Windows Phone is dead. Now what?

[spaceelf]

25 minutes ago, Above The Gods said:

Windows Mobile was released in 2000, right after the anti-truth issues. Microsoft basically failed on it's own.

And the final judgement wasn't rendered until 2002...even after which, it wasn't entirely done.

http://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-v-microsoft-corporation-browser-and-middleware

 

Right where a lot of their tech 'stalled' for a while.

 

I'm not saying they couldn't have innovated despite it, but it definitely threw a spanner in the works.

[+DonC Subscriber²]

I'm inclined to agree that Windows Phone is dead.

 

I still enjoy using my Lumia 925 as it works for my purposes just fine, but I was not tempted by newer models because it seems obvious to me that Lumia is on the way out. Mobile was different because of the physical size, lack of CPU power and battery power. We seem to be on the verge of being able to run the mainstream operating systems on these devices and this must be where Microsoft is heading next.

 

Having a different operating system on my phone and tablet makes about as much sense as having different operating systems on my laptop and desktop computers. I.e. not much.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

I don't buy into the whole 'it's a familiar UI' argument. For the majority of users, Windows 7 is the familiar UI. I guess that is one of the reasons that they are pushing Windows 10 so hard.

 

It's unfortunate because the OS itself is very nice and rock solid (I've not tried Windows 10 Mobile yet), but the app gap is very real. In a corporate environment using Exchange (the de facto standard for corporate email and calendaring), Windows Phone is unbeatable (it's the only reason I have one).

 

It's really a chicken and egg situation, one that I don't think Microsoft can win. Why invest resources in building an app for less than 10% of users when you can get invest 2/3 and hit 90%? As a customer why buy the handset if it doesn't do what others can?

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Unfortunately Microsoft were just too late with Windows Phone when responding to the iPhone launch.

 

iPhone OS was released in 2007 with the first iPhone, then in 2008 iPhone OS V2 was released which included the app store.

 

In 2009 Android 1.5 comes along with an app store form the start.

 

Then almost a year and a half after that Windows Phone 7 comes out near the end of 2010 in the US, even by the the iOS app store has had 2 years to get established.

 

In 2012 Microsoft replaced the Windows CE architecture with Windows NT, essentially resetting Windows Phone as no current devices were upgradable.

 

By this time Android has a massive market share and is seen as a viable platform for developers. I remember when Android wasn't really taken serious by developers and it was all about the iPhone. This is where Windows Phone is today, something Android overcame well over 4 years ago.

 

Like Fahim mentions it's a chicken and egg situation which has been going on for years, as competing platforms have grown with solid established apps. Unless something totally unexpected and radical happens, I can't see this ever changing. It's like the desktop OS market, the place of 1,2 and 3 has been established for years now.

[Dot Matrix]

Tom's right in that Windows Phone is dead - It's Windows 10 now. Microsoft is focusing on all the wrong things with Windows 10. Microsoft bought up Nokia, completely destroyed their innovation, and has a weird boner for iOS. They need leadership which can bring new life into their mobile space.

[spaceelf]

43 minutes ago, Dot Matrix said:

They need leadership which can bring new life into their mobile space.

Which...by merging their codebase, making it not reliant on carriers for updates, making it easy to use similar code for 10, 10M, and X1 (two of three of which are established and popular platforms,) and making it easy to port iOS and Android apps over...is exactly what they're doing.

 

Perhaps they needed to do these things earlier.  Perhaps it wasn't possible earlier.  But they're doing it now, and I honestly can't see where you're coming from in the slightest.

 

[binaryzero]

Who knows where we'll be in another 10 years. 

[sbasil]

The Verge writing about Windows phone is just about as trustworthy as a pedophile nanny.  It's an Apple fanboy site and only that. But secretly I wish that MS would bring their launcher for Android, officially (don't really like the  lookalikes). I do love the tile system so much more than Android's widget and icon mess.

[Dot Matrix]

43 minutes ago, randomevent said:

Which...by merging their codebase, making it not reliant on carriers for updates, making it easy to use similar code for 10, 10M, and X1 (two of three of which are established and popular platforms,) and making it easy to port iOS and Android apps over...is exactly what they're doing.

 

Perhaps they needed to do these things earlier.  Perhaps it wasn't possible earlier.  But they're doing it now, and I honestly can't see where you're coming from in the slightest.

 

Yes, but they're not going far enough. You don't hear anything from the Windows team in regards to mobile anymore. They're doing nothing for Windows Phone, just releasing questionable apps for iOS and Android.

[digudc]

Windows phone will not be dead may be surface phone will continue to grow rep and beat other OS phones.. i am sure of it.

[Dot Matrix]

Just now, digudc said:

Windows phone will not be dead may be surface phone will continue to grow rep and beat other OS phones.. i am sure of it.

