
Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile - nocoder
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41551546
======
itsmenotyou
I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they
say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of
the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with
developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran
promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones
etc. But nothing was enough to get over the problem of the lack of an initial
user base.

Most Windows phone owners I know (myself included) loved the design (hardware
and software), the customisability, etc. but the lack of apps ultimately made
us move to another ecosystem.

~~~
dtx1
I worked 3 years as a windows phone dev and i'm sorry to say but Microsofts
efforts were ... almost insultingly bad.

It started with windows phone 8 and the Metro UI. Bad Idea. The UI was too far
away from Android/iPhone to be easily ported and adding corporate design to it
was hard as it was too different. Silverlight and XAML was okay for the time.

Then came windows 8.1 and windows desktop 8 which was universally hated. The
whole fullscreen apps debacle was just horrible and all the unnecessary
restrictions on store apps for desktop made no one ever consider porting their
desktop app to a store app. The whole phone and desktop app in one was a joke
aswell since it was (and still is!) horrible implemented. Did I mention they
broke compatibility from 8.1 to phone 8? I didn't even bother starting all
over again for windows 8.1 i just straight up skipped it.

Then windows 10 came and it finally looked like the UWP Plattform might do the
trick. Well nope. The SDK is garbage. Scaling from phone to desktop is
hidiously bad and afaik still not solved. The Live-Tiles got even worse since
you couldn't programm them like the windows 8 ones. Just a whole mess. Couple
that with the hillariously bad store interface (backend aswell as frontend)
and 0 User engagement and it was bound to fail (as will all UWP apps)

You guys build a, I'm sorry to say but after 3 years of frustration it's fair
to say, half-baked half-assed phone plattform that at no point had even a
single feature that wasn't available better on iOS and Android, restricted the
developers unecessarily, broke compatibility once a year requiring a complete
rewrite and frankly build a product that only microsoft liked but was
universally hated by their users.

It's a story of too little too late and a whole lot of arrogance on microsofts
side.

Oh and don't even get me started on microsoft completely ignoring the european
market where they actually got up to 15% marketshare of new devices sold for a
while.

~~~
narrator
The thing about the MS platforms that has always been an issue is that they
change the developer APIs around all the time. Every year they come out with
the latest greatest way to access a database or whatever and it really isn't
that much better than what they had last year, but it still requires a
rewrite.

~~~
cjsuk
Yes. They also rewrite stuff half way through and tell you it's the same
project just to piss you off. Windows Workflow and Windows Communication
Foundation for example.

I'm really disinclined to invest in any of their technology because my
headspace is finite and I want to deliver business value, not change the
unworn carpets once a year.

~~~
dtx1
It's also just such a bad idea because they never get to mature their
features, add uniqueness or allow 3rd party devs to build the ecosystem. They
just build the same thing over and over again while their competitors keep
refining, innovating and adding features. Really a bound to fail strategy

~~~
cjsuk
Exactly that.

The feedback loop is shit as well. Out falls a broken pile of shit for a CTP.
No one accepts any feedback. It hits RTM, no one accepts any feedback. Two
years down the line, the same bugs are open.

You should hear the partner reps wanting to cry when you report a bug in
something that you NEED a fix for and are paying support for. You get fuck all
other than a registry fix or a hack even if the mainline product is falling to
bits across a thousand or so users (which is what happened to us).

Money where the mouth is as well. Typical shit:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/SCVMMLinuxGuestAgent/issues/2](https://github.com/Microsoft/SCVMMLinuxGuestAgent/issues/2)
-> ignored. Regularly hoses our new VMs deploying windows on SCVMM.

[https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093](https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093)
-> fuck you go away we're just going to take your data unless you set a magic
variable even though no one wants to give it away as indicated by the ticket
and there are bugs in the configuration and it causes people massive audit
problems.

~~~
dtx1
From the second ticket

> It's only a matter of time before some enterprising journalist looking for a
> scoop picks up on this. The headlines here are not good: "Microsoft caught
> with sneaky program to spy on companies"

Let me take care of that...

Edit: Wrote several of germanys biggest tech sites with focus on
dataprotection aswell as the german ministry for cyber security with a link to
that ticket. Let's see what happens

~~~
justinclift
Excellent, hopefully something positive comes from it. :)

On a similar note if they get back to you, Mozilla is testing the waters with
dumb privacy invasion stuff in Germany soon too:

[https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/06/mozilla-to-launch-
firefox-...](https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/06/mozilla-to-launch-firefox-
cliqz-experiment-with-data-collecting/)

They're probably across that already though, but if not it might be useful to
point out to them. :)

------
michaelbuckbee
Windows Mobile is my favorite example of ecosystems being more valuable than
individual user experiences. They came out later and really managed to hit a
bright spot in between the customizability of Android and the sleekness of
iOS. But without the deep app ecosystem backing them up, I'm not sure we're
going to see any new players emerge in this current form factor of mobile
computing.

So far we've seen:

\- Amazon fail \- Microsoft fail \- Facebook fail (killed internally)

All fail at providing anything like a competitive answer to Android and iOS
dominance.

What I see are all the big players lining up to take a crack at Augmented
Reality when the tech hits a sweet spot sometime in the next 5-10 years.
That's the reason for the crazy investments in MagicLeap, etc. it's a bet on
being able to muscle into the absolutely massive mobile ecosystem.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
WeChat has done that to some degree. Given that WeChat is basically a platform
at this point, one could imagine a WeChat phone coming out in china, bypassing
Android completely. Not sure what would be the point though.

~~~
wodenokoto
A wechat phone would be obvious and I don't know why they don't do it.
Remember that Google play and all the other play services are not available in
China.

~~~
woodada
Because not having Play Store != not running Android apps. People's games and
other apps still need Android to run. A non-Android Wechat phone would fail
for the same reason Windows phones did -- no apps.

~~~
zild3d
but isn't Wechat basically all the apps?

~~~
ferongr
No, unless your perceptions of what the average Chinese consumer wants are
warped.

------
dep_b
This is why the latest tool I did for Windows still was based on WinForms.
Because you know the old crappy stuff will be supported forever and the new
shiny better stuff (WPF was pretty cool!) will be deprecated within two years
and probably will not get significant developer traction. With a lot of
confusing marketing from Microsoft. I don't think even the guru's within
Microsoft itself can sum up all the different .Net versions that are out there
and what they mean from the top of their heads.

