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Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform Is Dead (windows10update.com)
Ammalgam writes: Tom Warren at the Verge today gave voice to what a lot of other technology analysts and today definitively declared that Microsoft's Windows Phone platform is dead. This largely based on the abysmal adoption numbers released in Microsoft's most recent earnings report. Mr. Warren articulates the obvious by stating: "With Lumia sales on the decline and Microsoft's plan to not produce a large amount of handsets, it's clear we're witnessing the end of Windows Phone. Rumors suggest Microsoft is developing a Surface Phone, but it has to make it to the market first. Windows Phone has long been in decline and its app situation is only getting worse. With a lack of hardware, lack of sales, and less than 2 percent market share, it's time to call it: Windows Phone is dead. "
Now this news should not be surprising to anyone who has watched the slow decline of Windows Phone. Last December, in an article on Windows10update.com, Onuora Amobi also wrote off the platform. In this case, his analysis was based on the nonconformity of the Microsoft user interface to Apple and Android's widely adopted aesthetic appeal. He wrote "I believe Windows Phone is dead. Kaput. Finished. Over. Done. ... Windows 10 is successful in part because it's a return to Windows 7 in many ways and that's what made the consumers happy. One of the definitions of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result". This is exactly what Microsoft is doing and it's insane. Over 90% of Microsoft's desired audience like the look and feel of iPhones and Android devices. They do – it's not good or bad – it just is what it is. They spend their money on those two user interfaces."
Now this news should not be surprising to anyone who has watched the slow decline of Windows Phone. Last December, in an article on Windows10update.com, Onuora Amobi also wrote off the platform. In this case, his analysis was based on the nonconformity of the Microsoft user interface to Apple and Android's widely adopted aesthetic appeal. He wrote "I believe Windows Phone is dead. Kaput. Finished. Over. Done. ... Windows 10 is successful in part because it's a return to Windows 7 in many ways and that's what made the consumers happy. One of the definitions of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result". This is exactly what Microsoft is doing and it's insane. Over 90% of Microsoft's desired audience like the look and feel of iPhones and Android devices. They do – it's not good or bad – it just is what it is. They spend their money on those two user interfaces."
You know The Verge?...That's a fucking iVerge!
I can't find the "news" in the headline!
MS has already stated that they will continue to develop and support Windows Phone OS. This article is just fear mongering. The platform is not going anywhere.
They really have no other choice anyway. It would be foolish to give up on the platform because it can be used for IoT and tablets as well and it is also allows them to be more agile if things ever change. Not that I see them changing in the short term, but who knows, the pendulum may swing back into MS's favor in time and if it does, they will have the OS and infrastructure ready for it.
Anyway, I will continue to use a Windows Phone because I like the interface. The lack of apps is not a concern for me.
In addition, the fact that Windows Phone OS has such a low market share helps ensure its security as well since most malicious software and exploits will be developed for Android and iOS.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
When the bloated shitware OEMs have been putting on machines becomes the bloated shitware shipped by Microsoft ... it's basically a sign that Microsoft is doing such a bad job at getting people to care they have to essentially resort to affiliate programs and paid product placement.
I'm afraid Microsoft has lost the plot so badly they will never be able to recover ... because for those many of us who simply don't want or need Office, and have noticed that while Apple adds stuff like movie editing software Microsoft is removing Solitaire ... there's not much beyond the OS to run other people's software on that MS brings to the table.
Except for notepad, Windows Explorer, and Calculator ... there's not a damned piece of Microsoft software which adds value to my home machine.
If the once biggest software company is reduced to adware, they'd jumped the shark so badly as to be doomed. Because they'll have almost stopped being relevant.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Was it ever alive?
I sit next to a box of Lumia's that someone bought for the school I work for before I started. They were only ever used as... well... phones. Nobody ever even tried to log in and use apps on them. And when I started two years ago, they'd not been used in over a year. Recently they were given to me as they'd been "sitting in a box" in someone's office collecting dust, and had been replaced with bog-standard dial-only phones.
My tech had one when he first started here - but he was 19 and naive. Within days of seeing what a real phone did (and not crashing his on-screen keyboard like his one did all the time), he changed his contracts.
The only other one I've ever seen was a teacher's at a previous school - who knew nothing about them and bought it because it "had Skype". She never managed to collect her email or anything else reliably and so never used anything that it could do.
That's out of literally HUNDREDS of adults that I know who come to me with all their tech problems, all the new-starters whose phones I set up with our email etc., all the parents and kids that I see every day about anything even vaguely technical. I must touch several hundred different phones a year, and the majority are almost 50:50 iPhone and Samsung, with the rest being cheap knock-offs and less common brands.
But Windows phones? Honestly? I've touched more Palm Pilots and Windows CE devices in the last year. And to be honest, they probably worked better and did more.
(Funniest thing ever was trying to get a WPA key into a WIndows phone where the on screen keyboard crashes, and then trying to modify the key so it didn't use the numbers that you couldn't get to, then finally getting it online and finding out that the "Update" button not only would never fix the problem, but also that it never actually did anything... it would download for over an hour, reboot, and be exactly the same... this was THREE MONTHS after the tech discovered that it was sucking up all his data trying to download the update and his phone company just wrote off the data charges the second he mentioned "Windows phone" because they were so accustomed to it).
