Microsoft Reportedly Launching Its Own Windows Phone Smartphone 190
zacharye writes "When Microsoft announced earlier this year that it will launch an own-brand tablet to compete directly with its various vendor partners working on Windows 8-based tablet PCs of their own, there was some backlash. Privately — and sometimes even publicly — long-time Microsoft partners took it as an attack on their businesses and questioned why Microsoft would be so brazen. But with nowhere else to turn thanks to Windows' overwhelming PC dominance, these vendors had no choice but to continue developing Windows 8 devices and compete directly with their software supplier. Though events may play out a bit differently in the smartphone market, where Microsoft has yet to stage the comeback it promised two years ago, BGR has learned that the Redmond, Washington-based company plans to release its own Windows Phone 8 smartphone in the coming months."
Hey, works for Apple (Score:5, Funny)
And Microsoft has always loved doing what works for Apple.
Re:Hey, works for Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
If something works for Apple, there is no reason for Microsoft to ignore it.
I can understand Microsoft may be frustrated with partners not following through on a long term strategy. They had success establishing their own gaming console, maybe they can do the same with tablets and phones. It's not like there is a huge base of third party manufacturers in these categories already using Microsoft products to piss off.
Partners not following long term strategy? (Score:2)
Hee eee hey...
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Just like a little kid who has been dropped on his head way too many times and then decides to try to be cool by copying what the cool kid is doing, but can only do so in the most craptastic way.
Microsoft. Because We're Special.(tm)
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Just like a little kid who has been dropped on his head way too many times and then decides to try to be cool by copying what the cool kid is doing, but can only do so in the most craptastic way.
Microsoft. Because We're Special.(tm)
...and what role does Apple play in all this?
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Yes, all those iOS licensees out there welcome each new iPhone as a healthy competitor.
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Poor Microsoft, riding on apples coattails again..
And we have invented a new technology called Vertical Integration, which is phenomenal. It works like magic, you don't need OEMs, it's far more profitable, it ignores 3rd parties, it's super smart, and boy have we patented it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JZBLjxPBUU [youtube.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Death of Nokia announced... (Score:1)
Film at 11...
Yes, but (Score:3, Funny)
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You betcha somebody will put CyanogenMod on it.
If the HW is good it might even be worth it.
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Will it run Linux?
Only hosted in Hyper-V. But you'll have to use the more expensive i7 CPU version to get reasonable performance.
Had to see that coming (Score:2)
With Microsoft building Surface, it was inevitable they would branch into building other hardware too.
Microsoft's mobile future is too important to Microsoft to leave it entirely to third parities.
It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft manages to make this balance work, although Google seems to be doing fine so far with Nexus devices vs. what everyone else sells. In that regards there's not much third parties can do, since both Google and Microsoft compete against them it's a wash.
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The Nexus phones are made by an Android vendor not by google. They also do a good job of spreading the love around. HTC made the first few and now Samsung has made the Galaxy Nexus. Much different than building your own hardware and competing directly
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That is somewhat different, but still competes against all the other vendors. And of course Motorola Mobility (which Google owns) still makes the Droid line, which is wholly competition...
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Droid is a verizon thing. HTC and Samsung have made droid labeled devices.
Google owns Motorola, but they don't play favorites with it. I don't see it being an issue because of that.
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I wasn't aware other makers also maid Droids, interesting.
But I wasn't claiming Google was playing favorites with Motorola, just that it was more direct competition for handset makers than HTC producing a nexus, and that hardware vendors were living with that already. So Microsoft doing the same thing should have no impact on the desire of third party handset makers to also build WP8 units.
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The droid line has nothing to do with Google directly. It is a Verizon thing. So your claim fails right there.
Hardware vendors are not competing with it they produce it.
Microsoft is not going to be buying handsets and branding them, which is what google does with the nexus line and what verizon does with the droid line.
Actually you are wrong, Motorola also makes Droid (Score:2)
The droid line has nothing to do with Google directly.
Had to followup after I found this at the motorola link:
Motorola Droid [motorola.com].
GottaBeMobile's Best smartphone CES 2012.... Buy it link works.
So how again does it have "nothing to do with Google"?
Point stands, now unaltered.
That's the last time I doubt my understanding of the Smartphone market over a post from some random guy on Slashdot...
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I was unaware, as I'm not closely following the 2nd tier Android handset makers carefully, but have parsed enough factual data from your obscenity laced rant to file away for future reference.
Thanks!