~~~
jmkni
It looks like WPF will be supported for the forseeable future, but I get your
overall point

~~~
shadowmint
We'll see.

I think the netstandard -> all platforms approach, combined with the
aggressive depreciation of old .Net 4.6.x versions is a road map for the
future.

Maintaining two entire release chains, the 4.x and the .Net core 2.x, is an
impossible long term strategy.

I would be absolutely astonished if the 4.x line is quietly folded away and
depreciated ('unsupported') once the netstandard surface area means the code
bases that no longer run on the .Net core fall to significantly small
fraction.

At that point there will just be 'one' .Net again, and it will be .Net core,
on all platforms.

Significantly, there seems little to no indication
([https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/43](https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/43))
that winforms and WPF are going to .Net core.

You might argue that Microsoft is a legacy beast, and they won't abandon their
developers by dropping support for old versions, but they already _are_ doing
that in the 'you can install it, sure, but it'll never get any more updates'
(#1, #2), so you know.

Don't bet the farm on a WPF app. Just saying.

#1:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2015/12/09/support-e...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2015/12/09/support-
ending-for-the-net-framework-4-4-5-and-4-5-1/)

#2: [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17455/lifecycle-
faq...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17455/lifecycle-faq-net-
framework)

~~~
ep103
What the heck can replace winforms and wpf apps though?

I've seen them promote at least 2 different technologies since the first time
I heard WPF was dying, and both of them are dead already, so far as I can
tell.

~~~
pjmlp
Apparently Xamarin.Forms, from the .NET Conf 2017 roadmap talks.

~~~
ep103
lol, so not only is the replacement technology none of the tech previously
promised to replace wpf / winform, its a piece of tech that is still
roadmapped?

Yeah, I don't think winform / wpf is going anywhere quite yet.

~~~
pjmlp
Xamarin.Forms is currently available for iOS, Android, UWP.

At .NET Conf 2017 they announced support for macOS, Linux and WPF. And demoed
macOS and Linux current status.

While previously at BUILD 2017 they announced XAML Standard for
interoperability between WPF, UWP and Xamarin.Forms.

Which kind of implies it is the way forward.

------
rchaud
Had Microsoft's acquisition strategy been different, they could have
significantly boosted WM's hopes. The lack of official apps for Whatsapp and
Instagram on WP were user's biggest complaints by far. Facebook bought
Instagram in 2012 and Whatsapp in 2014 for a combined total of $20 billion.

In roughly the same period, Microsoft bought Skype, Minecraft and LinkedIn for
a total of around $36 billion, the bulk of that accruing to LI's price. I get
that MS is enterprise-focused, but those prices seem completely out of whack
with what they actually got in value. Whatsapp, Google and Apple all offer
built in video chat for consumers and LI's value to anyone outside of
recruiting agencies is dubious.

~~~
mcny
> LI's value to anyone outside of recruiting agencies is dubious.

This is exactly the reason why LinkedIn needed the acquisition. I agree with
you that the $26B price tag makes no sense given that LinkedIn needed this
deal more than Microsoft did.

> The software giant will pay $196 a share - a premium of almost 50% to
> Friday's closing share price.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36519766](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36519766)
[https://archive.fo/SoaO6](https://archive.fo/SoaO6)

I think Windows Mobile should have followed through with its bridges,
particularly the Android Bridge that it unceremoniously burned.

ref [https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-officially-
cancels-...](https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-officially-cancels-
project-astoria-bridge-porting-android-apps-windows-10-mobile)
[https://archive.fo/qtqcK](https://archive.fo/qtqcK)

------
Grom_PE
If only I could properly reprogram this WP8.1 phone I have here, it would've
been much more interesting.

But rooting/jailbreaking (in WP world called "Interop unlock") has always been
awkward and possible only for the most popular types of WP: Lumia, Samsung.

To write programs, it requires me to install Windows 8 or 10 — can't do with
Windows 7 or Linux.

Even if I write a program, this phone requires special developer unlocking
online for "sideloading" two apps maximum at a time, another arbitrary awkward
limitation which can be circumvented by shuffling around with an SD card:
loading an app into phone, moving the app to SD, disconnecting the SD, loading
another app and so on.

WP8.1 does have an ability to install an app from a file directly, but only if
it is signed with special enterprise signature, and that isn't cheap.

Of browsers, only IE and IE-based browsers exist for WP, and that means no
proper customization and of course no ad blocking.

So the platform looked quite hostile to me and I wasn't motivated to explore
any further.

~~~
garganzol
And then those MBA types are wondering why their "business strategy" is not
working. The same applies to the Windows Store on Desktop. All that walled
garden nonsense they are trying to impose is not going to work. The only thing
I could seriously recommend to those clerks is to eat their neckties and
finally become living human beings.

~~~
pjc50
> All that walled garden nonsense they are trying to impose is not going to
> work

It seems to "work" for Apple, unfortunately. I can't see any business giving
up on the prospect of having a 30% cut of everyone else's software ...

~~~
garganzol
Not in the recent years. Apple Store on Mac suffered from a massive app makers
exodus. App Store for mobile suffers from rampant freemium-ization. Don't
forget about the heaps of legacy, no longer updated paid apps. Apple was able
to sniff that smoke, so it made a lot of App Store improvements together with
iPhone 8 release.

------
cjsuk
I see a lot of people going on about incentives. Actually the simple problem
is that MSFT know how to effectively fuck up a product:

1\. Schizophrenic product direction.

2\. Entire platform change half way through.

3\. Quality control issues galore.

4\. Regional issues galore.

5\. Reinventing wheels, badly.

It's just crap. That's happening to windows 10 too. It's just not quite as far
down the toilet.

~~~
blauditore
I think part of the problem is that they actually try to push innovation (e.g.
new UI paradigms with Metro), but then run into several vocal minorities,
backtrack a bit and try to find a middle ground. From the outside, it then
looks like a random zig-zag course, but it's much more an iterative
minimization of "mean square pain" among their fairly large user base.

Communication could often be better though.

~~~
cjsuk
I think it's more that they hire personalities and form personality cults.
Personality cults can't be seen to fail by investors due to the CYA culture so
they just burn off a cliff and explode when they hit the bottom of the ravine.

------
seltzered_
Previous discussion on windows phone's death - "Who Killed Windows Phone?" :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835372)

Notably @saurik's comment on google's relationship on windows phone:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776)

It's interesting considering the competing platform influence as today we're
seeing headlines of the amazon echo show getting discounted after the youtube
support got pulled:
[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/9/16448280/a...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/9/16448280/amazon-
echo-show-price-cut-discount-deal-30-youtube-removal)

My first memory of windows phone was running wp7 on an htc hd2. At the time it
was curiously interesting since I was writing code with WPF. In the beginning
were definately some interesting aspects on paper - the legitimized
'jailbreak' mode, decent multi-tasking for it's time, writing apps with visual
studio/c# (which felt much better than xcode at the time, and had a community
defining many of the initial reactive/mvvm work used in many places today).
But watching friends purchase Lumias that didn't get updates for wp8 months
later showed just how much has to be done on a support front, especially for a
new platform.

------
ngold
Apple was the 1st and got to dictate the terms of their walled garden. The
told Adobe from day 1 to get lost with flash, but for a wall it had walls
amazingly low for what had been tried in the past. And people lost their minds
with excitement, except those pesky open source kids.

Google looked around and said we want in but how? Get rid of the wall and let
any carrier and everyone use it. All the carrier's saw they could never get to
market as fast and cheap as this so they begrudgingly accepteded in the face
of Iphone taking huge marketshare an growing.

MS came late with an expensive phone, a walled garden and no software(but hey
kid why don't you build some for me for free). What were they expecting?

I guarantee that they would have loved to tie your phone to an Xbox live
account and make you pay 15 a month to text. That was probably the end goal
and they were trying to work backwards towards it.

