
The war Microsoft should have won - yarapavan
https://medium.com/@christianhern/the-war-microsoft-should-have-won-65d836aa2358#.5r1at79wm
======
mamurphy
I think the article is a nice summary of why Microsoft lost, but it doesn't
fulfill the promise of its title. "Should have won" implies that there were
steps Microsoft should have taken to overcome the difficulties it faced. Let's
explore some:

Lack of vendor trust, not wanting to get locked in with Microsoft like PC-
makers did. No easy solution there.

Hampered by success of cash-cows like Windows/Office. Shouldn't Microsoft have
been focusing on its strengths? Hindsight is 20/20, but those strengths are
still doing well for Microsoft. Who's to say throwing more resources at
Windows Phone would have gotten a better result?

Even difficulties that seem like they had obvious solutions, such as lack of
mobile web, may have been very hard to do, technologically, pre-2008, with
smaller screens and lack of mobile bandwith.

The article points out that Windows Phone never got above 15% share. Why was
it entitled to win? Or, to rephrase, why should it have won?

~~~
pjc50
They had just the same opportunity to do mobile web as Apple - CE devices
could run a real browser. Unfortunately, that browser was IE.

I think Apple's real innovation was the App Store, combined with a usable
(non-resistive) touchscreen. Prior to the App Store, it was _remarkably_ hard
to get apps onto phones. You were dependent on the mobile carrier, whose
levels of customer gouging made Microsoft look like newbies. And they were
usually terrible when you did start them, so few bothered.

The other problem was that the CE UI was not adapted for mobile; its look and
feel was the same as the desktop. Too many tiny click targets. "Metro" was the
attempt to fix this (too late). Apple also brought in the pinch-zoom gesture
system and dynamic rotation.

~~~
Const-me
> Apple's real innovation was the App Store

The app store only launched in July 2008, same time when iPhone 3G launched.

It was more than 1 year after the original iPhone launch.

The original iPhone was a marketing success even being merely a feature phone
by today’s standards: no app store and no user-installable apps at all.

> other problem was that the CE UI was not adapted for mobile

HTC launched its first touch-oriented windows mobile phone almost 1 month
before the first iPhone. They called it HTC Touch and included custom touch-
optimized WinCE shell. Nobody cared, and people just bought iPhones instead,
the sales figures for that year was 2M devices HTC, 6M Apple.

Because better and touch optimized browser, and also because unlimited data
plan. Back in 2007-2008, you couldn’t buy unlimited mobile data for any other
phone.

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sytelus
Single major innovation in iPhone was ability to perform reasonably high
precision user interaction using grossly imprecise input method, i.e. Human
thumbs. My theory is that people in WinMo team didn't used iPhone when it came
out because everyone carried WinMo in their pocket. I think most people just
didn't believed it was perfectly possible to use touch keyboard with thumbs
with reasonable precision. So the reaction to new design was slow. Once
Verizon told Microsoft how they were bleeding customers over iPhone, people
realized the significance of what had happened. But then there was long battle
for how to evolve. Should old WinMo code be modified or do we need new OS or
do we combine desktop and mobile OS? This would have been difficult decision
in itself because you also need to support vast number of existing WinMo
customers. This struggle took years to resolve and by that time ship was
sailed. If there was one person in charge who understood what was going to hit
the world and gave order to unify entire army behind creating new mobile OS
without worrying about compatibility or merge with desktop then we might have
had different story. Of course, in hindsight every thing looks crystal clear
about what should have been done but if you were sitting in Ballmerd chair
with data you had in hand your call could have been the same. On the other
hand Android chief realized what was going to hit them and they turned around
their execution overnight which was possible because they didn't had legacy OS
used by millions or desktop OS diverging from mobile. Anyway, this is just my
theory. I have no insider information like the author.

~~~
dboreham
The capacitive touch screen is a major factor however I believe it was Steve
Jobs ability to break carrier control (in the USA, where the iPhone was
initially launched) was critical. I had worked for a while in the telecoms
business and noted this at the time. In fact I bought Apple stock on the day
the iPhone was announced specifically because it had a visual voicemail
feature. This was something we had built years before but could not get it on
phones because the carriers liked to charge for the air time to listen to and
delete voice mails. He also got AT&T to provide a reasonably cheap data plan.
At the time you could either have a cheap plan with services the carrier had
complete control over, OR you could have IP connectivity at a much higher
price. This isn't something I'm rationalizing after the fact: I saw it happen,
opened the Schwab web site, bought stock and made a nice profit. I had no
notion of apps or nice browsers or decent touch screens being key at the time.
There were no apps on the iPhone initially but they had long existed for WM
Nokia BB etc.

