Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform Is Dead (windows10update.com) 456
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."
Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know The Verge?...That's a fucking iVerge!
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Microsoft may be able to jumpin at some point though with the bump in surface sales. If they rebranded as surface phone and launched a surface phone that's tied to a plan that is much like Google Fi they could potentially build a market for themselves. Especially if they used the hooks they have in the retail world at best buys and microsoft kiosks
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The Verge may be right, but they are totally apple fanboys who jump at any opportunity to make fun of the competition.
I would agree, but Windows Phone is not now nor ever was competition for Apple. The company that is competition for Apple's bread and butter market however, is a totally different story:
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-g... [phys.org]
TL;DR: Google (or Alphabet rather) is likely to overtake Apple's overall net worth soon.
Also to add to that, Apple's massive cash supply has a major problem that's going to take a lot of "financial engineering" to solve:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
TL;DR: Apple has a lot of cash overseas,
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Google (or Alphabet rather) is likely to overtake Apple's overall net worth soon.
LOL No.
Market cap, maybe.
But Apple has more than $200B in cash, while giving away about $50B a year in dividends & stock repurchases.
Apple's massive cash supply has a major problem that's going to take a lot of "financial engineering" to solve:
LOL.
Only if they want to spend it in America. But guess where they put lots ($10s of B) of capital into their manufacturing process. I'll give you a hint. It's in the Far East.
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Interesting)
If Apple brought their cash back to the US and paid their debts that would at least half their cash position. So they're not in bad shape by any means, but it's not as look as it sounds on the face of it.
Also, iPhone accounts for 2/3's of their revenue according to the article. If that's the case, Apple has said they expect a ~14 percent drop in iPhone sales this quarter. That's a big deal. It actually puts them pretty close to where Microsoft is at.
Alphabet, on the other hand, went and hired some wall street people, reigned in spending, reorganized and made some smart moves. They're on the rise.
The most valuable company thing I'm not sure about, I guess it depends how you measure it. Market cap does tend to be what the media and others are talking about when they say "the most valuable company in the world," but we all know there is a lot more to it than that. For example, market cap only represents outstanding stocks and is really all over the place.
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Right at this moment of time Apple has one huge, really huge marketing advantage of M$. Apple is selling privacy and looking after the privacy of others is cool and sells well. M$ are selling the opposite and complete loss of privacy and that is an impossible sell and the longer they keep it going the worse it will get. From young to old, at a social level, invasion of privacy is loathed, pervert a core word for offensive behaviour, secretly perving on someone, being a perv is considered quite foul, check
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Verge may be right, but they are totally apple fanboys who jump at any opportunity to make fun of the competition.
I would agree, but Windows Phone is not now nor ever was competition for Apple. The company that is competition for Apple's bread and butter market however, is a totally different story:
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-g... [phys.org]
As much as people like to dump on Windows Phone, or Blackberry, the shrinking of the smartphone market to only 2 major players is a bad thing. More competition is good in trying to keep all vendors on their feet, and there are certainly things WP and BB do better than iOS or Android.
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Umm...Why would I be Satya? If you read my post history, I'm a pretty big critic of Windows Phone. It's biggest problem is that it's just not relevant...to anybody...And that starts with its UI. A few years back, somebody at Microsoft created this blog post:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/thinku... [msdn.com]
It's a well written post, with a few wonderful examples of why information overload is bad. Even with their UI talent knowing information overload is a real problem, they go and create a UI that looks like this:
http://in4 [wordpress.com]
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are fanboys of any platform that are always eager to make fun of competitors to their Chosen Idol.... so what exactly was your point there? Can't be due to any sneering by any top dog... currently it's a near-duopoly in the smartphone OS world, and fortunately neither major participant is run by a monopolistic player of dirty pool.
Microsoft used to have 2-3rd place in North America at best, back before the iPhone and Android came out (#1 was BlackberryOS, #2 was PalmOS). Microsoft *could* have taken advantage of a decent position back then, but they, like Nokia, Palm, and BB, were blindsided by the advent of first the iPhone, then Android.
