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Ballmer: Microsoft Mobile Should Focus On Android Apps Not Universal Apps (theverge.com)
UnknowingFool writes: Former CEO Steve Ballmer had some strong opinions about the direction of Microsoft's mobile strategy. As reported last month, Microsoft's Project Astoria has not been received well and is not going well. The strategy is to help build Windows 10 apps by making universal apps via easy porting from Android. Ballmer questions its effectiveness. "That won't work," he said. Instead he suggested that Windows phones should "run Android apps." This is a dramatic departure from the Microsoft-only focus that Ballmer championed during his tenure as CEO.
As an ex-Windows Phone user, I said many times I would have stayed on the platform if I could (reliably and safely) run Android Apps (I'm aware of the work over at XDADevs to make this happen but I don't want to have to get my app APKs from Russia - I want them from the Play Store). I actually quite liked the OS of Windows Phone - it was quite powerful, smooth and frankly, feature rich (mainly because it had to be, because there were no damn apps for it). If I could have Android apps - and they worked well and safely (you know... for Android) I'd call that best of both worlds and come back.
I spent part of the last 3 years (about 20% of it) developing and maintaining an iOS app (hybrid web app - UIWebView + a GWT/Java server side). It predated Swift. I come from a Pascal/C/C++/Java/C# background, and I hated every day of Objective C. I recently got a taste of Swift, but... why the hell can't Apple use a language with more typical syntaxes?
We did iOS first, because among our particular customers, they had better than 80% market share.
The business case recently came up to need to port it to Windows Embedded 8.1 Handheld to support a couple of particular devices. WHAT A JOY. I had this app up and running on two real devices in four hours. C#, Visual Studio Community 2015... no Xcode developer profile / provisioning profile / whatever issues. I can debug the app and use the barcode scanner at the same time because, unlike iThings, the device will debug and let you use a wired peripheral AT THE SAME TIME (haven't been able to do that since Lightning).
The sad truth, though, is that Microsoft is late to the party. It was already too late when Steve started chanting "developers". They were already gone.
Microsoft is going to have to do something very wine-esque to just get apps on their platform. They have single-digit market share.
Well from a business perspective, during his tenure he tried to capitalise on MS’ dominant position on desktop and server in order to promote dominance on the emerging mobile-client platform. This he or the company he presided upon failed to do, and he retired after the “screw up”.
But that does not mean that he must continue dumbly advocating that there be strict adherence to what he tried, and failed, to do. After all, consistency is only a value if you are not a screw-up.
He continues to be MS’ largest single investor. That gives him a large vested interest in advocating that it behave rationally, even when rationality in this sub-game is at odds with the strategy he pursued previously.
Ideally MS would have succeeded in perpetuating its dominance to the new platform. It did not, so now it’s the case to do something else which is at cross-purposes with what would have formerly been ideal. This is not evidence of fallacious thinking; much the contrary.
"Place me in the company of those who seek Truth, but deliver me from those who believe to have found it."
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