
Fiction: Who Killed Windows Phone? - KKKKkkkk1
https://mondaynote.com/fiction-who-killed-windows-phone-af7491d4a363
======
toast0
Clearly, Microsoft killed windows phone. Between Windows mobile 6.5 devices
not being able to upgrade to WP7, and then again from WP7 to WP8, they weren't
doing well to support existing users. WP8 was pretty good on low spec phones
though, so you got a lot of new to smart phone users buying the cheapest
thing; yes, a lot of apps were missing, but a lot of those run so bad on
similarly priced androids that it's almost better not to have them.

WP8.1 added some good things, but also added the ability for the homescreen to
swap out; loading... when starting a backgrounded app was bad enough. Anyway,
there were new cheap options that were decent and shipped with WP8.1, so.

Then came WP10 -- the promised upgrades for WP8 devices didn't really pan out,
the majority of WP8 devices aren't eligible because they don't have enough
ram, and very few of the rest were offered the upgrade through the update
system, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops.

That's really for the best because the first year of WP10 releases seem like
nobody actually tested them on a phone, until Creators Update, which was
actually pretty decent -- except for Edge, which is so much amazingly worse
than IE, but Microsoft didn't want any other browsers on their store. It
doesn't help that there's only about 5 phones available that ship with WP10,
three of which are high end, and the low end ones are more expensive than the
WP8 phones upgradable to WP10, and have at best, equivalent hardware.

I'm not saying a good WP10 release would have somehow gotten windows phone
into 2nd place (even worldwide, where Apple is way behind Android), but it
would have kept them out of speculation for which platform would finally fail
first -- Symbian, Blackberry, Blackberry 10, or Windows Phone.

Edit to add -- each flavor of Windows Phone strongly encouraging developers to
throw out the SDK and start again doesn't help either. There may never been
more WP10 users than there are WP8 users right now, rewriting the app to
better support WP10 is a waste of effort, and the proposed update to WP10 to
stop supporting apps that can also run on WP8 is a great way to kill both
platforms.

------
seltzered_
"In this alternate reality, Microsoft easily kills Android with one simple
headline: Windows Phone Now Free"

It's worth noting that Microsoft did actually do this in 2014 - they made
windows free for devices sized 9 inches or less:
[https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-officially-makes-
windo...](https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-officially-makes-windows-free-
for-devices-under-9-inches)

Granted, this is long after Windows Phone 7's initial release back in 2010.

------
j_s
I was in the Windows CE space (the basis for Windows Phone 'til appx. Windows
Phone 8) a bit when Windows CE was mostly killed; so sad to see the MS
employee blogs withering on the vine filled with comments from helpless
developers as Microsoft kept moving the cheese.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/obloch/2010/05/03/windows-c...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/obloch/2010/05/03/windows-
ce-is-not-dead/)

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2012/11/16/introduci...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2012/11/16/introducing-
netcf-3-9-in-windows-embedded-compact-2013-a-faster-leaner-and-multi-core-
runtime/)

[https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/...](https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/595712/no-
support-for-windows-ce-and-compact-framework-development-in-vs2010)

\--

I blame Experiment 19: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/project/experiment-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/project/experiment-19/)

 _The prototype proved that Windows NT and the CLR could deliver better
performance than Windows CE and the .NET Compact Framework on identical
hardware. Within months of the completion of Experiment 19, Microsoft launched
efforts to build what would become Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT for ARM
tablets._

~~~
guelo
Yes. They lost in 2004-2007 when they decided to stop investing in the growing
CE platform. I still don't understand why. It's got to be one of the biggest
business blunders of all time.

~~~
Const-me
> I still don't understand why.

AFAIK, they wanted developers to use native code and Windows API. This is
especially needed for games and other resource-demanding apps.

Windows CE is just too old. The security there is comparable to Windows 9.x,
i.e. almost no security. It was very hard to design a CE-based OS that would
allow arbitrary native code to run, while denying the ability to access user’s
private data and break the device.

WP7 only allowed C++ code for close MS partners. Regular developers had to use
.NET, which has its own very advanced security model built-in.

Probably, MS thought that once they allow C++ development, third-party
developers start to port their older Windows games to WP 8 + Direct3D 11
feature level 9.3.

Eventually the plan didn’t work. MS bought Minecraft, convinced Rockstar to
port GTA San Andreas, but the platform still hadn’t gain enough traction, and
most third party developers passed.