Microsoft compounded its error in judgement by dumping time and money into 'Pink', thinking that a Sidekick inspired hardwired-keyboard phone style was eventually going to win out over the rapidly growing Apple/Android phones, who in turn were moving in the opposite direction (that is, Microsoft's competitors were busy as hell trying to cut down the number of hardware buttons, while Microsoft was busy adding more). In the end, the long-delayed Kin phone had no chance.
To try and make up for the fuckups, They send ol' Elop over to take over a now-ailing Nokia, then slowly drag Nokia into Microsoft's fold. Problem is, they did it about 5 years too late, long after Nokia fell into massive decline. They should have taken over that platform before it caught fire, to borrow Elop's analogy.
When Microsoft finally got its shit together, it was too little, too late. With a near-deserted app store, a widely-panned mobile UI, and a near-saturated market, Microsoft is in no position to do jack shit in this market... and I think the sooner Nadella gets the memo and pulls out of that mess, the better.
IMHO, the whole Windows Phone fiasco is prima facie evidence that Microsoft overextended itself. Excepting the still-no-ROI-yet XBox line, they have been patently unable to do anything profitable, let alone successful outside of their existing core competencies: OS, Exchange, Office, Active Directory, and rebranding Logitech peripherals. ...maybe it's time for Microsoft to get back to basics, keep the stuff that actually makes money, dump the rest, then sit down and take a long, hard, vision-related look at where they really need to go in order to thrive (and not decline or remain stale-steady-state) a couple of decades from now?
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd wager that the vision is there, within Microsoft's employee pool, but got hopelessly stuck in mid-management politics and infighting over whose shit smells better.
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are fanboys of any platform that are always eager to make fun of competitors to their Chosen Idol
I've often wondered about the motivation for this kind of behavior...is it simply a form of self-reassurance, or bolstering of one's ego to confirm that a given decision (i.e. Android versus Apple) was the "right" decision? Or is it a way to possibly makeup for thinking that one has, in fact, made the "wrong" decision? What's the motivation to take sides and hoot like bands of rival monkeys at a waterhole??
It's so weird. I own an Android phone, but I don't brag about it. I'm sure an iPhone or Lumia or Brand X would work just as well for me. Conversely, I don't diss people who happen to own a different brand of gadget, vehicle, or clothing than I do. Why would I?
It just all seems so weird to me, like some kind of abstracted dick-waving or patriotism or something. Why would I care what brand of phone someone uses? Why would I care about them knowing or caring about what brand of phone I use?
I don't understand it, I really don't.
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've often wondered about the motivation for this kind of behavior...is it simply a form of self-reassurance, or bolstering of one's ego to confirm that a given decision (i.e. Android versus Apple) was the "right" decision? Or is it a way to possibly makeup for thinking that one has, in fact, made the "wrong" decision? What's the motivation to take sides and hoot like bands of rival monkeys at a waterhole??
I can't speak for any underlying psychobabble cause; but for some of us it feels more like an expression of our values. For example, I have an iPhone 6 and I support a few dozen of them at my job. I hate these things with the passion of a thousand hells specifically because the business model revolves around sweeping all of the blatantly obvious problems under the rug. The troubleshooting steps for any error you might ever come across for any application on this platform are as follows: 1.) Restart the phone. 2.) Reinstall the application. 3.) Format the phone and reinstall the application 4.) RMA the phone. That's it. If none of those steps work, you will be abandoned by any technical support team out there specifically because they all know that the cause will be some underlying edge case bug that Apple refuses to address or even acknowledge. You want log files? F-U, Apple fanboys don't need no stinkin log files so they don't exist despite Unix being one of the pioneers of this concept. You want an error code? Nope, can't help you there, they don't exist; you're lucky if you're told that a problem occurred at all. You want to roll back to a previous version of a software package where this problem didn't exist? Nope, never going to happen not even diagnostically because I guess no one who ever wrote code for the Apple platform has ever made a mistake.
