]

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!

Re:Did A Comedy Central Piece hit /.?

[omnichad]

Maybe Charlie Brown will finally kick that football...

Try and try again.

[Frobnicator]

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.

Re:Try and try again.

[Pieroxy]

WM 5/6 was a piece of shit of a great magnitude. You mush be some kind of shill to even pretend it was worth anything. You had to reboot the phone basically on a daily basis to get anything running. The second day the photo app would stop working, the next one the alarm clock and the third day your phone would not even ring when called. I got several of them at the time.

Not mentionning you had to spend your days in the task manager killing the apps that you launched during the last hour to get back some memory and hope to run other apps.

Ah, and updating the OS or apps for that matter would take 205 steps on your computer.

I got an iPhone 1 (a gift) in early 2008 and the difference was just that the shit was working. It was inferior to both my former windows phones in terms of spec (ALL of them save the screen size) but the shit was just running smooth. What a relief! I remember the firs time I updated iOS. I realized the phone had been running for TWO MONTH without a reboot. Whishful thinking coming from WM5/6. And it didn't even have apps !

To all the naysayers that will deny Apple their "revolution", man, there was one and of a great magnitude. But it was not the hardware. It was software that worked on the hardware. This made all the difference.

Re: Try and try again.

[vux984]

The iPhone when it came out was far less useful than any of the windows phones, but it took off because it cost more, and did less, while being pretty.

Nope. Multitouch was simply worlds better than stylus + soft or slide out keyboard.

"Visual voicemail" or whatever it was called kicked the ass out of dial-in voicemail which was still the default on windows mobile devices.

And the whole UI being designed for touch instead of stylus made it a LOT easier to use.

Yes, you definitely gave up lots of functionality in terms of the iphone not having stylus, and only being able to interact with it with your fingers; editing a spreadsheet on an iphone 3G was terrible compared to Windows Mobile 5/6... but making a call or appointment or sending a text message was orders of magnitude better.

Where I see Windows phones...

[VAXcat]

The only place I ever see Windows phones is on TV series as glaringly obvious product placement...never seen one in the wild.

Too Late (Ask Zune)

[flanders123]

When the final iteration of the Zune rolled out, it was largely considered a terrific product. However, the summary of that particular review is a chilling reminder of MS's tendency to arrive late to the party:

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.

good times

[lactose99]

...provide an experience very much like the desktop...

Excellent! I always wanted my phone to BSOD in the middle of an important call!

Intel based phone could change the game

[Bugler412]

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.