~~~
r00fus
The data plan was insane. Year before I had a Palm and it cost $45 vs. $20 for
the iPhone. Sure it was 2G, but the things you could do were so compelling.

Being on the road, starting a download for an app at one stoplight and being
able to use it by the time I got to the next stop light... that was an
epiphany.

------
pfarnsworth
They lost because their ultimate strategy was "All Roads Lead to Windows."
This is what handcuffed all their talented developers and product managers
into creating extremely inferior products. The ones that had freedom from the
Windows ecosystem, like X-Box, did relatively well in terms of
competitiveness.

Steve Ballmer was stuck in his dinosaur thinking and couldn't see the writing
on the wall. The break away from the Windows monopoly is one smart thing
Nadella did, and hopefully it frees up all these talented developers from
creating better products.

~~~
awm17
Microsoft hasn't really given up "All Roads Lead to Windows." They are pushing
very hard in the VR/AR space for Windows to be the prime OS, partnering with
Oculus, creating HoloLens, adding Windows Universal App support for AR
devices. And XBox no longer has the independence it once had -- it must also
run a standard offering of Windows.

~~~
erikpukinskis
If that's true, they're just going to get screwed in exactly the same way
iPhone screwed them. Mobile VR is going to be substantially more popular than
VR-plugged-into-a-giant-expensive-Windows-box. The subset of people who want
to maintain a PC is dwindling. New-to-computing users basically go straight to
mobile. Untethered VR is better for social (no cords to tangle, we each
control our own device), and that's not even talking about what's going to
happen when AR hits. AR tied to a PC makes zero sense outside of industrial
uses.

Microsoft better have a dedicated VR-centered mobile skunkworks going, or
they're just going to repeat this entire "Two Windows' In One!" fiasco all
over again. Except now it's going to be three Windows'.

You know Apple does. They're going to come out swinging hard with dedicated VR
hardware, a dedicated VR OS and I suspect dedicated VR silicon too. With some
kind of VR Facetime, VR iMovie, and partnerships with some major iOS app
makers. Samsung is already shipping. Microsoft is already struggling not to
slip into 4th place, in terms of profit. And Valve is, for the first time, in
a position to offer a complete Microsoft-free platform of their own. While
Microsoft is trying to compete with Apple at their new game, Valve is gunning
hard to out-Microsoft Microsoft at their old game (an open PC platform).

------
gumby
I can see the seeds of Microsoft's failure in Ballmer's response to the iPhone
question. He talks about how the device can "do email" and "do web". They were
check off items. Apple didn't say "our device can do email" they said "you can
get your mail wherever you are." They weren't the first to offer that _by far_
but they talked about the customer: the end user.

Ballmer also talked about his customer: the enterprise CIOs (and for the
phones, the carriers, not the end users).

Apart from the money-losing Xbox division I am not sure Microsoft really has
ever had an end user orientation. Not surprisingly, given Ballmer's
background, they are a 20th century industrial concern, more like a car
company than anything else. That served them very well when the field was
young and the companies that were computerizing needed all the help they could
get -- and so were willing to be dictated to.

By the way I also liked the buffoonery of saying that they have a "respectable
position" in the "high end" music player business. In another appearance he
touted their strength in the "hard-disk based music player space." It reminded
me of Steve Jobs claiming that NeXT was dominant in the "business workstation
space". Let's define a niche and fill it...backwards!

(Ironically Zune _did_ have a number of interesting features (dare I say
"innovations") but the customer base was too smart to care about specs. By
focusing on gimmicks they ignored the hard work of making a product that
people actually wanted to use.

------
Ologn
I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android:

    
    
       * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux
       * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25
       * The source code is available
    

To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I
don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I
believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much
for a seeded company looking to build apps, but it might discourage a student
looking to release an app.

For all the hassles of Android's ever-changing API and such, they do try to
make it painless for developers to get onboarded.

~~~
i_are_smart
This is true, but Apple has the same model - you need an OS/X machine (note:
much more expensive than a basic windows machine) to develop for iOS, and I
believe the app store fee is also $100. It doesn't seem to have hampered iOS
at all. (although the argument to be made is that because they were the first
to get big, the barrier to entry didn't matter much).