As for the animosity toward Apple fanboys? I suppose that it stems from a feeling that they are the ones that are propagating this culture of "There is no problem as long as you ignore the problem until you buy your next device.". It's a bit infuriating to be told by one of them that "You have to stop pretending that you can fix everything.".
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Informative)
You want log files? F-U, Apple fanboys don't need no stinkin log files so they don't exist despite Unix being one of the pioneers of this concept. You want an error code? Nope, can't help you there, they don't exist; you're lucky if you're told that a problem occurred at all.
Huh? What are you talking about? [apple.com]
Re: Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:3)
Any large company with large amounts of your average sales/tech/support does this. I've seen it in Radio Shack (manager retreats), shoe chains, Microsoft (parties with oysters and champagne). It's part training and part is retention, making sure they don't have to expend too much on training their monkeys due to turnover while maintaining the smallest edge on their competitions hourly rates.
There is an entire market for corporate shit like this with motivational speakers on one end and party planners at the
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Microsoft gradually chipped away at it and eventually supplanted PalmOS as #1 for the simple reason that Palm wouldn't allow PalmOS on other hardware. Anyone else who wanted to make their own PDA had to invest in making their own OS (Nokia) or use Microsoft's offering. (This is the same mistake Apple made in the PC market, thus relegating them to a 5% market share today.)
And yet, this same strategy seems to have worked brilliantly for the iPhone, or at the very least, doesn't seem to have hurt Apple at all. Any theories as to why this would supposedly be a disadvantage in one case but not in another? Personally, I'm not sure that licensing an OS to third-parties is a huge factor in success given the top two players have wildly diverging strategies in this regard. And remember, Android isn't a big money-maker for Google like the iPhone is for Apple.
But in an idiotic move, Microsoft insisted on tying it together with their desktop OS monopoly by forcing it to use the Win32 API and UI paradigm. (A Start button on a phone? Really?) Nobody wants to use the Windows desktop UI on a 4-inch screen.
And hilariously, Micros
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The Verge may be right, but they are totally apple fanboys who jump at any opportunity to make fun of the competition.
Doesn't make them wrong. Microsoft Phones aren't "dead" because they were never even "alive". They just "never were".
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is it, the apps or the UI?
I, anecdotally, do NOT like the iOS UI. Its widgets are hidden away in a drawer, apps' most useful functions tend to be at the top of the screen instead of within thumb reach, and I can't even choose where on my homescreen I want to place an icon. Android UI is generally better and it provides more flexibility, although I wish it were more flexible out-of-the-box and didn't require rooting to do some of the truly nice things. Windows Mobile UI is a mix, where its widgets (tiles) aren't quite as useful but the tradeoff of better resource management makes that acceptable.
Again, just my opinion, but the UI is absolutely NOT the weak point for Microsoft. Apps are. That should improve if more well-known app vendors port to universal Windows 10 apps, since they would only need to tweak the desktop/tablet UI a bit for phones. MS needs to be much more proactive on getting app developers on board.
Microsoft has strength in its future ecosystem where apps will run on Xbox, phone, desktop, tablet, tables, HoloLens, IoT, and so on. IF they get that going, it could blow all the others away. Of course that's future and not today, so this strength is only hypothetical and as of this moment they don't get many points here.
I don't think the Windows phone platform is dead. I think the WP7/8 iterations are dead. 10 has some great potential, but MS needs more innovation in hardware as well as software or that platform will never get to its fullest potential.
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I would say the Apps combined with market uncertainty.
Microsoft failure is due to the same factors of its success in the Desktop Market.
It isn't about technology or design, but the consumers comfort level.
Apple has the Apps and it is #1 (for any particular hardware brand). There is little worry that next year there won't be the new iPhone and when you upgrade you have your apps.
Android as Apps also and it is #1 (for overall use of the Operating System). Being it is such a popular brand there is little worr
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Android UI is generally better and it provides more flexibility, although I wish it were more flexible out-of-the-box and didn't require rooting to do some of the truly nice things.