------
Ezhik
Well, I personally still just miss Metro UI, the Windows Phone 7 and Zune HD
iterations of it. No UI quite looked as pretty since.

------
IgorPartola
I never considered a Windows phone because it failed to provide a substantial
value prop vs Android and iOS. They could have competed on price, physical
quality (we still have no truly waterproof phones), battery life (as in not a
few more hours but actual weeks of battery, or warranty. That last one would
have been the easiest: offer substantially better warranty than Apple (are
there any Android phones that have original comprehensive warranty? I mean not
through the carrier or Best Buy.)

The other thing to do would have been to offer Android app compatibility. I
wonder if it would have been possible to spend that money they paid developers
to port apps on developing a decent compatibility layer that would have made
the porting unnecessary. Or provide tooling that made APK -> Windows app
compilation super easy.

As is, they had a sad story of a phone with some neat features but no big
steps forward, in a market already saturated by good-enough competition.

~~~
usaphp
> we still have no truly waterproof phones), battery life

Aren't iPhones and galaxy "active" or something are waterproof?

There are "survival" type phone that have weeks of battery life and
shock/water proof, but it's not what the market wants, there is a minority of
people who would sacrifice the look/dimensions/weight of he phone for the N
week batter life. Most consumers would go for the looks and portability I
think. That's why iphone sells as much and those "survival" phones don't. Do
you think if iphone would stick a twice as thick of a battery in its next
iPhone many people would buy it? I certainly would not

~~~
khedoros1
I don't know what other people would buy if they were advertised heavier, but
I'd buy a phone with about a 4.5"-5" screen, and 1.5x thicker than my current
one, as long as the edges aren't sharp. Something like a Galaxy Nexus with a
bit of battery bulge, updated components, and a micro SD slot would be close
to perfect.

~~~
usaphp
What prevents you from buying a battery case for he nexus or iPhone?

~~~
khedoros1
The Galaxy Nexus that I have is for the wrong carrier, its version of Android
doesn't receive security updates, and has a tiny amount of storage with no
expandable memory option.

iOS lacks a lot of the features I take for granted (MTP for arbitrary file
types, support for app stores like HumbleBundle, ability to run different
browsers and servers like ssh on-device). The iPhone hardware itself: non-
removable battery, no external storage, and current models don't have a
headphone jack. I'm not a fan of wireless audio devices. I'd have a fair
amount of software to re-purchase. I've got an iPhone 6 available to me, that
was originally a work phone. It's nice, in a lot of ways. Not something I'd
consider for my "daily driver".

So, what prevents me? The fact that those devices would still be unsuitable,
even if I got a battery case. I would've considered the Sony Xperia X Compact,
if it had been released when I was last phone shopping. Seems Sony's got a bad
habit of not updating their phones, I doubt their commitment to supporting
them, and that's a particularly niche model, anyhow. Not much third-party
support.

------
DanBlake
As a windows 10 user, I would have definitely moved to a 'windows phone'
anytime before ~2010. What would have gotten me to move would have been some
sort of seamless 'handoff' from my desktop computer to my phone. I still think
the opportunity is there for them to do that. I dont mean the ability to run
desktop apps of course, but maybe some new take on 'remote desktop' which had
a ios like UI. I just imagine leaving my house and going to work where I take
my phone out and just plug it into some dock and I magicly have my home
environment. And when I am on the go, I have some 'ios-ified' version of my
home setup.

The only other phone I know of that kind of tried to do this was the atrix,
which afaik was a failure

------
skinnymuch
I'm sticking with the combo of being late to the party and not having even a
solid fraction of the top apps on iOS/Android. I believe Windows Phone
could've survived if it had enough of the top app support. A distant third.
But still enough to warrant continued investment.

So in my eyes if they could've gotten top app support from coming out with W7
earlier or just somehow getting that support when they did release things, it
would've salvaged things. The insane Nokia purchase price would still need to
be heavily written down along with a lot of layoffs. Just not as much as what
actually happened.

Ah well. Most of all I will miss webOS, then Windows 8 Mobile.

------
saurik
A platform is only as good as the applications that are available for it, and
we live in a world where some of the best applications are made by one company
named Google.

For many users, the everyday experience of using the Internet surrounds
watching videos on YouTube, finding their way with Google Maps, and
communicating using Gmail.

Google's mission statement, of course, is "to organize the world's information
and make it universally accessible and useful"... however, that is an
abridgment: the full version continues in a whisper with "(except on Windows
Phone)".