~~~
mtgx
The saddest part of the story was that Nokia's amazing hardware division was
lost because of this. Sure, Nokia made some classic innovator's dilemma
errors, too, but they were still _huge_ at the time Samsung got into Android
(about 2x as big in phone market share). About a year or two later they
decided to go with Windows Phone - the ever 2% OS of the mobile market,
because it was "different".

It was stupid, and also the final fatal mistake that Nokia made. It was clear
Android was well on its way to become the "Windows" of smartphones, which
meant, ironically, that WP would be relegated to being at best the macOS or
Linux of the mobile market. Plus, Android already allowed OEMs to be
"different".

Nokia was basically making an argument for a "different ecosystem" at that
point. But they should've known that it was too late to attract developers to
a _third_ ecosystem. Android had to fight hard to even reach more or less
parity with the iOS ecosystem in terms of revenue for developers, even with
its 5x larger market share. There was no hope WP would win in these
conditions.

~~~
solatic
Nokia was too invested in Symbian, which was ill-prepared for the new world of
rich smartphone experiences. As a much older platform, it had been architected
around some faulty fundamental assumptions, like the phone processor only
having a single core. Nokia also had an army of middle management internally
which had built their careers on Symbian and would have lead an internal
revolution had Nokia pivoted to Android back when it was opportune to do so.

Nokia didn't go with Windows Mobile because it thought it was the superior
platform. It went with a different platform because it had become painfully
clear to said middle management that Symbian could not be economically
technically adapted for modern smartphone hardware, that sales were tanking as
a result. And then Nokia went with Microsoft instead of Android because
Microsoft gave them a boat load of money to do so, whereas with Android, Nokia
would've had to build everything from scratch, and it wasn't clear anymore
that they'd have the resources to do so.

Nokia's story is, more than anything else, of how technical debt can kill a
company.

------
Cyberspy
This is karma for the way they started their 'Windows Smartphone' project, aka
'Stinger' (their internal name). They partnered with UK-based Sendo, who
should have been their go-to-market partner, until Microsoft nicked all the
code and gave it to HTC. They, in turn, partnered with Orange to bring out the
SPV. How do we know it was Sendo's code? becuase it had Sendo's bugs - the
eact version could be determined by which bugs it had and didn't have.

When Microsoft starts out like this, they deserve every little failurethey
get!

Refs:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterpla...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterplan_to_screw_phone/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_SPV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_SPV)

------
probably_wrong
I wanted to develop for Windows Phone, I really did. I even bought two phones,
hoping that my experience with the first one would be fixed with the second.

But I just couldn't: getting the environment to work required me to upgrade my
version of Visual Studio, upgrade my version of the OS, pay a developer fee
(or send an e-mail with a scan of my ID and grade transcript to get it waived
as a student). And even after sorting all those obstacles, the IDE was so
buggy that I couldn't even place a date picker object.

The impression I got was: you can develop for WP, as long as you do it the way
we like it (OS version, Visual Studio version) and invest about a hundred
dollars getting up to spec.

Compared to Android's "here's the free IDE for your OS of choice", I'm not
surprised developers weren't thrilled.

~~~
binthere
But that's how development for iOS is too, probably even worse because you
also need to buy the whole computer in order to develop in it (I know there
are other ways, I'm just considering the way most developers do). But this
model still successfully works for Apple.

Developing for Android is really amazing. But the real deal is the phone's
market share. It doesn't matter much how good or crap is your experience
creating apps for a specific platform. At the end of the day it's about how
many users will be downloading your app. Apple and Android has the market.
Windows does not have it.

------
Zhyl
This isn't surprising, really. Windows Phone has been poorly for a long time.

While I understand Microsoft's efforts at trying to approach the mobile space,
it does seem that it's often at the expense of their core product - very
similar to how Google nearly crippled their core offering by integrating
everything with Google+.

I'm impressed that despite all of this, though, they've managed to keep
desktop dominance, even with the rise of of Chromebooks and Macbooks.

~~~
richardwhiuk
Windows is extremely well sunk into the enterprise market, and neither Linux
nor Mac are at all focusing sufficiently on it to displace them.

Linux isn't user friendly enough, and Mac's support policy is a complete no go
for enterprise.

~~~
herbst
If a Ubuntu in 2017 isn't user friendly I really don't know what that phrase
is even supposed to mean.

~~~
CaptSpify
As someone that only works on linux systems....

The state of Linux is not great. We _still_ can't get the basics like sound,
wifi, etc out of the box. I get why it's a problem, and it's generally not the
fault of Linux devs, but it's still a problem that turns people away.

I _really_ want to see Linux take over on the desktop, but turning a blind eye
to our problems is a poor way to do it.

~~~
unethical_ban
>We still can't get the basics like sound, wifi, etc out of the box.

Complete and total fabrication. Video for gaming is still trouble, but I have
no more issue with Linux wifi or sound output than I do with Windows. In fact,
Linux networking to me is better than Windows.

~~~
CaptSpify
"It works for me" has never been proof that a problem doesn't exist. I find it
hard to take such comments seriously.

To be frank: You are wasting everyone's time with such comments.

~~~
unethical_ban
If I am wasting time, you're doing the same with generic comments. You
provided as much proof as I did.

------
pier25
I don't think the problem was primarily the lack of apps but a major reason to
use Windows mobile.

With iOS you get the high end hardware and deep integration with Apple's
ecosystem.

With Android you get deep integration with Google's services and a wide range
of devices in prices and features.

What did you get with Windows mobile?

~~~
criddell
> What did you get with Windows mobile?

From a consumer point of view, not much.

There's a lot there for businesses though. If you employ a bunch of .Net
developers for your in-house applications, Windows Mobile is a pretty natural
way get a mobile app developed.

~~~
evilduck
The problem there is that a business has employees and those employees don't
want to own Windows Phones personally and at the same time businesses don't
want to provide each employee a company phone either.