If you're using a newer version of Android, you don't need root to do most of those things anymore. Pretty much the only reason I root these days is because Nexus devices, for whatever reason, have the ability to record calls via API disabled, even though AOSP has that capability, so you need root for apps like Boldbeast to use ALSA.
For adblocking, I just use firefox with adblock installed. Other things (like removing built in apps) is better with Marshmallow, which now moves non-core apps that don't make o
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Again, just my opinion, but the UI is absolutely NOT the weak point for Microsoft. Apps are.
I agree with you completely.
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the windows phone is dead either. It's on life support and has been since it's inception. Microsoft does have the money to keep it on life support forever if it wishes. They have the money to bleed for years and years until the finally somehow find a way to succeed in the phone market. It's only a matter of whether they have the will. Sony helped the Xbox succeed by repeatedly stabbing themselves in the eye. I suppose microsoft is hoping the same will happen with iOS and Android.
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. The UI is superior to both IOS and Android and really is a joy to use. My employer recently gave me a new Lumia to replace the iPhone 5 they gave me previously. After some initial protests I was really taken by how slick the interface is.
Apps are the problem. My bank doesn't provide one for WP and a number of others I have used regularly are either unavailable or inferior to their IOS and Android counterparts. It also has an image problem and I think it was a mistake to drop the Nokia branding. Microsoft may have good brand recognition but it is far from a trusted brand.
Re:Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has strength in its future ecosystem where apps will run on Xbox, phone, desktop, tablet, tables, HoloLens, IoT, and so on. IF they get that going, it could blow all the others away. Of course that's future and not today, so this strength is only hypothetical and as of this moment they don't get many points here.
No, no, no, just no. The whole "homogenize mobile and desktop" line of thought is what gave us garbage like Windows 8. Targeting all devices means you have to follow the lowest common denominator. That, or implement platform-specific code, which is basically what you'd be doing for any cross-platform program to begin with. Programming aside, an app will often (even unintenionally) be designed around one platform, so even if it "works" on other platforms, it's not a particularly good experience. For example, an app designed for mobile might not have proper keyboard shortcuts on the desktop version, or an app designed for a desktop might involve too much typing to be usable on mobile.
Re: Article paid by Apple to boo over it. (Score:3)
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Yes, Tom Warren, founder of WinRumors.com is an Apple shill.
No wonder you posted anonymously.
Assumes it ever lived (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an Apple ecosystem person at the moment, but I'm definitely in for seeing alternatives and I'm also not on the Win10 hate train - I quite like it, and it would be nice to see some of its features well integrated into a mobile platform as well.
Re:Assumes it ever lived (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It WOULD have been nice. Microsoft's grand-unified platform included some good ideas, and potential for more, which would have benefited everyone. But they were so way way way late to the game. They needed to be pouring out product once Android started to stick, preferably sooner. Instead, their desperate catch-up strategy of leveraging Windows Desktop as a platform to sell Phone (looking at you, Windows 8) only angered the public... forcing live-tiles and "modern" apps on desktop users did NOT make them
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Their Windows 8 strategy was what killed them. B'cos the first Windows 8 phone that I got - a Lumia 520 - totally transformed my attitude towards instant messaging. Previously, I'd just avoid doing it at all - typing on a numeric keypad was out of the question. But Lumia's typing experience was so fluent & smooth that it totally switched me over right away. At the time, neither iOS nor Android's keyboards were that great.
Had Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 8 years ago, when Android & Appl
Re:Assumes it ever lived (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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While I agree that emulating the parts of the iOS ecosystem that we all hate (the walled garden, and the over-dependence on for-rent services) was their biggest mistake, I just don't have the same loathing for Microsoft as I do for Apple. Apple innovated the walled garden model, and got millions of fanbois to promote it. Apple is like an abusive spouse, constantly telling their users they're too damn stupid to own anything as cool as their gear; and yet those people are grateful. Apple is straight up evil.
M
If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me (Score:3, Insightful)
Sucks for those WP fans that tried to be loyal and support their chosen platform, but Microsoft ain't never gonna change from their old ways.
