
Stick a fork in ’em: Windows Phones are done - irenetrampoline
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/18/stick-a-fork-in-em-windows-phones-are-done/
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captainmuon
Why does everybody aim for total market dominance? Is is not enough anymore to
be just profitable?

And even if it was a minus business and Microsoft would subsidize all Windows
phones, you could argue that they have good reasons to do so. A few years ago,
there was a good article arguing "Android is a Moat" \- namely that the main
reason Google develops Android is to protect it's search engine castle in
mobile against Apple. Windows phone could be Microsoft's way of ensuring Bing
(and the Windows Store) have a foothold in the mobile world.

If I look at my Android phone, there are maybe 5 external apps that I use
regularly, 3 of which are probably available on Windows. If developers don't
want to port their apps, Microsoft is in a position to just f'ing do it
themselves if they really wanted.

~~~
rogerbinns
> Why does everybody aim for total market dominance? Is is not enough anymore
> to be just profitable?

Network effects are very helpful. Also remember to distinguish fixed costs
from variable costs. The development effort is pretty much a fixed cost,
whether you sell few or many. Each additional product sold reduces the fixed
costs per device. Generally the more you sell, the cheaper you can make the
product, the more profitable you can be, the better deals you can negotiate
etc.

And then the bigger customer base you have, the easier it is to continue to do
well financially. There are more opportunities for a longer term sustainable
business.

> If I look at my Android phone, there are maybe 5 external apps that I use
> regularly ...

The power of defaults! What you are also implying is that the apps that came
with the Android phone are all you need, plus those 5 external ones. This
gives great power to the provider of the builtin/default ones.

> If developers don't want to port their apps, Microsoft is in a position to
> just f'ing do it themselves if they really wanted.

Not really. Microsoft doesn't have the source to the apps, would have to stick
to rules about trademarks (eg calling an app "Google Search" would be
problematic), would have to develop against public APIs and their
requirements, would have to maintain the apps, and a heck of a lot of other
stuff. For example see [http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/09/microsoft-re-
releases-its-y...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/09/microsoft-re-releases-its-
youtube-app-for-windows-phone/)

An aside/anecdote was a developer colleague who worked at a company that made
a music player. They were paid $100k by Microsoft to port to Windows Phone in
its earlier days. The Microsoft app review team then rejected the resulting
app, because it kept running as music players need to, and Microsoft didn't
have any rules yet about apps that needed to keep running in the background.
It did eventually get sorted out, but still rather amusing.

------
T-A
So Microsoft gets rid of the feature phone business, which does not use
Windows Mobile, and the author concludes that Windows Mobile (which released
its latest Insider Preview two days ago) "is on life support".

If there is a logical argument here, I am missing it.

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WorldMaker
Hey Journalists, here's a free headline to spin this the other direction:
Microsoft Drops Feature Phones to Focus Renewed Energy Towards Windows Mobile.

Microsoft dropped a (albeit semi-profitable) division that had nothing to do
core competencies nor with what Microsoft is actually interested in in the the
mobile space. This should be cause for celebration for Windows Mobile.

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justncase80
Sucks. I had one for years, switched to Android (for the GearVR) and have been
frustrated ever since.

Windows Phone is better in a lot of ways, too bad they couldn't make it stick.
It just seems like to me they mostly had a marketing problem and they needed
to incentivize the mobile carriers to actually try to sell them. I remember
going into the Verizon store and watching the sales people actively steer
people away from the phones and push them towards Android. I don't know why
that was but it seemed like a huge problem to me.

~~~
Grishnakh
>Windows Phone is better in a lot of ways, too bad they couldn't make it
stick. It just seems like to me they mostly had a marketing problem and they
needed to incentivize the mobile carriers to actually try to sell them.

They had a marketing problem all right: they're Microsoft. Their brand has
negative value. No one actually _wants_ to buy consumer gadgets from
Microsoft. Remember Zune? How many billions did they pour into Xbox before it
finally became profitable (and remember they really downplayed the "Microsoft"
name there)?

It wouldn't matter if Windows Phone were better than the competition in every
way; people still wouldn't buy them, because of the Microsoft name.

But I can't imagine how they'd ever make their phones that good anyway. MS has
a reputation for their software being buggy and having clunky UIs, and for
good reason. That's how their phones are too: some things work nicely, other
things are clunky and broken, and the UI is ugly as hell. just like every UI
MS makes.

>I remember going into the Verizon store and watching the sales people
actively steer people away from the phones and push them towards Android.

Probably because they actually wanted to make a sale and get a commission,
instead of showing them a phone with a butt-ugly UI that has no apps and
having them walk out in disgust.

I'll be the first to admit that Android (and iOS) both have severe problems of
various sorts. But being "better in [some] ways" is not enough. Android and
iOS have the advantage of already dominating the market, and also (and
relatedly) of having all the apps. MS should understand this better than
anyone, because this is precisely what props up their desktop monopoly.
Toppling entrenched competitors with those advantages is ridiculously hard for
anyone, but trying to do it with a name-brand that no one likes much, and a
product that has no apps and a clunky and ugly UI, is a guaranteed failure,
even if it is snappy and responsive as many claim.

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dethswatch
I bought a winPhone Series 7 in 2010 the day it came out.

It was the first phone I'd bought since 2003 that didn't let you add your own
ring tones- you couldn't even buy them.

It took them about a year to add copy and paste capabilities- as if cargo-
cult-wise, this was the key to Apple's success with the iPhone.

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jpeg_hero
Looks more like a google android strategy.

