
The fall of Microsoft's Andy Lees: inside the Windows Phone power shift - protomyth
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/14/2632983/andy-lees-windows-phone-power-shift
======
9oliYQjP
Ballmer can play as much musical chairs as he wants. The problem is him.
Despite a massive Microsoft talent drain, there are still smart, capable
people at Microsoft. What Microsoft lacks is a cohesive vision about where
they are headed. Bill Gates' vision was a PC running Windows on every desktop.
Everything Microsoft did had to be reconciled against this.

What is Ballmer's vision? That's his responsibility as CEO. In fact, it's
pretty much his most critical one. At this point, he's too high level to do
much else. All I see from him is somebody that installs a really smart person
in some new vertical that Microsoft all of a sudden deems super important only
to let this person take the flack for things not going properly a couple of
years after they start.

~~~
freehunter
>What is Ballmer's vision?

Something about developers.

~~~
signa11
here is his vision from 2k6 on zune:

Have you squirted a song yet? That’s the question Microsoft hopes your friends
will ask you as you ponder which digital music player to acquire. Although you
are more likely to buy an iPod this season — something even Microsoft admits —
the software giant from Redmond is running a huge marketing campaign that it
hopes will plant some seeds of doubt. After all, iPods don’t squirt songs. And
Microsoft’s new player, Zune, does.

~~~
freehunter
I actually bought a Zune. I had an iPod before that, but iTunes on Windows was
awful. I bought a WP7 phone for the same reason, I wanted a managed music
experience but iTunes wasn't an option for me.

Really, I think that could be a marketing campaign for Microsoft. "Our
downsides average out to be slightly better for a small minority of the
market! Spend weeks agonizing over the tough decision then settle for us!" I
love my Windows Phone, but I'd likely be on iOS if Zune wasn't a better piece
of software.

------
saturdaysaint
I don't get it. I thought this was the Windows Phone playbook - release as
early as possible (2010), gain something like feature parity in fall 2011
(i.e. the Mango release) and team up with Nokia to make some great hardware
(the Lumia). This is what Windows Phone people have been telling me since the
beginning of the year. The virtues, logic and shortcomings of this have been
evident from the beginning so I don't see how Ballmer can point at anyone but
himself.

It's a problem that anyone stretching the definition of "early adopter"
already had a phone that did everything a Windows Phone does in 2009. Buying
into a phone ecosystem sounds mundane to mildly entertaining to us, but it's a
terrifying leap for most of the market - the vast majority of people will buy
what their more technically inclined friends and family use. Think of how long
it's taken for the iPhone to approach the prevalence of the Blackberry - how
bizarre, then, that MS expected WP to bloom while two competent competitors
are taking the market by storm. WP7's biggest fault has nothing to do with
Andy Lees - it's too late to market.

~~~
wnight
The single-greatest reason to avoid Microsoft is that they're willing to
sacrifice any and all partners (customers, retailers, developers, employees,
etc) to attract more of the others.

As a customer you can count on Microsoft adding DRM to the product if anyone
else in their development chain asks for it. As a developer you can count on
Microsoft making uncomfortable changes without ensuring the devs can work with
it. As an employer it's better than EA... mostly. As a retailer, Microsoft is
desperately trying to cut you out of all extended revenue streams while still
dependent on you to sell the lock-in to the customer in the first place.

You're pretty much guaranteed to be screwed with one way or another - to help
MS, to help a favored partner, or just as they reposition a project (often in
the trash).

WP7 could come with a free gold bar and would still be overpriced.

------
smackfu
When you have a universally well reviewed product and it's not selling, you
have to change something. Usually the person on top.

~~~
fpgeek
In my opinion, the top that needs to change first is Ballmer. I think the
first thing holding back Windows Phone in the markeplace is the name. "Windows
Phone" inherits the baggage of desktop Windows and of Windows Mobile, neither
of which is that positive. Something like "Metro Phone" or whatever would
inherit less baggage and would be doing at least a bit better. The naming
decision was and is Ballmer's, so...

~~~
smackfu
OTOH, is it not selling because of the name, or because the local AT&T store
has one model, and will never recommend it?

~~~
potatolicious
Or because they are _completely_ not marketing it?

When it launched they did some incredibly poorly thought out TV ads that
looked more like some art-house feature than a television commercial. Only a
notch above the completely ioncomprehensible campaign Palm ran for the Pre.
Look where _that_ landed them.

And since then the marketing has been nearly invisible. Yeah sure, you'll see
the Windows Phone Facebook page push some promotions and token events, but
where is the _real_ force of marketing?

When Motorola first made its maneuver into Android-land, I remember every bus
shelter, subway platform, billboard, _everything_ plastered in Droid ads, with
clever (if slightly unimaginative) slogans.

Microsoft's marketing in _everything_ has been utterly incompetent. They've
gotten so used to owning products that _require_ no marketing that they're not
incapable of doing it.

Just think at the "major" marketing moves MS has made in recent years.
Seinfeld? WTF?

The Lumia is an absolute _gem_ of a device. It's beautifully integrated and
has industrial design that screams elegance. And nobody I know has heard of
it.

~~~
w33ble
I think this is probably their biggest problem too. I'm a pretty technical
guy, maybe not up on the latest and greatest in the land of cell phones, but I
get by.

That said, I'm still not even sure if I can go buy a Windows Phone device yet.
I've seen some reviews of the Lumia, and it looks nice, but I honestly
couldn't tell you if it's out or not, and who would even have the thing if it
is. Or, for that matter, if ANY of the US carriers have ANY Windows Phone
devices yet. I've read about upgrades to the OS, so I suspect there are
handsets to be had, but I just don't know.

Yes, I could look up information about Windows Phone and available devices,
but why should I? Nobody I know has one and the one person I knew that wanted
one more than anything else ended up buying and Android phone because he
couldn't wait any more. My point, which was OP's point, is that Microsoft
should be doing their part to make sure I know this information passively,
like all the other phone manufacturers have done. I've seen the interface, it
looks slick, but that's where my knowledge of their platform stops.

In contrast, I see a new Android billboard (typically some flavor of
Motorola's Droid) go up every month. I can't be bothered to keep up with all
the variations, but I know they are available, and where to go get one.

------
outside1234
Its officially criminal that Ballmer hasn't been removed yet.