Re:If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Windows Explorer adds value? How, exactly?
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It's a shitty file manager, but I suppose it's better than having no file manager.
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TripAdvisor exists on my Android phone, came preloaded and can't be uninstalled.
So... as usually, Microsoft comes in last even from a bloatware perspective!
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Re:If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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I often hear it's usually wiser to buy phones from independent stores or straight from the manufacturer for that reason. Also, paying upfront instead of "subsidized" (in installments) is ultimately cheaper, and you have more options.
Re:If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]), 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.
Help! (Score:5, Funny)
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We (rightfully) do plenty of Microsoft-bashing around here already; do we really need a special article dedicated to it?
Not just Windows Phone (Score:4, Insightful)
Blackberry is dead too.
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Blackberry is making Android phones with their signature keyboard. File under: "If you can't beat them, join them."
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/blackberry-may-abandon-bb10-operating-system-and-and-switch-to-android/articleshow/50765073.cms [indiatimes.com]
Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform Is Dead (Score:2)
Need to make an X86-64 phone or ARM with full VM (Score:2)
Need to make an X86-64 phone or ARM with full x86-64 VM.
OR OR at the very least no app store lock in on Windows RT
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app store lock is an issue and there are touch based windows apps and the touch screen is the mouse.
Keyboards are nice to have as an addon as well.
MS is not abandoning the platform (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:MS is not abandoning the platform (Score:5, Funny)
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.
I bet you loved Windows RT too.
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It's not like MS has ever had a poorly received product in a crowded marketplace, and just held on til it took off before...
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Re:MS is not abandoning the platform (Score:5, Insightful)
And just like the Zune, they'll continue to do so right up until the day they cancel it.
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Understood. I am not suggesting that it is secure *because* it has low market share.
All I am saying is that it doesn't hurt security.
The Meh Phone... (Score:2)
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Your friends aren't the brightest.
My friend makes more money in sale commissions than I do in fixing broken users and consoling hurt computers.
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Zuned (Score:2)
They are the best in some aspects (Score:4, Informative)
The lack of a few apps is a problem if you need these.
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GMail is most often preinstalled and it's superb.
No, the GMail app is an unmitigated piece of crap. Last time I used it, I still couldn't even turn off "conversation" threading.
My wife's got a lumia, and she like it. Her biggest complaint is that all the fun cases she wants aren't made for it.
I don't care for the Apple style store lock in, but in terms of UI and built in features its pretty good. Apps not being made for it an issue as well, again due to marketshare.
If MS wants the platform to succeed at this point, I think they'll need to pull a blackberr
Not dead. (Score:4, Funny)
Clearly, it's just resting.
(NetCraft confirms it!)
Windows Phone? (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
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Not a case of can't figure them out.
Can't be arsed to use them because of the problems they have (so not perfectly useable at all). Simple shit, like joining to Exchange accounts, is actually not as easy as you think. So they got used as "just phones" until the contracts were up, and then put aside for real "just phones".
And they were in my office to get sold off because they were of no use. Literally, they were junk. Unfortunately, the school budget is so huge that nobody had the time or inclination to
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My youngest has been using a Lumia 630 for a year or so. It's really not a bad device; I like the the interface, and she hasn't had any issues with it crashing that I'm aware of. For a cheap phone the camera is ok - I got it for $50, unlocked. The only thing against it really is the paucity of apps.
She's getting an iPhone next, despite me trying to steer her towards an Android.
Two different requirements (Score:2)
Re: Two different requirements (Score:2)
Phones are used for work as well. I think these will do reasonably well in the corporate world where iOS is too expensive and Android is harder to secure.
I liked the UI (Score:2, Informative)
I thought the Windows Phone UI was pretty good. Certainly better than the Android UI, which I never liked. I suppose I consider the iOS UI in between the two.
I'm guessing the fragmentation of Android devices means I never picked up an Android device and felt that it worked the same as other Android devices. So those differences grated on me. I haven't used WP in a while. but it was pretty easy for me to get to the things I needed quickly.