Surface Phone doesn't even exist.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

24 minutes ago, sbasil said:

The Verge writing about Windows phone is just about as trustworthy as a pedophile nanny.  It's an Apple fanboy site and only that. But secretly I wish that MS would bring their launcher for Android, officially (don't really like the  lookalikes). I do love the tile system so much more than Android's widget and icon mess.

I'd disagree, I think The Verge have always told it like it is with Windows Phone.

 

Tom Warren who wrote the article has been a lot more positive about Windows Phone than a lot of other people other the years. I think his article "I've given up on Windows Phone" upset a lot of the more hardcore Windows Phone following The Verge had though.

[ZombieFly]

22 minutes ago, digudc said:

Windows phone will not be dead may be surface phone will continue to grow rep and beat other OS phones.. i am sure of it.

lol

[spaceelf]

18 minutes ago, Dot Matrix said:

Yes, but they're not going far enough. You don't hear anything from the Windows team in regards to mobile anymore. They're doing nothing for Windows Phone, just releasing questionable apps for iOS and Android.

If the silence continues a month or longer after win10Ms release I might think you have a point.  Even the Windows team hasn't exactly gone into huge detail about their future plans though, so you might be waiting a while.

 

From where I'm standing Win10Ms offering is a huge improvement over WP8 so I'll continue being optimistic.  So far people have been saying Windows Phone is dead over and over with 7, 8, and 8.1, and just saying it hasn't made it true.

[Dot Matrix]

45 minutes ago, randomevent said:

If the silence continues a month or longer after win10Ms release I might think you have a point.  Even the Windows team hasn't exactly gone into huge detail about their future plans though, so you might be waiting a while.

 

From where I'm standing Win10Ms offering is a huge improvement over WP8 so I'll continue being optimistic.  So far people have been saying Windows Phone is dead over and over with 7, 8, and 8.1, and just saying it hasn't made it true.

How is it an improvement? Microsoft removed a bunch of stuff that made Windows 8.1 a great OS, and are now asking that you beg for those features back. 

[spaceelf]

30 minutes ago, Dot Matrix said:

How is it an improvement? Microsoft removed a bunch of stuff that made Windows 8.1 a great OS, and are now asking that you beg for those features back. 

Such as?  (I assume we're still talking about Windows Phone here, not whatever tablet crap you're obsessed about.)

[zetsub]

14 hours ago, jjkusaf said:

I think with the rising popularity/sales of Microsoft's Surface ... they really need to release a phone under that name.  At the same time...they can not expect to sale the devices at equal to or higher than the competitions price ... or people will not jump ship. 

 

I wouldn't call Windows Phone dead yet as Anibal said ... Microsoft is keeping it on life support.  It will be dead when they've decided that enough is enough...which could be much sooner than later. 

A surface phone is not going to fix windows mobile. How would releasing another windows phone fix the issue?

 

This is just like how a windows 10 universal app wont fix windows phone app problem

[Astra.Xtreme]

It's not dead until it stops being profitable.  Until then, MS will keep it alive.

Hell, even Blackberry is still alive, and that company ran itself into the ground for about a decade.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

15 minutes ago, Astra.Xtreme said:

It's not dead until it stops being profitable.  Until then, MS will keep it alive.

Hell, even Blackberry is still alive, and that company ran itself into the ground for about a decade.

...but is it profitable?  I couldn't really find the answer in their earnings report aside from the 57% drop (though that doesn't answer if they are profiting from the platform).

 

What is alarming is that Nadella (for WP users) even said their current market share is "unsustainable" and where the device matters less than the services it is accessing.  That interview was before the Q2 release.

 

 

[Active.]

Paul Thurrott chiming in:

 

Quote

Microsoft is simply following through on its promised strategy of July 2015. Which was to reduce its exposure to per-unit losses (Microsoft, like Nokia, loses money on every Lumia) and keep Windows phone in market artificially, on life support, so that it could continue developing a cross platform Windows 10 and the universal apps platform. That is, Windows phone really is dead. But Microsoft will sell you one if you’re a fan.

 

Quote

Windows phone is a failure, no doubt about it. So much so that it casts serious doubt on the viability of a Surface phone. Looking ahead, I think that Microsoft keeps Windows 10 Mobile around to continue the Windows 10 cross platform dream, but that Windows 10 evolves generally so that hardware makers can add phone/text capabilities to devices as they see fit, but that the notion of a “Windows phone” sort of goes away. 

 

[shockz]

MS really messed up, from marketing to devices. Every single launch was an utter failure. They've made their choice for the direction of Windows though. It's going to be universal or bust.

 

Not only are developers turned off by Universal apps, there hasn't been any noteworthy developments in 9x applications either. Everything is going either iOS/Android or web-based/platform independent.

