

Microsoft’s Smartphone Marketshare Down 0.4% Since January  - SlipperySlope
http://mashable.com/2012/07/02/microsoft-windows-phone-market-share/

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BadassFractal
I personally just don't see why I'd ever want to buy one. As a developer, I'm
not interested in the MS ecosystem (been there). As a consumer, WP7 isn't the
cheapest option either (I'd rather use VirginMobile or StraightTalk), nor does
it have the most active and exciting app store. A lot of the apps I care about
aren't ported (yet at least) to the OS. Most likely won't be as long as its
market share is around 4%. Don't really care about XboxLive integration, I
don't even have a TV to plug a 360 into. Zune integration is nice, simply
because the Zune pass is a great offering and they killed the music player
that used to support it. However, now that Spotify is almost completely caught
up to Zune pass's catalog, there's not much of a reason to use a Windows-only
service either. Skydrive/Office online integration? Google's services do the
job well enough that I don't see a particularly compelling reason to switch
over to MS's counterparts.

Can someone give me a reason why I should care?

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justauser
I can't but I can think of another reason not to buy one. Windows Phone 7 is
not upgradeable to Windows Phone 8. There will be a Windows 7.8 update but
it's end of the road for that particular ecosystem as well. So with that
announced to be available "sometime towards the end of the year" they've
probably hurt the few potential Windows Phone 7 candidates interested in a
device. What was Nokia thinking?

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rbanffy
> What was Nokia thinking?

"Microsoft needs our patents to extort more money from Android makers, but
buying Nokia would irk their few OEMs. We need to make Nokia fail while it
remains closely aligned to Microsoft so they will be in a privileged position
to acquire our portfolio"

:-) I'm no telepath, but you assume Elop's best interest is a thriving Nokia.
I am quite sure he'll make up for his lost performance bonuses in other, maybe
less direct, ways.

~~~
cooldeal
It's sad to see how clueless people are about how companies are actually run.

Do you even know what a board of directors is and what it can do and does? Do
you know much power over the company the chairman of the board has? Look at
the profile of the chairman <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorma_Ollila>

Insinuating that Elop is taking a bribe to drive down Nokia is just conspiracy
mongering with no basis in reality.

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gruturo
He's not insinuating he took a bribe. He's insinuating he's been on some sort
of covert assignment since 2010 and he never betrayed his mission. It's an
impossibly crazy thought, yet it gets harder to dismiss for every day going
by...

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recoiledsnake
Can you explain the process by which Microsoft can _assign_ someone to be the
CEO of Nokia?

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rbanffy
Replacing a CEO is not something that happens overnight. Headhunters are
contacted, candidates are approached. It may be luck, it may be knowing the
right headhunters, but once the "right" candidate is approached, you can pad
his/her resume so that they become irresistible hires for the target company.

~~~
cooldeal
So you think MS padded Elop's resume to make him desirable to Nokia over other
candidates? Like being the CEO of Macromedia?

What about the decisions after he became CEO? You think they were not done
with the support of the board? Look what happened to Leo Apothekar, the board
_found a replacement_ for him within a month of him taking questionable
decisions.

It seems very likely that Nokia wanted a partnership with Microsoft even
before Elop was hired. Why else would they hire someone from outside Finland?

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MichaelGG
The article is not clear if this is Windows Phone, or also including the old,
sucky Windows Mobile. If the latter, I would expect to see their share
continue to fall as people get off those old devices...

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ghshephard
I don't know if they updated it since you read it, but, the following excerpt
made it clear that this includes all windows phones. " it should be noted that
comScore doesn’t break out figures for Windows Phone 7, which means that much
of the activity may have been driven by Windows Mobile users dumping their old
phones for Android-based phones and iPhones. "

~~~
barranger
Which really does two things:

1) makes this drop completely meaningless as it could be 100% Windows mobile

2) makes you wonder just how low the WP7 numbers would be without Windows
Mobile

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zmmmmm
Since they don't break out the figures it is hard to tell if WP7 is going down
or up. However in some ways that is not the point - if WP7 was doing anything
like what Nokia needs it to do it would be busting out of that figure. Static
sales mean a disaster for them, and perhaps ironically a windfall for
Microsoft: now that they have decided to screw their existing WP7 users the
last thing they need is for sales to pick up at this point, and if they do
have an eye on purchasing Nokia (or its assets) the price for that is going
rapidly down.

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dantiberian
The data was collected with these methods

> MobiLens data is derived from an intelligent online survey of a nationally
> representative sample of mobile subscribers age 13 and older. Data on mobile
> phone usage refers to a respondent’s primary mobile phone and does not
> include data related to a respondent’s secondary device.

I don't think that the 0.4% figure is statistically significant considering
the much larger margin of error likely to be in the results.

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revscat
I am starting to wonder if Microsoft's problem is something quite other than
the quality of the product they produce. From everything I have read, WP is a
well made platform: smooth, stable, and a pleasure to look at. While I have
not personally done anything other than casually play with a demo model, none
of the reviews I have seen have said anything seriously negative about it. MS
has put a lot of time and effort into this, and it seems that they are doing
everything (or at least most things) right from a technical perspective.

And yet... Success is not following.

Personally, I wouldn't consider a Windows phone simply because I have been so
badly burned by Microsoft in the past. It has nothing to do with the quality
of WP per se, but rather lingering negativity I built up from using some of
their less than stellar products over the course of 20+ years.

I'm starting to wonder if this isn't more widespread than is generally
acknowledged.

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rbanffy
> none of the reviews I have seen have said anything seriously negative about
> it.

So, basically what they built is a phone that doesn't suck. Had they done it 6
years ago, they'd be on to something. Now others have successfully done that.

> I wouldn't consider a Windows phone simply because I have been so badly
> burned by Microsoft in the past

And now they managed to burn WP7 owners with the no upgrade option thing.

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sek
The Metro UI is great and the phone is OK, but now Microsoft get's to taste
how it is to be the minority platform.

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rsanchez1
There just haven't been many notable Windows Phones lately. The most notable
one to have come out recently is the Nokia Lumia 900. Meanwhile, Android has
the HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S3, Galaxy Nexus, pretty much any Samsung phone
really, and Apple is, well, Apple. The OS might be great, but the devices are
forgettable.