Best described as a "Burning Platform" (Score:2)
Or as Nokia would have called it, out of the frying pan, into the fire.
I like my Windows Phone (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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I hereby ban you from ever using figurative imagery in the future.
2% market share is PLENTY to keep it alive. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Apparently the AC's here have more of a clue about Microsoft's problems here than you do:
1) revenue is not profit. You also have to consider marketing costs, production costs, R&D costs, maintenance costs...
2) Microsoft has been losing money, not rolling in it, from their mobile ventures
3) the US is not the rest of the word, your extrapolation fails.
(I'd have modded someone else up instead of restating the obvious, but as I already commented in the story I can't and currently only two non-AC posts with
Risto Siilasmaa and Rajeev Suri are geniuses (Score:2)
Thank you for selling the long-doomed platform before it was completely driven into the ground.
Yours, happy Finnish Nokia shareholder since about 2012.
Windows Phone is dead? Pfft! Knew that! (Score:2, Troll)
Basically, anyone who's ever used a Windows Phone device has known that the platform, from birth, was performing a slow-motion hara kiri.
It was just a matter of time.
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Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
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This guy is an idiot. The platform is mature, and arguably, the best out there. Everybody I know who uses one likes theirs, as well. MS isn't going to walk away from this because of current fashion trends.
You could replace "MS [phone division]" with "Palm Inc", "BlackBerry", "Nokia", "Sega", and a million other companies.
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8 was great, but 10 might kill it. (Score:2)
Windows' growth problem is one of image, not technology. None of my techie friends have bothered to even give it a serious look -- they assume it doesn't have the features they want and leave it at that. And I don't think it's their fault. Microsoft hasn't made it interesting to them, and it certainly doesn't have the allure of the Google name.
I don't write mobile apps, but as a dev I like to have a good mix of technology so I've bought high-end Android for my tablets and high-end Windows for my phones. Hav
Farewell Windows Phone (Score:2)
I had a Windows phone (Score:3)
One of the things I liked about it was the lack but not total absence of in app advertising. For example, I could play Sonic Dash for hours and rarely see an ad. When I came back to Android, I had to watch a full one minute video ad between each level, unless I paid for it. I no longer play that game. I imagine Microsoft must have paid developers a lot for minimal advertising as a failed tactic to advance their platform and that it would have gone away had the had success. All-in-all it had the apps I needed, but I am not as heavy and demanding a user as most, so that's just me.
Enter the home screen interface
While at first I liked that wild and wacky tiled home screen, I recognized right away that the interface would be a major factor in the platforms death (already knew it was dying but I am a very curious nerd so I tried it all the same).
What did I like about the interface? I'll come back to that. First let me say what I think made it platform suicide among but above most others. If you hand any Android phone running any version of Android stock interface or 3rd party to either any other Android users or iPhone users, they will be able to operate it in a matter of seconds if not instantly through intuition. Likewise, if you hand an iPhone to an Android user, they will be able to use it. If you hand a Windows phone to either an Android or iPhone user, the interface will be so foreign and seemingly archaic, they will not want to learn how to use it let alone take to it like a duck to water. So that's that. Back to my love hate situation with the interface.
So as I said at first I liked it. I am a full time geek so it didn't take "too" long to figure out. Over the first few days, I methodically laid out the home screen. At first it seemed very efficient and I perceived clear advantages over other platforms. I was excited. Then I started adding more tiles. It started to become a complex puzzle game, finding the most logical places and sizes for tiles. It got to the point where adding one new tile caused me to rethink the logic and efficiency of the entire I layout. I started to think really hard about anything and everything I felt I needed on the home screen, so one evening I went to town. I spent a good two hours re-arranging everything after adding the rest of what I needed and went to sleep. The number of tiles representing apps was be no means excessive. When I woke up the next day I looked at my home screen and I was absolutely and completely fucking lost.
Nerdy experiment #23,943,284 complete. Back to my Nexus.
Um, yeah, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Windows Phone has a well-integrated, consistent, good-looking interface. Android and iOs have a lot of random icons on a page, ala 1995. I don't think that you know what you're talking about.