------
myrandomcomment
When MS released the first version of Windows NT it was buggy as hell.
Internal to MS they ran Banyan VINES. Bill ordered it to be ripped out and
replaced with NT. It was a mess. All the coders in MS quickly started to fix
all the stuff that effected them. NT 3.51 came out pretty quickly after and to
be honest it was quiet good for the time. For as much money as they spent
trying to get people to buy the phone or write apps, they could have given a
phone to each employee and family member, told them they would pay for the
cell service for a year. You do not have to take it but all other phones are
banded from the office. Every app you submit you get X number of RSUs. Pretty
sure all the needed apps would have turned up in that year.

~~~
garganzol
Love Bill. He was the type.

------
pritambarhate
One cool move on Microsoft's part can be releasing Microsoft's version of
Android. The main problem is Google Play Services. But since MS almost has
parallel offerings for all Google Services they can create an "API" compatible
version of Google Play services. This way users will be able to install all
the current Android applications which are available on Play Store.

This can convert Android into an Oligopoly instead of Google's Monopoly.

~~~
camus2
Why would anyone bother with a copy of android when the original just works?
it makes no sense.

Microsoft strategy was just bad. It tried to copy the iPhone when it should
have tried to copy its own strategy on PC, which is creating a OS and letting
other companies build Windows Phones. The only person who got something out of
the Nokia deal is Elop, which is curiously similar to how bad Macromedia/Adobe
deal was. What is left of both deals? nothing.

Microsoft isn't that good at consumer hardware, the only exception is the
Xbox. Look at the surface book, full of issues when it should have been a hit.

Eventually MS will try a comeback in the mobile OS market, in 5/10 years,
because it's essential for MS survival. But it needs to build the services to
back that up.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Microsoft strategy was just bad. It tried to copy the iPhone when it should
> have tried to copy its own strategy on PC, which is creating a OS and
> letting other companies build Windows Phones.

That wouldn't have worked either. Microsoft has the desktop market today
because they had it in 1981 when the IBM PC was released. Operating systems
have huge network effects.

There is very little they can do today that will cause them to lose that.
People _hate_ that there is no simple off switch for all the Windows 10
telemetry, but is it causing all those people to switch to Ubuntu? No. They're
mostly sticking with Windows 7, and when support runs out on that, they'll
grit their teeth and use Windows 10. Because they have no choice. They need
Office and Photoshop and Active Directory and some weird printer thing from
their weird printer support company and a dozen other things like that. Which
kind of maybe have Linux equivalents but some of them aren't as good and all
of them have some initial switching cost which would all have to be taken on
at the same time. So when the choice comes to either let Microsoft punch you
in the face or walk away, most people still aren't willing to walk away.

But with Android the shoe is on the other foot. Microsoft can't dislodge
Android for the same reasons that Canonical can't dislodge Windows.

------
pmontra
> We have tried VERY HARD to incent app devs. Paid money.. wrote apps 4 them..
> but volume of users is too low for most companies to invest.

The problem is that no customer I knew was keen to have to pay for the same
app three times. Android and iOS cost enough money. Windows Mobile only choice
would be to overcome one of those two platforms quickly, but it started the
race way too late. Everybody was hoping it died quickly. A market split evenly
in 3 would be a budget nightmare.

However let me say that only one platform would be unhealthy. Nothing good
comes from mono cultures, as IE demonstrated after winning the browser wars
some 15 years ago.

------
wdn
Microsoft got a chance to steal market shares and established themselves as an
alternative to iOS and Android when they introduced Lumia 950 and 950XL. I
really think the device were great. However, they made the fatal mistake on
this, the price point.

They priced the 950/950XL same as iPhone and Android flagship phones. Yes, I
do understand the 950 and 950 XL have flagship hardware, however, you do not
priced it as your phone is in high demand.

If they priced the phones at 300, it would sell a lot more. Developers do not
want to develop for an OS with no users.

Not only the hardware price was bad. The fees to developer was also bad. If I
recalled correctly, they also want to takes the same amount of fee as Apple
and Google. If I was Microsoft, I would not charge developer any fees for 3
years just to get them on board.

~~~
dpark
> _Microsoft got a chance to steal market shares and established themselves as
> an alternative to iOS and Android when they introduced Lumia 950 and 950XL._

The hardware was never the problem. Lots of great devices shipped with Windows
Phone.

(Disclosure: Microsoft employee)

~~~
garganzol
At some point I looked for Windows Phone device with a decent audio output so
I could enjoy my lossless paid subscription to services like Tidal.

I wasn't able to select a Windows Phone. There were several models but none of
it made an explicit accent on sound quality. As a last resort I looked to
external DACs and it turned out that Windows Phone didn't support them either.

I just went and bought a second hand iPhone 6 with a good discount. The sound
quality I got from it was decent and I became a happy Apple customer one more
time (had iPhone 4 and other Apple gears before).

So a statement that the hardware was never the problem is a bit of a stretch.
Everything accumulates pretty quickly and every detail has an impact.

~~~
dpark
The set of people interested in running external DACs for their phones is
vanishingly small. I’m pretty sure that losing that market wasn’t what doomed
Windows Phone.

Regardless, my point wasn’t that the hardware was perfect for everyone or
every use case. The point was that there were premium Windows Phone devices
before the 950 showed up. The 950 arrived after the end state for Windows
Phone was pretty obvious.

~~~
asveikau
> The set of people interested in running external DACs for their phones is
> vanishingly small.

The point is that everybody is a different niche. If you start this attitude
that feature X is uncommon and not worth the effort, then you do that for a
thousand feature X's, eventually you make a product for no one and since you
can't predict what niche feature X will suddenly become more important later,
the future doesn't happen on your platform.

I have talked to far too many people at MS who have exactly this dismissive
attitude about _every single feature_.

~~~
dpark
The “features” missing from Windows Phone were mostly high quality 3rd party
apps. Windows Phone had a ton of great features in itself.

As a dev (at Microsoft), I’m well aware of the potential risk of dismissing
features. However, I’m also aware that features are not free. Everyone who
actually ships has to make tradeoffs. You can’t ship every feature so you have
to cut ones that you think are low value (to the customer or the business,
depending on how you look at it).

~~~
asveikau
I spent time at MS too, and I have worked on a WP app, and I don't think my
comment has been grokked here. It was _the app platform_ I was thinking of the
most that was missing lots of features, and I would say the whole approach to
how the app platform people exposed device capabilities was both wrongheaded
and not at parity with what the other guys did. And instead of being aware of
this gap and taking corrective action, they doubled down into Raymond Chen
style "every feature starts at minus 100 points", which works well if you have
a desktop monopoly but not as well in a truly competitive market, and
meanwhile can be used to justify a lot of bad behavior.

I don't think the whole answer fits in a comment box though. If you have
interest in learning more offline I can explain it further.

~~~
dpark
I didn’t build anything for Windows Phone (or any phone) so I don’t have much
experience with the platform’s SDK weaknesses. I mostly heard that programming
for it was pretty nice but that it just wasn’t worth it because of the user
base. That’s just my anecdote though.

------
melling
“Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has argued that the company isn't out of the
mobile hardware business, insisting that its HoloLens augmented reality
headset is a mobile device.”

I hope the rest of the industry remains paranoid. Nadella does have a point.
Mobile will evolve and in 5-10 years, watches, glasses, etc could usurp a
significant share of the mobile phone market.

It can be easier to claim a new market rather than take an established one.
Windows is still close to 90% of the desktop makes share, but it matters a lot
less today.