Re:Had to see that coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends. Is Microsoft designing and having the device manufactured entirely on their own, or are they working with an existing Windows Phone vendor on it?
All of Google's Nexus devices are prominently done by one of their OHA members (HTC, Samsung, ASUS, etc.) and that's probably one reason there's never been a whisper about the Nexus program. By contrast, with Surface Microsoft bypassed all of their OEMs and is going head to head with them.
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We are yet to see Google's Motorola strategy. I would expect the manufactures to get nervous as early as the first Motorola phone release.
Microsoft gives on competing with Android/Google? (Score:5, Informative)
With Microsoft building Surface, it was inevitable they would branch into building other hardware too.
Microsoft's mobile future is too important to Microsoft to leave it entirely to third parities.
It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft manages to make this balance work, although Google seems to be doing fine so far with Nexus devices vs. what everyone else sells. In that regards there's not much third parties can do, since both Google and Microsoft compete against them it's a wash.
If I am a handset manufacturer, now the only game in town is Google's Android, since the Microsoft is considering moving into hardware on this front.
Has Microsoft realized that they just can't manage Phone manufacturers [1] ? Microsoft has repeatedly backstabbed it's "partners" to it's own detriment later on. Is there anyone laying down the law in Redmond? - seems like Lord of the Flies when it comes to internal discipline and ability to execute as a group.
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterplan_to_screw_phone/ [theregister.co.uk]
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> If I am a handset manufacturer, now the only game in town is Google's Android,
> since the Microsoft is considering moving into hardware on this front.
Did you miss that Google has already moved into the hardware with their purchase of Motorola Mobility?
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Did you miss that Google has already moved into the hardware with their purchase of Motorola Mobility?
Apparently you missed that Android is open sourced. That means that there are at least three major competitive ecosystems (Amazon ; Barnes and Nobel and the major Chinese app market places [quora.com]) as well as innumerable minor ones (e.g. CyanogenMod and all the small independent market places). Any or all of those would welcome a major manufacturer as a partner.
Google has to compete for favour from Mobile manufacturers. Microsoft is setting its self up to completely mess them over. Probably, it will buy one o
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You can do anything you like - as long as Google approves, or else you have to fork as Amazon has done.
What's your point? From the moment you start to do anything different you have effectively "forked". Having long running independent forks is a clear fear for Google. What this means is that any handset manufacturer can threaten a fork and that's all they need to ensure that Google stays onside.
Probably, it will buy one of the more successful ones with a Windows phone (HTC? LG?)
Why not Nokia itself? That has made the most sense all along.
Nokia no longer has the level of smartphone sales to be useful; they have destroyed most of their manufacturing base and closed their most important factories. They also seem to be in an agreement where they hav
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We've been here before already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin [wikipedia.org]
As a civilization, we have extremely short memory sometimes...
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It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft manages to make this balance work
Perhaps they don't need to, maybe Desktop and Laptop software is enough for Microsoft as far as OEM licensing goes? Windows Phone hasn't done particularly well in the market so maybe it's time to try going vertically integrated, you avoid hardware fragmentation and reliance on OEMs to deliver quality products, it becomes wholly Microsoft's responsibility, they reap the benefits if they succeed and they only have themselves to blame if they fail. This leaves the OEMs with Android and perhaps things like Bada
WTF? (Score:2)
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however they don't restrict the manufacture to just MS for their devices (yet?) so better comparison would be Google/Droid
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ZunePhone (Score:2)
Who is going to want a ZunePhone?
They might want to first get some penetration in the smartphone market before spending in even more money.
Oh well, this is the modern MS, spend desktop and office money on markets that someone else dominates and keep spending till you compete. Never mind the fact that even 360 has not paid the Xbox bills.
If I was an investor I would be pissed. If you are just going to waste the money pay it out as dividends.
Re:ZunePhone (Score:5, Funny)
>Who is going to want a ZunePhone?
Obviously people who want to squirt you.
>They might want to first get some penetration
Doesn't everybody?
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BMO
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Who is going to want a ZunePhone?
The ZunePhone. [youtube.com] That was a joke. But Microsoft was rumored to be considering making the Zune 3 a phone. [zunescene.com]
Re:ZunePhone (Score:4, Informative)
That's not the Microsoft way. The Microsoft way is to fail, then fail again, then double down on the double failure, then start to get some traction, then fail some more, then double down again financially, and then get some more traction, etc.