 

It used to be running Windows was a requirement to be productive in just about anything, however any OS with a decent browser is basically almost anything you need now. Windows will continue to exist as the default go to for desktop/laptops, but with the continuing dwindling of the PC market, it won't be long before the only relevance Windows has is in the Enterprise, and in another 10-15 years, Android and iOS will have a considerable foothold the Enterprise too. Consumers are already moving on. I myself only use my PC at home when I have to type a long document or e-mail. Or RDP to my server. Or login to work. The rest I can do on my phone (including log on to work). Microsoft's consumer cash cow will be creating apps on other mobile platforms, or subscription based 365 services. @Dot Matrix that's why they've got a "hardon" for iOS.

 

They came in too late. Developers aren't interested because consumers don't use WP, because they already jumped on to the iOS or Android platform, and since there's no applications for consumers, they won't touch it either. It's the chicken and the egg. Had Microsoft been more competitive as soon as the iPhone was announced and not utterly dismissed it (see ballmer vid of him basically rolling his eyes at the mention of the iPhone), they'd have stood a chance. Google really lucked out, MS was sitting on their hands, blackberry fell apart and people looking for an alternative to a more free ecosystem only had Android to choose from. Microsoft should have been jumping on the opportunity like Google did to create competition almost immediately after the iPhone "1" was released. As soon as the first Motorola Droid came out and the marketing blitz they did with VZW, we knew that Apple had competition. Considering how much money MS had at the time, there's simply no excuse to have missed the boat.

Edited January 29, 2016 by shockz

[+Fahim S. MVC]

2 hours ago, shockz said:

MS really messed up, from marketing to devices. Every single launch was an utter failure. They've made their choice for the direction of Windows though. It's going to be universal or bust.

 

Not only are developers turned off by Universal apps, there hasn't been any noteworthy developments in 9x applications either. Everything is going either iOS/Android or web-based/platform independent.

 

It used to be running Windows was a requirement to be productive in just about anything, however any OS with a decent browser is basically almost anything you need now. Windows will continue to exist as the default go to for desktop/laptops, but with the continuing dwindling of the PC market, it won't be long before the only relevance Windows has is in the Enterprise, and in another 10-15 years, Android and iOS will have a considerable foothold the Enterprise too. Consumers are already moving on. I myself only use my PC at home when I have to type a long document or e-mail. Or RDP to my server. Or login to work. The rest I can do on my phone (including log on to work). Microsoft's consumer cash cow will be creating apps on other mobile platforms, or subscription based 365 services. @Dot Matrix that's why they've got a "hardon" for iOS.

 

They came in too late. Developers aren't interested because consumers don't use WP, because they already jumped on to the iOS or Android platform, and since there's no applications for consumers, they won't touch it either. It's the chicken and the egg. Had Microsoft been more competitive as soon as the iPhone was announced and not utterly dismissed it (see ballmer vid of him basically rolling his eyes at the mention of the iPhone), they'd have stood a chance. Google really lucked out, MS was sitting on their hands, blackberry fell apart and people looking for an alternative to a more free ecosystem only had Android to choose from. Microsoft should have been jumping on the opportunity like Google did to create competition almost immediately after the iPhone "1" was released. As soon as the first Motorola Droid came out and the marketing blitz they did with VZW, we knew that Apple had competition. Considering how much money MS had at the time, there's simply no excuse to have missed the boat.

Google didn't luck out. When they saw the iPhone they started a massive re-engineering effort to turn Android from the Blackberry-like OS it was at the time to something that was much more iPhone-like. It took them several years before they had a slick product (arguably Jellybean/Kit Kat) but they had a product very quickly. Quick enough to be in the race which Microsoft missed. 

[wingliston]

[Tuskd]

The more i read about Windows Phone, the more I believe they are doing the right thing. Windows Phone was a flop. So to stop making losses, they halted production of their phones. They may be working on the 'next big thing', win32 on mobile, but not necessarily that. Everything they are doing is pointing to something important (from their POV) that needs more time. But they can't keep churning out Lumias in the mean time. So they just launched a few phones to stop the fans from whining and diverting their attention to iOS and Android for temporary revenue and publicity. Finally, when this 'next big thing' is finished, they will jump start their Lumia (or surface?) and hope other OEMs ,developers, customers jump in as well. Sure this is a speculation. But almost withdrawing themselves from the mobile segment, yet putting everything they got on an OS that wants to be on all form factors, especially mobile, could imply something big is in the works. If this 'next big thing fails or MS is unable to draw attention to it, when it releases, that's when MS will pull the plug. So for now its really a wait and watch, just like always .

[Yogurth]

I believe that Microsoft is going the way of Ubuntu Edge, a full desktop OS on phone/tablet with adaptable interface. That would imho be the best Windows Mobile solution for the company,