I disagree. Windows Phone is a very solid interface, maybe even the best one, assuming you only have a few apps. The real problem was it only had a few apps. It was embarrassing how few options there were.
The hardware was solid for the cheaper phones. If you wanted sub $100 phone, especially a couple years ago, the Lumia series was the way to go.
And Android is effectively a monoculture too, everybody just gets their apps from Google Play, the same as if it was the Apple store.
Really, the absolute lack of apps was what kept Windows Phone from being some kind of cult phenom. Too bad, I basically like the idea of a phone that I can use as a Windows computer.
Google is the company that can be least trusted. They are the only company which has the primary business model of collecting as much information from you as possible and selling it to the highest bidder.
Apple, BB and Microsoft collect info too, but at least it's not the basis of their business model.
Google and Apple don't sell your info. Google's cash cow is the fact that they exclusively hold certain information about their customers, and they leverage it by allowing targeted advertisements--they would lose their broker status by giving out all that customer info (that's why they very carefully anonymize advertisements on their products, so they don't let their customers spill the beans to anybody else BUT Google.) Apple's cash cow is customer loyalty and huge margins on their premium devices, so they would be foolish to squander their customer loyalty by selling their info out
Not ashamed to admit it. I loved my giant yellow Lumia 1520 and the HTC One isn't so either. I find the Metro UI (whatever it's called these days) to be really pleasant to use. In a way I like being the black sheep of mobile users, my phone solves the problems I need it to solve handily and looks good doing it and it doesn't look like the phones of everyone else.
Plenty of iOS devices have gone through our household and I resent how there's still a lingering dependency on them because of old iTunes libraries requiring them. I resent the iTunes interface and how poorly designed it is; a miscarriage on a dinner plate is more appealing than that shitty software. It feels like the whole paradigm is a way to fuck over people.
Android strikes me as a mass consumer oriented product which is probably why it's been so successful. Conformal and uninspiring in every way.
It'd be a shame if the whole Windows Phone platform just died off. I've always told everyone good things about it.
Do you have any idea how much money just 2% of the US mobile market is?
2% of the US market is still 6.5 million subscribers.
If you sell a new one every 2 years at $400/each, thats still almost 3 billion dollars a year in revenue. Drop it to $200/phone and its still 1.3b. In ONLY America. Then theres the rest of the world.
Just because some moron at some shitty magazine makes an ignorant statement doesn't make it news for nerds any more than Donald Trump talking about tech is news for nerds.
As far as every number indicates, the business is profitable. Its not an iPhone, but it still makes money. Killing it would be stupid. Selling it might be more profitable, but killing it would just be utterly stupid.
Did this guy work at GM when they decided to stop selling the only 2 profitable brands they had as well? Idiot.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Windows 10 from a user experience might not be too bad, but it's the aggressive data collection that really has people hating Windows 10. Not only bad defaults, but often downright impossible to turn off even when you think you have. Combine that with extremely aggressive attempts to get Win 7/8 users to upgrade. If those things weren't there, I doubt the same level of hate would be.
Full disclosure: I'm not a Microsoft fan. Yes, Windows phone sales have been abysmal. We've known this for.... decades, actually. Whatever Microsoft renames or redesigns the phone, it's never done well. Microsoft doesn't appear to "get it" at a fundamental level.
But, so far, Microsoft continues to pour money into it. And Microsoft still has a lot of money. So realistically, the Windows phone isn't dead until Microsoft says it's dead.
The "windows phone dead" meme, like "the year of linux on the desktop" meme, is one of those wishful-thinking things that may actually be true someday. But not today.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Well, this is a good point, but the real issue with Google's business model isn't collecting data your data per se -- it's that you don't get to find out what they do with it. If it were transparent it would be a simple and reasonable economic transaction: I get services from you and you get to use my information, and if I don't like how you use it I can go elsewhere for those services.
All the arguments for the optimality and acceptability of a market economy are based on the assumption that parties to transactions have perfect -- or at least good enough -- information about conditions related to that transaction. But an entirely self-interested party (as corporations are) will if given the opportunity hide information related to a transaction when it is favorable to them. This is one of the reasons we pay more for healthcare than other countries, because our system is rigged so that you can't figure out how much a medical service costs. This starts with the largely bogus Hospital price lists (called a chargemaster), which pretty much guarantees that self-insurance is not a viable option. But if you have insurance, nobody is ever quite sure how much of what is covered by that insurance. In theory you pay your copay and that's it, but insurance companies routinely dispute bills (which is why providers make you agree to pay out of pocket), I am convinced sometimes speculating that you will pay some of the amount they ask for.
People use "free market" to mean "unregulated", but in fact a free market that operates the way people assume a free market should requires regulation, particularly of information. I'd like the law to say Google has to give me an accounting of all the ways they've made money off my information, so I can decide whether the const in consequences to me is worth the value of their services.
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