Microsoft wins by outspending the competition. The problem with the Microsoft of today, is that they can't outspend Google or Apple anymore.
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Pity about those leap years.
Maybe we've had Microsoft all wrong (Score:2)
Nokia Stabbed In The Back (Score:5, Insightful)
I never saw that coming...
Re:Nokia Stabbed In The Back (Score:5, Insightful)
>I never saw that coming...
Every Microsoft "Partner" thinks they are special. "It will never happen to us" they say. "Look at all this money we get from Microsoft!" They think they can beat the Devil with their own fiddle playing. Except this isn't a Charlie Daniels Band song.
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BMO
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I get the feeling the MS partnership was completely or largely a top-down decision forced by Elop. The peons presumably knew they were shafted from the start but didn't have a say in the matter. Elop presumably knew they would be shafted, but doesn't care because he gets well paid until Nokia is a gutted shell, at which point he hops off, buys a few yachts, and walks into the next cushy job -- perhaps with his old buddies at MS.
*Everyone* saw this coming, that's the tragic thing. The past 18 months have bee
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It wasn't the employees decision to get Elop. It was the board. The Nokia board has been exceptionally incompetent, and approving Elop was just another example of their ongoing incompetence.
They have their golden parachutes.
The employees do not.
It's disgusting.
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BMO
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Citrix is special. They do not compete directly with Microsoft and their tech sells Microsoft products.
They may as well be a part of Microsoft.
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BMO
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In memoriam: Microsoftâ(TM)s previous strategic mobile partners
ïMicrosoft's new "strategic partnership" with Nokia is not its first. For a decade the software company has courted and consummated relationships with a variety of companies in mobile and telecom. Here are the ones I can remember:
LG. In February 2009 Microsoft Corp. signed a multiyear agreement for Windows Mobile to be included on devices from LG Electronics Inc. LG would use Windows Mobile as its "primary platform"for smartphones and
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I also feel pity for all those Android OEMs. How could Google piss on them and release their own Nexus. And what's more, they own Motorola Mobility now...
What? You are saying this is different because?..
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Because Google doesn't actually release the Nexus devices (except for the Q, which had no equivalent.) The OHA members do.
And yes, they own Motorola. But the OHA still exists. It'd be similar if Google, upon buying Moto, terminated the OHA and dropped the AOSP.
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And yes, they own Motorola. But the OHA still exists. It'd be similar if Google, upon buying Moto, terminated the OHA and dropped the AOSP.
So what did Microsoft terminate and drop with regard to its Windows Phone partners?
So far all we have is ad-grabbing gossip on a second-rate website.
Not so fast.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has had their share of unsuccessful hardware (Zune comes to mind) but they are capable of getting it right sometimes too. They make a really good mouse and keyboard for example. XBox is successful, albeit after years of losing money on it. I think they are able to build technically successful products but what kills them time and again is poor marketing and an inability to make anything perceived as "cool" by the hip generation.
The Zune was a really good MP3 player (better than the iPod in many ways) but it had that horrible brown color and MS put no marketing behind it. This is a lesson that gets lost on hard core techs sometimes - it doesn't matter that your product is technically superior if you can't sell it. This is what Apple excels at - superior marketing.
If MS hopes to be successful with their branded phone they are going to have to hire some people that know how to sell stuff. First thing I would do? I'd get rid of all of those idiots behind that series of ridiculous Seinfeld ads. Remember those? Yeah, nobody does and that's the point. Complete waste of time and money. Next thing they have to do is design something that looks cool and is easy to use and is well built. Number three - develop some features that set them apart from IOS and Android. Give people a reason to buy an MS phone instead of the default choice of Apple or Android. Otherwise why bother? Just get one of those two and call it a day.
This is Microsoft's last, best chance to get back in the mobile game. If they blow this one then they might as well throw in the towel and accept their fate as the leader in an increasing dying industry (desktop pc's).
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Zune was not point of failure (Score:2)
because they didn't build a huge ecosystem around it the way Apple did with the iPod.
They tried - they had Zune Pass, and quite a bit of music accessible.
The real reason they failed is that instead of building the Zune they should have Zunified Windows Mobile phones with a music ecosystem and better playback/discovery experience, seeing ahead of Apple that standalone music players were a short-lived niche that smart phones would eventually overtake.
But Apple saw before Microsoft did that the standalone musi
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But Apple saw before Microsoft did that the standalone music player would be eclipsed by the personal phone, even though Microsoft was producing them long before Apple... very odd.