~~~
WorldMaker
This is partly why I've not put much stock into "Surface Phone" rumors, but am
listening for whatever fascinating tidbits I can hear from the rumor mills of
a "HoloPhone".

------
ryl00
Back when Microsoft started started throwing in the towel and put their phones
on fire sale I loaded up on $30 Lumia 640's (how could you not at that price
for a 5" LTE in 2015?)

They've served me and my family well since. The lack of apps has a flip
side... I'm not terrible worried about malware. ;) And I'm not worried about
my kids getting too distracted by all the games, etc available on iOS/Android.

~~~
bluedino
>> The lack of apps has a flip side... I'm not terrible worried about malware.
;)

Is this something people should be worried about on a phone?

~~~
chrisper
You should if you have Android and install apps from third party stores /
websites. But sometimes even Google Play Store has malware.

------
pjmlp
Quite sad how WinDev torpedo the WP7 efforts with the WP reboots (WP 8, WP
8.1, UWP).

For quite some time WP was the best developer experience between iOS, Android
and WP, regarding tooling and available SDK programming languages.

------
naikrovek
This doesn't mean anything, to me. I just read "Windows 10 Mobile as a
standalone OS is going away." Remember that Windows OneCore is a thing, and
that Windows on Arm is a thing. They are eliminating all the "one-off"
operating systems and consolidating all of the features into OneCore.

I am not pining for Windows Mobile (despite owning several throughout the past
decade) I just think that Windows OneCore will make Windows available on
phones again if Microsoft ever have a good reason to enter the mobile market
again.

~~~
pjmlp
Might be, but given how they managed the whole story, they will get UWP apps
that work by accident on phones.

Just like Google and Apple get phone apps that work by accident on tablets,
but feel out of place otherwise.

~~~
naikrovek
what do you mean "by accident?" UWP works across Windows 10 platforms by
design.

~~~
pjmlp
Just because UWP targets all Windows 10 platforms, it doesn't mean a developer
will take all of them into account.

Currently most UWP developers only care about desktop as target platform, so
if it happens to work and be a good UI/UX in a e.g. 7" display it will be by
accident.

One needs to take responsive design and API contracts into account, to make a
good UI/UX across all supported platforms.

------
samfisher83
While WM was clunky at least you could run any random piece of software you
wanted. Then Microsoft tried to copy apple. I think if they had put a
relatively open OS and sold highend phones for $200-300 bucks I think they
could have made it. They probably would have had to sink billions and
billions, but they could have done it. Look at Xbox its viable platform today.

~~~
WorldMaker
You can sideload applications in Windows 10 mobile easily enough. Like Android
it's been on by default for some time and just a matter of downloading an
.appx package file. The ability to sideload doesn't help if there aren't apps
to sideload.

I don't think the problem was ever the openness of the platform. An open
platform doesn't guarantee developers either (look at decades of people not
support Linux ports of their applications as an obvious example).

~~~
garganzol
The problem with sideloading is that it requires a lot of hops. So many hops
nobody does this.

Usually "a hop" is represented by some required certificate, a special
"container" the app needs to follow, a special API voodoo call you should make
to sideload the app. It quickly decays from being a reliable reproducible
computer science, and turns into the joke of marketing greed you would never
trust.

~~~
WorldMaker
From a user experience standpoint: sideloading is just "install this app".
Click a link on a website to an APK for Android or APPX for Windows and watch
it install. It doesn't get much easier than that. Fewer hurdles and security
concerns than installing some random EXE that may be a wrapper for an MSI and
needs Administrator rights to your machine for who knows what reason. The
install experience for an APPX link is really nice in Windows these days. It's
a great user experience.

From a developer standpoint: those "hops" have been your job for decades.
Complaining about them says more about whether or not you are good at your job
than the platform itself is suitable to applications.

Windows has _always_ encouraged executable signing, and downloading unsigned
EXEs from random websites has always been a bad idea. (The SmartScreen
warnings for them these days have become appropriately diresome.) Other
platforms have signing requirements, too.

Containers have always existed: ZIP, CAB, MSI, etc. If I was forced to write a
container by hand-formed scripts, the APPX format is much easier than MSI or
most other installer packages for classic Windows desktop: it's a zip file
with a pretty easy to read XML manifest.

(With the Desktop Bridge, no application developers have an excuse to use an
EXE or MSI installer anymore if they are only supporting Windows 10. If you
can build an EXE or MSI, you can build an APPX. Build an APPX.)

There's no special voodoo API calls needed to sideload an app on Windows.
Users just double-click an APPX package and magic happens [since the
Anniversary Update in November of last year], they get a simple installer
dialog. (You can use PowerShell to automate installing APPX packages, but you
don't have to. It's an advantage to power users, not voodoo to pass to normal
users.)

As for "reproducible"? APPX installs are way more reproducible than EXE/MSI
installs. It's a pretty slick system if you bother to look under the hood.
It's also rather well documented in that case that you do.

I can't assuage any conspiracy theories about marketing greed, but looking at
sideloading from a technical perspective, it certainly isn't "a lot of hops"
and "nobody does this" is a matter of perspective; I've got several packages
in development that currently are outside of the Windows Store.

~~~
garganzol
The given problem is not in the UX standpoint, it's a developers' problem.

As a developer of WinAPI app, I can just click on .EXE file. I can use
CreateProcess to run it. I can use command shell to run it, right? And so on.
I'm free.

The UWP is a different story: as a developer, I can do exactly nothing. I
cannot run .EXE. I cannot run .APPX. I cannot run from command shell. I cannot
distribute .EXE. I cannot distribute .APPX.

Instead, as a developer of an UWP app, I have to use exclusively Visual Studio
in order to run my app. That's all. I cannot launch my just compiled app from
command line. I cannot launch automated UI test. I cannot distribute the app.
I cannot use XCopy. Bummer, nothing. I'm a monkey in a dystopian walled
garden.

Why would I invest in such a platform? Why should I play bureaucracy games
with certificates on my own machine? Why, as a developer, I have no access to
"Launch from Layout" API, but Visual Studio has? Doesn't anyone think it's not
competitive, to say the least?

The list goes on and on. But yes, from a MBA or an occasional lurker
standpoint the skies are blue. Really, what could go wrong.

~~~
WorldMaker
> I cannot distribute .APPX

You can distribute .APPX. You can't distribute an unsigned .APPX and guarantee
users can use it, but you haven't been able to do that with .EXE in years
either.

> I cannot run .APPX.

Double clicking an .APPX installs it.

> I cannot run .EXE.

You can include Win32 .EXEs in .APPX packages now. There's a bunch of tools to
support just that scenario called the "Desktop Bridge".

> I cannot run from command shell.