~~~
zeveb
True — but it's also why neither I nor the companies I've worked at have
worked on iOS apps (of note, the Android apps we've built have been internal
corporate apps, not consumer-facing apps, where iOS's consumer base would be
an asset).

I as a developer very much don't want to use Windows or macOS. Why would I
want to use either of them when I can use Linux? I know there are others who
think otherwise; it's great that we all live in a world where we can direct
our destinies.

~~~
marcoperaza
This makes no sense. In what kind of backwards company are internal apps
targeted based on the software devs' platform preferences? The determining
factor is what phones the people who need to use the apps have. If many of the
people that need to use the app have iPhones, you'd be forced to write them
for iPhones. If many had Windows Phones, you'd be forced to write them for
Windows Phones. Your development-platform preferences be damned.

~~~
zeveb
The hoops of developing for iOS were why the _company_ didn't develop internal
apps for iOS; the hoops of developing for iOS are also why _I_ don't develop
for iOS.

I am not a slave; I can choose where I work.

------
simbalion
“Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.” –
Bill Gates.

~~~
clock_tower
See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_disease)
.

------
frik
Why are the charts that old? (2011, 2012) With newer charts from 2015/2016,
it's clearly visible that Microsoft lost the mobile war, with less than 1%
market share. Not that grim, but bad as well is the XBoxOne marketshare
compared to the allmighty PS4. And the Win10 marketshare is half of what
Microsoft expected one year after launch, almost another Vista - from a
consumer perspective the privacy leak makes it worse than Win8 and Vista
combined, but that's another story some will say - well the users aren't dumb,
they choose the better alternatives every day, and Microsoft looses
marketshare. Think about it.

------
pjmlp
I have bought a Lumia just to play around with the WinRT platform, as was
positively impressed by the SDK and Visual Studio tooling, versus the usual
chaos of Android releases specially for NDK users.

The C++/CX + XAML experience feels like Visual C++ finally catching up with
C++ Builder and finally becoming _visual_.

Also the component model allows for an easy interaction between .NET,
JavaScript and C++, similar to Objective-C++ / JavaScript Core on iOS.

So I really like the WinRT model.

But alas, with all the mid-steps specially the last one of ditching the 512MB
Lumias, Microsoft should just drop WP from the UWP supported platforms.

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ktzar
Main reason: capacitive touchscreen display. They were last to understand how
they were enablers of a new way of interacting.

------
zamalek
I do still miss that keyboard. I still don't type nearly as fast on a phone,
and considering that these devices had no autocorrect, not nearly with a
quarter of the accuracy.

Apart from the resistive touch-hostile technology and stylus-centric
interface, HID has taken a substantial step backwards in the years following
the decline of CE devices.

------
yarrel
Corporate smart phones, sure.

Consumer smart phones are a very different prospect.

------
RyanRies
Way to have a typo before the article even begins.

~~~
monsk
I thought it was a typo as well, but author continues to write 'loose' in
place of 'lose' so maybe English isn't his native language.

------
uuoc
tl;dr:

Ex. micro-softie laments all the ways ms failed in the mobile space, while
completely overlooking the elephant in the room:

MS, in the mobile space, did not have an already entrenched monopoly upon
which to leverage other market share.

~~~
s3r3nity
Is this a fair analysis, though? It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies
that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share.

Unless this is a subtle commentary on Google's use of their search
monopolistic power to drive adoption of Android (which drives further adoption
of Google products) -- if so, then kudos to you.

~~~
chriswarbo
> It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their
> advantage to drive mobile share.

The iPhone was a natural progression from the iPod, which dominated the music
player market since the turn of the millenium.

~~~
Someone
I don't buy that. If the iPhone was 'just an improved iPod' at release,
reception wouldn't have been as mixed as it was ('brilliant' vs 'flop')

The iPhone was a small battery powered box you can hold in your hand and it
could play music, just like the iPod, but at the time the iPhone debuted,
that's about where the similarities ended.

Also, because of its price ($500 plus a two-year contract) the iPhone targeted
a different audience.

~~~
chriswarbo
> The iPhone was a small battery powered box you can hold in your hand and it
> could play music, just like the iPod, but at the time the iPhone debuted,
> that's about where the similarities ended.

iPods had just become colour when the iPhone came out, so the main differences
were interaction (touchscreen vs "touch wheel"), screen size and connectivity.
It wasn't long before the iPod touch came out, with a big touchscreen and
apps; basically a non-phone iPhone, giving that different audience a clear
transition path.