I say that Apple saw that the successor to the music player was a consumer smart phone. MS was too concerned about the enterprise smart phone and put too little effort into the consumer side. For MS, Apple's iPhone could never compete with Windows Mobile but the shortsightedness of MS was that iPhone was never competing directly with Windows Mobile or Blackberry. Apple focused on making a phone for consumers instead of shoe-horning an enterprise one for consumers.
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Although I knew a number of people with personal Windows smartphones, by and large I'd agree with your point... it probably was the wholesale inability to realize how big the consumer smartphone space would be and defend it well that hurt them.
Probably also the separation of concerns in the company, you can imagine the Zune team and the Windows Mobile team being very at odds instead of working together.
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Saying it was the inability to realize how big the consumer smartphone space would be points to a bigger culture difference. Apple has almost never expressed an interest in the business market, probably thinking that MS had it all sown up. So the difference goes farther back than phones. I doubt Apple could have predicted that the consumer market would wag the business dog. Jobs was many things but he couldn't predict the future. Rather, MS got blindsided when the consumer angle started impacting their core
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I doubt Apple could have predicted that the consumer market would wag the business dog.
I think you could see that a really long time ago. Really it was home users with Apple II's and the like wanting to be able to use spreadsheets that really made computers even get into business. Later on the Palm line came in from the personal space to enter into the corporate world. On a lesser scale, the same was true of Mac laptops and OS X, that came in to business very much against the will of IT departments far
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I thought that MS mouse and keyboards were re-badged Logitech products? If it is still the case, then it's quite different from Zune and Xbox?
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As far as I know their mice are all in-house products. Also the original 'sidewinder' gaming mouse = pure awesome.
Now if they could just figure out how to market things and/or write decent software...
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Ummm...so you are saying that MS should promote a mouse-cellphone....
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If anybody had the balls to enable unlimited wireless mp3 sharing between devices, they could own the market.
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The XBox has little to do with hardware. The Xbox has a failure rate in the vicinity of 20-50%. It does not matter because MS has the money to just replace the console because the console is not the thing. The Games are the thing, and MS was able to use it's developer mojo to get the games. The XBox is no
Re:Not so fast.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a lesson that gets lost on hard core techs sometimes - it doesn't matter that your product is technically superior if you can't sell it. This is what Apple excels at - superior marketing.
I see this bandied about all the time, Apple's marketing is so awesome it defies the laws of physics, while Microsoft's marketing sucks rocks. Yet if asked why Linux never took over the desktop and Microsoft's dominance there, the answer is typically that Microsoft's marketing is unbeatable. Apparently Microsoft is both awesome and sucks at marketing... WTF?
Claiming the iPod won out due to superior marketing displays massive and willful ignorance, extreme forgetfulness, or both. The iPod won out due to ease of use, plus the incredible integration with the iTunes music store (which came out after another 2 years I think?) - this made it easy and simple for REGULAR consumers to buy music and load it on their device. That plus some confidence their investment wouldn't disappear. Zune launched right into a fairly well established iPod ecosystem and delivered... "squirting" music to your friends, which let them listen to a song you purchased what, 3 times? That's worthless.
The Zune blew chunks in this respect. Microsoft didn't get the music industry on board at the same level, and there was a clusterf*ck of DRM crap which kept getting renamed, rebranded, retired, rehashed - remember PlaysForSure? The announcement that "PlaysForSure" would be killed off and all music inaccessible unless burned to CD? The different but parallel Zune store? The reversal? The new "Certified for Vista?" The new-new XBox Music store? The consumer base threw up their hands and lost confidence any money spent on any media would continue to be usable in the next 6 months.
Sorry but Microsoft totally mishandled this all on their own.
For a company with deep pockets, they are pretty quick to throw a device getting a lukewarm reception under the bus. XBox seems to be the only thing they stuck with long enough. What they haven't figured out is that if you are going up against entrenched successful competitors, and can't leverage Windows on the desktop, you have to deliver a BETTER consumer experience and be price competitive. Google figured this out with a different strategy (open source, free tools), competitive pricing, etc. Microsoft is still trying to leverage their desktop. I don't get it - it seems to me mobile apps are basically written from scratch.
If there's one thing I've learned... (Score:4, Interesting)
if there's one thing I've learned, it's that BGR really can't be trusted for its exclusive leaks. SO many of them just don't pan out, it seems like like an accident one one of them actually does.