The desktop bridge now supports command line apps:
[https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/07/05/command-
li...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2017/07/05/command-line-
activation-universal-windows-apps/)

Any app that supports protocol activation (URIs like xbox:// or my-custom-
app://cool-action) can be called with PowerShell (`Start-Process xbox://`).
Most apps don't publish activation URLs, but some common ones are
discoverable.

From within a UWP app you can launch other apps and files to their associated
and URLs: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/uwp/api/Windows.System.Laun...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/uwp/api/Windows.System.Launcher)

The Desktop Bridge has an API to launch an .EXE from UWP, either as a
background task or a foreground task. There are also APIs to transfer data
between the .EXE and UWP apps.

> I have to use exclusively Visual Studio in order to run my app.

You don't have to. It's a lot easier, but it's not the only way. APPX isn't
that special, it's a zip file with an XML file and your binaries and whatever
else, and any IDE could put one together if it desired. I wouldn't want to
hand-build .APPX packages, but that's an option if you really desire it.

> I cannot launch automated UI test.

There are automation drivers for Appium and Selenium for UWP.

> Why should I play bureaucracy games with certificates on my own machine?

You don't, Windows Developer Mode does all the security work for you for your
own development/testing needs.

IF you want to let others install your app, you need a security certificate.
This has been the case with .EXE and .MSIs for decades, this is not new
security.

> "Launch from Layout" API

I have no idea what this is referring to.

~~~
hirsin
Launch from Layout is an installation method that allows you to take loose
files (an unpacked appx zip) and tell the OS 'treat this as an installed app'.
You can do this with a couple WinRT APIs, Device Portal, or WinAppDeployCmd
which comes with the SDK.

I own dev mode for Windows 10, and can confirm that these issues have been
always solved and recently received more improvements, although the
documentation may be lacking. Windows has always supported third party stores
and the ability to pass around an appx.

~~~
garganzol
>a couple of WinRT APIs, WinAppDeployCmd

Any hints or sample for Launch from Layout? Yes, I read the docs. This
question haunts me for 4 years and I still have no answer. Please please
please.

------
jarjoura
Look I don't want to beat a dead horse, but Microsoft has no one else to blame
but themselves. The launch version was a great early adopter MVP and moved the
entire mobile industry to a content first paradigm (flat UI). However, they
never tried to catch up in the feature department. Instead they focused on all
the wrong things, like porting to NT kernel and building an OS that could
support limited memory.

So during all of those years, developers were left with those same C# MVP APIs
that didn't support all the various things 3rd party companies needed. It
required hiring a specialist C# engineer and spending extra time to fill in
the gaps left behind. No company was going to do that with a phone barely at
10% of the market.

Microsoft should have ruthlessly focused on getting feature parity with iPhone
and Android, and released updates every month. Showed the world they were
serious about being a 1st-tier dominant player.

Instead, they felt lazy and slow. I think there was 18 months between one
release to the next without a peep from them. That's no way to instill
confidence that they were competent at their job.

~~~
acdha
> they focused on all the wrong things, like porting to NT kernel and building
> an OS that could support limited memory.

I think it’s easy for us to focus on software but I don’t think any of that
mattered compared to failing so badly on the hardware side. Over that period,
how many _weeks_ were there where they had phone hardware which was
competitive with Android, much less iOS? It seemed like every time I saw it
mentioned the cycle was “<software feature> looks cool but the phone specs are
like my old phone”.

~~~
naikrovek
That was one of the little gems of Windows Phone. It could do what your
current generation Android/Apple phone could do on previous generation
hardware.

WP hardware was dirt cheap because of it.

------
JTenerife
I remember when they tried to push the first version of Windows Phone out of
the gates. I think it was 2008 or 2009. Then - as to be expected with that
ambitious projects - they already had big delays. What happened then is a good
example of how big companies seem to have problems taking the necessary
radical steps when projects don't perform. I've experienced this at my
employee. Only that the project I have in mind is more than 10 years heavily
underperforming while spending easily over a billion dollars. Microsoft seemed
to let the Windows Phone project keep going pretty much the same way as it
started ... same project lead, probably a lot of the same people. What happens
than typically is that good people don't work on this kind of projects.

Then the whole Nokia mess ... what a sad story.

I remember when I finally gave up any hope for Windows Phone: It was when I
read that Samsung and HTC ought to pay license fee to Microsoft. That was
probably the biggest mistake in Microsoft's history. They should have payed
them 50 $ per sold Smartphone with Windows Phone on it.

Anyway - I still have a Windows Phone from my employee and like it.

------
ChicagoDave
As much as I loved Windows Phone (I bought 4 of them), the app development
side was never mature enough to take seriously by most professionals. The
support from Microsoft on the development side was pretty limited, outside of
"hey, we're MS, you need to do this!"

At the time, the Metro theme seemed like a novel and interesting idea. In
hindsight, mimicking the UX of iOS (which is exactly what Android did), was
the correct path. Had MS made the Windows Phone look exactly like iOS, but
offered an easier app dev story, there _might_ have been a chance to grow
their market share.

But in reality, I doubt there is anything MS could have done to rebuild their
mobile presence. Apple and Android are an unassailable juggernaut from a
consumer's perspective and even I succumbed.

After buying the Nokia 1020, which was a phenomenal piece of hardware, MS
started tinkering with core apps like the calendar and email. There was this
fanfare of purchasing third party apps and adapting them, but this was the
deal-breaker for me. These two apps (which I installed with an early beta of
Windows 10 Mobile) were simply horrible. They were menu oriented. Mobile phone
apps shouldn't have menus. Period. Anytime you see a hamburger menu, you're
looking at pure UX laziness. When the second update came through and I saw
these apps get _worse_....

...I walked out of work, walked the two blocks to the nearest AT&T store,
threw the 1020 on the little round table and said, "iPhone 6plus, don't care
about color or anything....and I rubber case"...

That was nearly three years ago. I recently upgraded to the 7plus and sold my
6plus for $250. I never even think about apps now. It just works.

My black Nokia 1020 with the recharging case sits in my desk. Worthless.

~~~
roryisok
> My black Nokia 1020 with the recharging case sits in my desk. Worthless.

Can I have it? Since it's worthless and everything. I'll pay shipping.

~~~
ChicagoDave
Well worthless is subjective. There's some value since the camera is pretty
great and it can still be used as a legit phone. And I keep tabs on if anyone
has built some 3rd party tools for it to turn it into something cool.