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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.
They've always had pitiful market share, but it's disintegrating pretty rapidly now. This along with the fact that they're starting to put adware in their phones should indicate that they're probably throwing in the towel now.
Yeah it's dead, but not because of the UI... (Score:3)
Its UI is fine - different, but fine. The problem is platform loyalty and being late to the game. iOS and Android were well established before Windows phones hit the market, and if you are already embedded in either platform with many paid apps and familiarity with it then why change? It wasn't a killer deal on price, which could have swung things potentially, and it was *really* late to the party. I argued at the time that they were too late to even bother entering the phone OS market, and instead should have focused on offering versions of their desktop software on the two existing OS platforms.
Always was dead, always will be (Score:2)
MS just doesn't know how to connect with consumers. They think consumers make purchase decisions like CTOs. When MS tries to be cool, it inevitably backfires. The Xbox division somehow manages to escape all the corporate and branding baggage, maybe someone in Redmond should them how?
Consumers don't actually like Windows, either; they just accept it... like death and taxes. If MS is going to get their mobile efforts off the ground (after what, 5 tries now?), they need to separate it from the Windows bran
The platform didn't have to suck (Score:3)
What is so sad Microsoft has elected to do this to themselves intentionally. The underlying technology is quite good yet like metro UI in Windows 8 some assholes within Microsoft just had to fuck it up with their crappy shells and politics in a continually failing and hopeless bid to emulate the financial success of the crappy apple walled garden.
One of the reasons I will never use Windows phone aside from crappy 8-bit UI designed by children is it is openly hostile to the end user. Apple style lock down with Google style spying on steroids.
Even trivial features such as local address books are denied to the end user. Nor can WiFi be used without participating in crowd sourced location spying. If you don't capitulate to untenable demands of the vendor you end up with a worthless brick that doesn't even make a good paper weight.
If the platform would have remained open without endless calling home that cannot be disabled. If it allowed for reasonable personalization / widgets / replaceable shells rather than take it or leave it metro crap developers and in-turn users would have been all over it. The people who would have supported it early on all bailed after WM.
Oh? (Score:4, Funny)
Has Netcraft confirmed this?
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Netcraft confirms it!! (but only for 1 DNS lookup) http://uptime.netcraft.com/per... [netcraft.com]
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Do you complain about it every time, and yet people continue to use it?
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iPhone sucks from a power user perspective. I could never stand the small screen even if that's fixed with the new generation devices, and then the software itself is crippled because Apple forces power user features to be disabled. Android versions of identical software tends to have more features as such, but the problem I have is the platform is stale. It doesn't improve generation after generation. It's also slow and glitchy. Estimates are the software is about 10 times slower thanks to Java. I like my Android phone but wish it were faster and smoother as a result. The only alternative on the market would of been Windows 10 Phone but it's been announced as dead. Only issue I had with Windows is Microsoft killed off the head end devices and device choice became scarce. I tried out a low-end phone and while it wasn't terribly bad, it could have been better. Only problem I had software wise with the platform was the lack of Google Apps such as YouTube. I upload and view plenty of YouTube, and Windows Phone is limited to using a web browser to use the site currently, which is not as nice.
The potential of Windows Phone is nice- by having a full version of Windows, you could potentially run all your Windows Apps including traditional Windows 32 ones wherever you went.
obamasweapon.com [obamasweapon.com]
Incompetent competition is worse than no competition. You should cheer for the Ubuntu Phone or some other underdog long before you hope Microsoft can ejaculate their slimy business all over the phone market.
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Stuff changes.
Apple wasn't always the darling it is today... there was a time when Apple was hemorrhaging money and the company almost didn't survive. Should they have just thrown in the towel?
The thing is, what is true today is not necessarily true tomorrow. Stuff changes and if you are not prepared to take advantage when the time comes then you will lose out.
If MS continues to keep its foot in the door by keeping a scaled back version of its mobile platform running, they will be ready when the time is rig