What follows are a selection of stories of Google's process of systematically
isolating Windows Phone, each backed up with articles of the time (though it
is of course trivial to find references: even mainstream media started to
realize that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and started
questioning the underlying motives).

-

Microsoft was forced to write their own YouTube application, which did not
show ads and so was blocked by Google. I will note that Apple also effectively
did this, though working with Google (a key difference), so this isn't crazy
on the face of it: the original iPhone came with a copy of YouTube written by
Apple that did not play any advertisements.

[https://www.windowscentral.com/google-microsoft-remove-
youtu...](https://www.windowscentral.com/google-microsoft-remove-youtube-
windows-phone-store)

In the aftermath of this debacle, they wrote a new one, working along with
Google this time (as far as I understand), that did show advertisements and
was designed to satisfy Google's other demands... but Google seriously waited
until it was not just completed but fully released and then went ahead and
blocked it anyway.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/08/16/google-
blo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/08/16/google-blocks-
microsofts-youtube-windows-phone-app-again/)

-

Recently, Google decided that users of Gmail would not be able to access their
email using Outlook on Windows Phone... even though it isn't like Microsoft is
bad at _email_ of all things.

[https://mspoweruser.com/google-appears-blocking-
windows-10-m...](https://mspoweruser.com/google-appears-blocking-
windows-10-mobile-users-adding-google-accounts-outlook/)

However, this isn't the first time that Google messed with Windows Phone on
email: when they removed the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, it was seen by many
as a direct attack on Windows Phone.

[https://www.theverge.com/2012/12/14/3768274/google-gmail-
act...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/12/14/3768274/google-gmail-activesync-
windows-phone)

-

And who could forget the saga of Google Maps, which was blocked by Google on
Windows Phone, even though it was accessible on other phones which used the
exact same web browser engine, and even though the renderer was shared by the
desktop version of IE.

[http://gizmodo.com/5973295/google-maps-has-never-been-
access...](http://gizmodo.com/5973295/google-maps-has-never-been-accessible-
on-mobile-internet-explorer)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-
blocking...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-blocking-
wp8-maps-2013-1)

-

At one point Google's AdMob started to see a massive drop in revenue... only
on Windows Phone. This was later claimed to be a "bug", but of course took
Google a long time to come up with a fix, undercutting developer revenue on
the platform.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/developers-see-drop-in-
window...](http://www.businessinsider.com/developers-see-drop-in-windows-
phone-ad-revenue-from-google-admob-2015-5)

-

Of course, Google refused to bring any other software to the platform, such as
for Google Voice; and while you used to be able to use this from the web, once
Apple relented and allowed Google Voice in the App Store, Google mostly
stopped bothering maintaining their web version.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/lack-of-google-voice-app-for-
windo...](https://www.cnet.com/news/lack-of-google-voice-app-for-windows-
phone-isnt-just-inconvenient/)

This wouldn't be so bad, but Google also tends to throw its weight around to
get third-party clients for their products pulled from places like the App
Store... now, I personally think they have no legal basis to do this, but
Apple goes along with it (as Gooogle does support their platform ;P) and it
creates a chilling effect on people writing their own clients elsewhere.

[http://www.macworld.com/article/1141939/googlevoice_apps.htm...](http://www.macworld.com/article/1141939/googlevoice_apps.html)

Regardless, someone _did_ write a third-party Google Voice app for Windows
Phone, and Microsoft (who had even been frantically writing their own third-
party apps) let it stay around. So, Google had to change their terms of
service and figure out how to block it on their server, as again: their
unabridged mission statement _clearly reads_ "(except on Windows Phone)".