You can pester me on LinkedIn if you want:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/chidave/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chidave/)

~~~
roryisok
I still use a WP handset as my legit phone and will probably continue to do so
until they're just not usable anymore for whatever reason. Would love to get
my hands on a 1020, but I should probably just go buy one second hand. I'm in
europe so yours probably wouldn't even work over here

~~~
ChicagoDave
It's GSM (AT&T). I'm willing to trade. Got anything interesting?

~~~
roryisok
mostly just other windows phones with cracked screens I'm afraid. Want an
Apple Magic Trackpad and Wireless Keyboard?

------
dagaci
One of the biggest failures of windows mobile was constant abandonment and
reset,

\+ all the mobile developers and users from the pre-iphone days were simply
dropped with no path to wp7,

\+ the earliest and devs of wp7 were all dropped in favour of wp8,

\+ MS execs then approved of a slightly less damaging strategy with 8 to Wp10
but at this time it was already too late

Microsoft could not solve the app-gap problem because the problem was caused
by a lack of trust.

~~~
garganzol
This. But wait, in order to further harmonize "cloud first mobile first
experiences" they may be deeply pleased to announce one more important
transition from UWP to OneCore.

~~~
NiveaGeForce
UWP is getting new features all the time, it's the way forward for Windows
apps and will stay for many years to come. Even all the default Windows 10
apps and stuff like settings UI are UWP.

OneCore is an internal Windows refactor that won't affect users nor
developers.

------
frik
Windows Mobile 6 (2007, CE based) was pretty good. iPhone changed everything.

Then Microsoft destroyed v6 with Windows Mobile 7 (CE based but incompatible
to CE apps, Silverlight-only apps)

Windows Mobile 7 got replaced by incompatible Windows Phone 8.

Windows Mobile 8 got replaced by incompatible Windows Phone 10.

Microsoft finally admits Windows Phone/Mobile 10 is dead.

More on the "burning platform memo" of their infamous Stephen Elop, and the
$7.6 billion write down on the acquisition of Nokia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mobile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mobile)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
There was no Windows mobile 7. It was already branded as Windows Phone 7 by
then. They went back to Windows Mobile for 10, I think.

------
DrBazza
What Microsoft did wrong: charge for the OS, and then rewrite it.

I had a Samsung Omnia 7, and it was still the best phone I've had, in the
sense that the UI was fast, obvious, and well thought out.

Then they brought out Windows 8 mobile. And abandoned all hardware that ran
Windows 7 mobile. And messed around with a working UI and broke the
'experience' (ghastly buzzword).

And all the while, trying to fight Android which was free, and Apple that just
has a cult of users that will buy the new phone regardless.

------
thisoneforwork
Disclosure: I work at Microsoft, I have worked for Microsoft before and quit,
and come back. I love the company, but I am no zealot (tried to standardize a
company on Macs during my six years away, because it made sense). I never
worked on Windows Phone, but I know the company and the tech well.

Here is where we fucked up:

1\. We were, for a long time, a company, where every product/business group
had to pay for its own right to exist. Everyone had their own P&L,
contribution margin targets, marketing. You had to make money by yourself to
stay alive. KT made sure we all understood this.

2\. We had a history of "fast follower" successes - Windows, Word, Windows
Server, SQL Server, Exchange, IE, even Intune nowadays, and many many others
got successful not by disrupting the current market leader or by hardcore
innovation, but by leveraging either an open or standard platform and always
getting better, without trying to rewrite the rules of the game. OK, maybe
Office rewrote them when it came out, but it was packaging.

3\. Balmer (whom I love as a leader) got trolled by Apple's and Google's
success, and Microsoft graduating from not really cool to quite uncool. So he
decided to tackle them the way it had worked before (point 2.).
Simultaneously, he tried to correct point 1, but, as radical as his 2014
reorganization to break org barriers was, he did not get rid of KT (Kevin
Turner). KT brought in the money, KT defined the culture. Everyone had to keep
making their own money.

We could have: Offered the mobile OS for free from day one. Given Office on
Mobile for free from day one. Bought or OEMed Xamarin a lot sooner. Returned
100% of app revenue to app devs who sell through the Windows Store. Made dev
tools (Studio CE) free earlier. Guaranteed no data collection (remember the
Scroogled campaign…?)

All those have either been done, or are irrelevant now, while the stock is
still at a record high, after we lost the game... We could have done all of
the above and fare better than we have, and we have fared well.

Instead, we comp hardware sellers on MARGIN, as if it makes a bloody
difference. We monetize the post install experience. All bullshit for pennies.
Everyone had to make money on their own so we missed the bigger picture.

Satya fixed this, and it hurt, as it was the only way left to go. I gave up on
a phone I really liked, as I saw no future.

I don't know if I should hope for us bringing new phones out, but I sure hope
we never again let our Operating Mechanisms kill our ability to see the big
picture and disrupt the market.

~~~
julian_1
> We could have: Offered the mobile OS for free from day one. Given Office on
> Mobile for free from day one. Bought or OEMed Xamarin a lot sooner. [...]
> Made dev tools (Studio CE) free earlier.

Quoted for emphasis. It's remarkable in hindsight that Microsoft didn't try to
leverage it's own already successful products with their inherent network
effects, to buy market-share.

------
shadowmint
This surprises no one.

I'm more interested in: what's the future for UWP apps now? Another dead end
like silverlight?

A cross platform UI library that runs on .Net core (ie. windows, mac, linux,
android, ios), some kind of hybrid of ??? and Xamarin forms could potentially
be quite a nice tool... but its pretty hard to be excited about the prospect
with their track record of killed off UI frameworks so far.

~~~
mtgx
UWP apps wouldn't be so bad for Windows if maybe Microsoft extended their
functionality a little and kept improving their performance.

However, what scares me to death as a user is that if UWP is let's say super-
popular with developers 5-10 years from now, and everyone builds their apps as
UWP apps for Windows, then Microsoft will eventually restrict "normal" users
(read: most "consumer" Windows machines) from even side-loading apps from
outside of the store.

If that's something that has even _crossed the minds_ of Microsoft's
leadership, then I definitely don't want UWP to gain any sort of real
traction. And I'd rather see Microsoft improve user security through instant
virtualization for apps, like what they're doing with App Guard for Edge, even
if it's only an option users could choose, and not something that works by
default for most or all apps.

~~~
vetinari
Exactly that was the original intent with Metro apps. For developers, Visual
Studio was able to provision keys (online), but otherwise you had to be inside
AD domain, or have the Enterprise SKU and "sideloading key".

Only with Windows 10 it became possible to sideload non-win32 apps.

------
lgbr
The existence of Windows Phone was one of the more confusing efforts in the
professional world. Microsoft had released an OS that, while itself was a
capable OS, the ecosystem around it was unacceptable. The availability of apps
was terrible, and those that were there were often not kept up to the standard
that iOS and Android apps were.

Still, a lot of people bought them at work because of concerns over
compatibility with Exchange or the rest of their Microsoft ecosystem. They've
all slowly had to learn that Microsoft isn't as omnipresent as it once was,
and have had to buy new devices and learn a new OS all over again.

Microsoft really should have killed this sooner and saved everyone the
headache.