In this case, we have an unconfirmed source saying that MS is planning its own phone but it doesn't have a release timeline for them. Seems like an easy way to get page hits to me.
Didn't hurt for Android! (Score:4, Interesting)
Google did the Google Nexus 7 and it hasn't upset Android makers as far as I can tell. But it does upset carriers who capitalize on their ablity to have devices locked down so that they can take the most advantage of consumers possible.
I think what Microsoft is doing will give the new Windows Tablets/phones the best possible opportunity for success (or failure) by setting the bar at a particular level. OEMs are free to exceed the Microsoft model, but it would upset consumers to not at least meet the standards set out there by Mocrosoft's base model. And when software/firmware updates come out for the Microsoft device, they had damn well come out for the OEM phones and tablets too. In the end, it should upset carriers more than it should upset manufacturers.
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Google didn't do Nexus 7, Asus did - Google just slapped their logo on it once it's done.
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"but it would upset consumers to not at least meet the standards set out there by Mocrosoft's base model"...consumers? Care about MS's base model? Not bloody likely.
Get ready for the myPhone! (Score:2)
It will be different from the iPhone 5 because it will have a wonky camera and GPS navigation that doesn't work properly.
Wait a minute...
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You forgot: and the screen will be blue...
The story is thousands of years old... (Score:5, Interesting)
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drowning frog's back.
"I could not help myself. It is my nature."
Maybe... (Score:2)
Maybe they are buying up all of those phones from Android that Google won't let them sell and rebranding them?
Rush for Space? (Score:3, Funny)
For my Nokia friends. (Score:2)
A Youtube clip that explains you corporate relationship with Microsoft:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT5WYSwET28 [youtube.com]
Have a nice day.
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Nah, it's more like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzxQgRbTesA [youtube.com]
Microsoft can fulfil Nokia's every wish! There's just one small catch, though...
(In this analogy, Elop is the cum-streaked turd which summons Microsoft in the first place.)
Microsoft Kin wasn't bad enough??? (Score:2)
Unless Microsoft is keen to take heed to the mistakes made by their Kin phones (HA!), this may well fail just as miserably. Kin phones didn't even make it two months before getting pulled off the shelves.
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I thought WinPhone had some tech limits to doing that sort of thing well? Does WinPhone 8 fix that?
My understanding was you had to use their message system to the phone to launch your app instead of letting it run as a service in the bankground.
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I do not believe it yet accepts incoming calls when the app is not open. That makes it pretty pointless.
http://www.wpcentral.com/understanding-skype%E2%80%99s-limitations-windows-phone [wpcentral.com]
Microsoft says they are working to change the way skype works so they can work better with it. Which is the wrong way to solve the issue. Fix your OS not demand others to change their applications that work everywhere else.
Re:Not interested..... (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft owns Skype. In that context your last sentence doesn't make any sense.
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Sure it does, skype works on everything else as it stands. The fact that they own it just means they should have seen this coming.
It just points out how bad they really are doing.
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That will never happen.
Microsoft has no interest in that market. They do not want sideloading, they want a locked down walled garden type environment.
Re:Zune, anyone ? (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty sure they can get that for free by reading Slashdot comments.
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+1 funny
same goes for (insert company here)
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Not to Nokia. Wait...
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The key difference is Google gets its nexus devices from an android OEM it does not make them. HTC, Samsung have both made one and Moto made a google experience device.
Long term having more device supported by ASOP is good for google. So now even a sony device is supported.
MIcrosoft has no such ambitions nor intentions to have such an ecosystem.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
yeah it's funny...
Andy Rubin starts two companies, Danger and Android.
Danger is acquired by Microsoft. Microsoft massively botches the release of Danger's product and it dies a quick, horrific death.
Android is acquired by Google. Google releases Android to massive acclaim and goes on to widely displace the then dominant leader, Apple's iPhone.
Interesting contrast isn't it?
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that "microsoft" killed the phone is true in a sense, but you also have to understand the company culture at MS. It is built on a lot of teams. Not one single united company where everyone shares ideas and works together nicely. You should read the history of what happened to Danger and you will see a major factor to its demise was the infighting that took place, nothing technical really. Apple/Google I think have a lot less of this kind of stuff so it was easier to let it bloom.
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so... you are saying Danger failed, not due to technical issues, but due to Microsoft being unable to release a working product? I think that is a fair paraphrase of gp's "Microsoft massively botches the release..."