[https://www.neowin.net/news/metrotalk-third-party-google-
voi...](https://www.neowin.net/news/metrotalk-third-party-google-voice-app-
for-windows-phone-is-dead)

~~~
jitl
Your account is true, and I'm not disputing it or that Google took nefarious
actions here, but the OP's thesis is that Windows Phone was doomed as a
platform years before even the release of Windows Phone 7, the fist "modern"
version that dropped compatibility with Windows Mobile/Windows CE.

I think Google could have only employed this strategy against an already
failing adversary: they haven't tried the same against the iOS platform.

------
kccqzy
As a user I quite enjoyed the UI concept of Windows Phone. It felt refreshing
then especially because of its apparent simplicity, and focus on typography,
which was a stark contrast from the skeuomorphism of iOS then.

Too bad there were never enough apps, IE mobile was buggy, and I felt that my
Lumia never had the build quality Nokia was once famous for.

------
pdimitar
I sold my S7 Edge and Lumia 1520 just today.

I _loved_ the Lumia 1520 device. It was beautiful, felt extremely good in the
hand, was only slightly hefty, and the IPS display was phenomenal -- no AMOLED
screen can compare to a Lumia IPS display when it comes to reading text. It
was so good.

However, it was a death by a thousand paper cuts -- as many others have
already pointed out. Even though I adored the device, I couldn't help but
notice how useless it was. I was lucky enough to find several apps that I
wanted to have on both my S7E and the L1520 but in the end, they were written
by enthusiastic underpaid devs and were lagging behind in features, and some
of their bugs I continuously observed throughout my full year with the device.

I was saddened to sell it but hoarding tech whose death clock has been running
for a while is not sensible.

------
tehlike
Windows phone 8 was pretty nice to develop on. Microsoft's experience on
building OS and a developer environment was also pretty visible on the
product. IT was probably a little bit too late, though.

------
8xde0wcNwpslOw
The people.

No one asked for another restricted platform.

~~~
red75prime
Who killed Ubuntu phone then?

~~~
ahmeni
Time traveling UX designers to prevent a future catastrophe.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Are there any manufactures building phones I can just install some form of
Linux on?

Update: I mean, other than Android :)

Update: I'm reading about Tizen now and Sailfish

~~~
flukus
It seems like the Sony Xperia X is becoming a sailfish option:
[https://blog.jolla.com/sony-xperia-project-
update/](https://blog.jolla.com/sony-xperia-project-update/)

Now if only I could work sony's naming scheme. Apparently the x series is the
replacement of the z series (what happened to the y series?). Then looking at
local retailers, all I can find are the XZ phones, so who knows what they are.
Haven't looked at specs yet because I'm lost in code names. I really wish
buying from any other manufacturer was as simple as buying from apple.

~~~
steanne
just found a name chart.

[http://www.fonearena.com/blog/224635/sony-g8441-with-
snapdra...](http://www.fonearena.com/blog/224635/sony-g8441-with-
snapdragon-835-android-8-0-surfaces-in-benchmarks-ahead-of-ifa-2017.html)

------
yuhong
Thinking about it, the entire MS business model was to pay royalties on
hardware that is now often made by ODMs in China. It is very likely that the
next economic collapse will result in a decline in PC sales. Of course,
shareholders rely on MS stock to go up every time PC sales increase.

------
cbanek
What killed Windows Mobile/Phone? The iPhone (the first one) did.

Windows Phone was complicated, and all about the enterprise. The business
model was all about selling more server licenses, and everyone having a phone
that tied them into that ecosystem was good.

Once Apple put out a phone that normal (non-techy) people could use, it really
was over. Their UI was much, much better, and although it had less features to
start, all their features worked.

It was all downhill from there.

And yes, I agree with the story that culture was the real culprit:

> We know who/what killed Windows Phone, and it’s not Android. We could point
> fingers at one or more Microsoft execs as the culprits, but that misses the
> point: Microsoft culture did it. Culture is dangerous; under our field of
> consciousness, it sneakily filters and shapes perceptions, it’s a system of
> permissions to emote, think, speak, and do.

------
geogra4
I always wondered what Jean-Louis Gassée was doing after BEoS.

------
jessaustin
_[in 2013] The company’s Lumia brand of smartphones offers respectable devices
— I bought one — but..._

Haha this closing admission explains entirely the goofy anachronisms and _non
sequiturs_ that comprise the rest of TFA. The dream of windows on the phone
could have come true, if only it had been a decent phone OS, before either of
the two actual decent phone OSes had been introduced, and also it had been
completely free... JLG has lots of uncles but no aunts.

We still make fun of my brother's Lumia phone, that he "got for really cheap".
Why was that, I wonder?

~~~
throwaway7645
Loved the Lumia phones. Rock solid stability.

~~~
djsumdog
Yea I had one for a while. It was a good little phone. Durable. I liked the OS
too. The Kindle app was terribly buggy .. if there was a version of Firefox
for it I think I'd have been set.

~~~
throwaway7645
Yea...Windows Phone OS is really reliable (2 restarts in 5 years). I've never
felt it underpowered either. Yes, my biggest complaint is the terrible PDF
apps. Seriously Microsoft? Full Excel, but no PDF?

~~~
jessaustin
This is not a basic problem, but it obviously stems from one. When you only
get the apps that the platform vendor can be arsed to provide, you'll find
that their priorities are not your priorities.