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Why? I don't like Apple because they like to tell me how to use my stuff. Android allows the carriers too much say (updates are delayed or non-existant) and has fragmentation issues. So, I'm really interested to see what MS and RIM can bring to the table.
As for the fashion comment... I doubt many here know what is cool and what is not. We don't care. We like functionality above coolness.
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I am interested in WP8. I'm also interested in what RIM releases for their new phone, eventually.
Lemme know when FailedPhoneCo comes out with their great phone. I'm sure it is just right around the corner and it will be awesome double rainbows.
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Mod parent up.
N.B.: I'm not sure that would work, and I'm dubious about not requiring the CEO to at least live in Finland, if not Helsinki, but generally that's an excellent list.
FWIW, Elop was a lousy choice, and something they should have KNOWN was a lousy choice before they hired him. They would have done much better to hire from within, but they'd likely to have done better to pick someone off the street at random. At least that person wouldn't likely have been *intending* to sabotage them, which is
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Apple strategies won't work well for MS (Score:3)
This is one thing I can't see MS copying properly from Apple. Apple based both OS-X and iOS on FBSD/XNU, and so portability is not much of an issue for them - something they've fine-tuned from the NEXTSTEP days and then had porting experiences first from Motorola 68k to PPC, then PPC to x86 and finally x86 to ARM. In fact, Apple could stage a coup by doing one more leap from x86 to ARM, using either a Radeon or an NVIDEA GPU for any compute heavy loads that they need. The fact that ARM is still 32-bit wo
Re:Apple strategies won't work well for MS (Score:4, Interesting)
No... MS is delivering the opposite -- tablet and phone apps will run on PCs.
Seen Windows 8 yet -- most have. The goofy squares-based UI (the UI formerly known as Metro) is coupled to the WinRT API, which is awfully close to a whole new OS. That's what Microsoft supports on tablets and phones. They're also using all managed code with VM, so this stuff runs on Phone, ARM-based tablet, PC-based tablet, and regular ordinary PCs.
That's the key to Microsoft's new walled garden -- apps for WinRT/Metro are only available via the Zune, er, Microsoft Store online. Not on phones, but on ARM tablets, Microsoft force-bundled the mobile version of Office with Windows... OEMs can't buy them separately. This is also where they have a big advantage, since that's $75-$100 paid by the OEM to Microsoft... money neither MS nor Apple is paying on their tablets.
Microsoft's already being less fair than Google. For the moment anyway, Google's kept Motorola at arm's length, no obvious special advantage over the other Android licensees. And when they make a Nexus device, it's not Google contract manufacturing it themselves, but their doing a special project with one of the existing OEMs. And until recently, these have been fairly special projects. Nexus devices have occasionally shown up at teleco stores, but most have been direct from Google -- not a volume market. Except maybe the Nexus 7, which was aggressively priced, and seems to be selling very well (this is probably the tablet that pushes Android over-the-top on US tablet market penetration -- a recent report has Android at 48% vs. iOS at 52%, but that doesn't include recent tablets).
But MS is actually designing their own devices, building them at some CM (could be right next to Apple, figuratively anyway, given that Foxconn makes about 40% of the entire world's supply of consumer electronics products). It's possible they're still doing a "Nexus" like thing, building a product that's meant to serve primarily as an example to the market. They might also be taking the Apple approach, trying to be the high end in the Windows tablet (and now Phone) market. The "Surface Pro" suggests that's possible -- they're building a full PC tablet, based on an i5 Ivy Bridge processor, not the Atom that HP and others will be using in their more ARM-comparable tablets.
But there's good reason to reject both premises. For one, every other company that's taken on Apple directly on tablets, based on price, hasn't done well. Apple's one of the only CE companies established as something of a luxury brand. No one pays Mercedes money for a Ford. Given their price advantage, Microsoft could push out their Surface tablets, and eventually phone, at a very competitive cost. And they have a big reason to do this... they clearly think this is the future, thus the risky compromise of the desktop environment and the complete reboot of what a Windows program really is (the greatest change since Windows was launched). They're likely to try and win themselves a chunk of the mobile market, any way possible. Even if they have to trample the OEMs.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference between MS and Apple these days?
- MS sells shit products for a low low price
- Apple sells shit products for a ridiculously marked up price.
Apple is now just like any other tech brand, farm components off to the lowest bidder and worry about the PR nightmare later. Thanks Tim Cook.
This is what happens when you entrust a multi-billion dollar company to a bean counter, not a visionary.