------
mmsimanga
Sad news. I have a Nokia Windows 8.1 phone. Battery life is excellent for a
smart phone. Build quality is great including quality of camera. Apps are the
only missing feature. Sad all the expertise Nokia built up over the years has
come to nought.

~~~
roryisok
I'm also still using my Lumia 925 as my main phone. And despite this news I'm
still thinking about buying a newer one, second hand. Every time I use android
or IOS I miss tiles, pinning, the super clean settings

------
blackoil
I was using WP since times of WP 7 and Lumia 710. At that time other options
were either super costly iPhone or crappy lagging Android. WP had a fresh
look, smooth OS and range of hardware from Nokia.

Unfortunately, MS fumbled couple of times with internals while moving to WP 8
and WM 10.

In the meanwhile Android fixed the kinks and improved UI. Motorola and Xiaomi
improved value for money of Android.

~~~
maaaats
Yeah, a $80-$100 Nokia ran as smoothly as an expensive Android at that time.

~~~
vetinari
You may think it ran as smoothly, but it certainly didn't do as much.

Lumia 520 and Moto G were almost identical hardware (almost same CPU, same
GPU, Moto G had double RAM and 720p display, Lumia only 800x480), for similar
price, but the Moto G was way better device, that did stuff people wanted.

------
TYPE_FASTER
They've given up on being a mobile OS provider, I think, at least for now. I
wonder if the announcement that they got the Win 10 kernel to compile on ARM
is more geared at laptops/tablets than phones.

What I haven't seen reported is Win 6.X had a large enterprise/industrial user
base that now is going to have to choose between Android and iOS. It's
interesting that the size of that existing customer base is small enough,
compared to the consumer market, that it's not worth Microsoft's efforts to
keep the industrial mobile OS product going.

------
hitgeek
"incentivize app devs". as an early adopter I felt abandoned.

I was all in on windows mobile around v7 and windows8. bought the flagship
lumia phone and surface rt tablet. invested the time to develop some basic
apps. 6 months later both platforms were basically discontinued with no
upgrade path, so I abandoned it too.

if microsoft had just made an enterprise successor to blackberry, instead of
trying to make a consumer phone, they probably would have been more
successful. once the platform had traction in enterprise, maybe they could of
made the consumer jump.

~~~
chickenbane
Sorry you feel abandoned. However, as you say you are an early adopter you
should recognize this is a strong (even likely?) possibility.

Yes, if the platform you invest in early is a success you can reap many
rewards. But the mobile OS market has killed many platforms, and even a
successful company like Microsoft can't guarantee success.

We can play what-ifs in hindsight, but it's not like Microsoft was late to the
game. I remember Windows CE and Pocket PC. My guess (and hope) is for
Microsoft to make an Android phone. They just announced a launcher, so fingers
crossed!

------
tomelders
MS really doesn't understand why people don't like their products. And that's
a bit bonkers. People get paid lots of money to think about that problem
everyday, and they still can't figure it out.

Nobody trusts you. They don't trust your vision. They don't trust your
commitment. They don't trust your ability. They don't trust your execution.
And they don't trust your intentions.

no one trusts Microsoft. Well maybe some people do, but how's that working out
for you?

------
amatheus
Where does this leave Windows Universal Development? Hardly Universal if it’s
only for Windows 10 desktop. I’m no Windows nor Xbox user, but do people
develop using Universal for both? Are there other platforms right now worth
targeting for Windows Universal?

~~~
naikrovek
There's still HoloLens, Surface Hub, XBox, and IoT Core and Enterprise.

My employer writes UWP apps for itself, because we have all of these devices
(even XBox) and write UWP apps for them all (because with the exception of IoT
Enterprise, they're all UWP-only.)

IoT Mobile is still a SKU that Microsoft sell, by the way. Guess what IoT
Mobile is? It's Windows Mobile.

It isn't dead, it's just not getting new features. It'll be replaced by
OneCore in the not too distant future, I imagine.

~~~
NiveaGeForce
UWP is getting new features all the time, it's the way forward for Windows
apps and will stay for many years to come. Even all the default Windows 10
apps and stuff like settings UI are UWP.

OneCore is an internal Windows refactor that won't affect users nor
developers.

------
enos_feedler
I think a big question now is will Microsoft build a smartphone product on top
of Android? This will help them capture existing app ecosystem and enable them
to provide "the best of Microsoft" for enterprise mobile customers. The cloud
market is so important and it just seems strategically weak to not have a
phone platform to connect with that. Google Cloud has Google Play Services and
there is lots of opportunity there.

~~~
askvictor
What Google has done with iOS and even Android (particularly with Samsung's
play to break dependency on Google) might be where MS is heading. Google has
decoupled their apps/services from the OS, and provided a consistent
'Google-y' UX (or working towards that anyway) across all of the platforms. MS
seems to be in the way there, with Edge being released for both mobile
platforms.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
This makes me really sad given Windows 10 Mobile had a desktop mode,
Continuum, and Microsoft had x86-on-ARM emulation in development for Windows
10 laptops.

Why they never put 2 and 2 together is beyond me.

------
rbanffy
> Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

Who didn't?

Seriously, nobody actually expected it to win over either iOS or Android.

------
MentallyRetired
I actually really like windows 10 mobile, but as a developer my attention span
is limited and the market just wasn't there.

That said, I think if they announced convergence on all devices, released some
really nice hardware (surface phone anybody?), and marketed convergence as the
Next Big Thing, they could have made some serious in-roads in market share.

"Your all-in-one wonder device is ready!"

------
blackaspen
Wow. This is sad. Not surprising though.

I'm disappointed that we're now stick with a mediocre duopoly of OSs now.

------
jarym
Windows Phone had potential. All MS needed to do was to show some real
commitment to it by keeping APIs relatively stable and not impose any onerous
requirements.

APIs were never stable for very long and all the weird UI decisions they tried
to force down peoples throats really backfired. The marketing hype around
universal apps backfired too - the developer APIs were not at all aligned with
the marketing vision.

Truthfully, I think Microsoft is adjusting to being a corporation without a
monopoly. That's what it comes down to - away from the desktop users had more
attractive options (iOS/Android) and even on the desktop users just avoided
upgrading (I skipped both Vista and Windows 8) while others have totally
ditched desktops altogether.

Bye bye WiMo.

------
skc
So that's Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft that failed with phones.

I think it's safe to say we will never see a viable third option in mobile.

Might as well start thinking of the next great paradigm shift but even there
it's hard to see anyone out maneuvering Apple and Google.

~~~
c3534l
Those are like the poster children of tech industry network effects. Apple was
first, Google decoupled the OS from the hardware, and Windows came in two
years after Google without the goodwill Google has. Amazon and Facebook are
the same story. Too late, not hip enough to catch on with the cool kids.

------
FussyZeus
It's a shame but it's not surprising. I loved my Lumia Icon way back, but even
then the lack of apps from all but the biggest players was eventually a
dealbreaker. I went to iPhone personally, I like the similar build quality and
the heft to the devices is nice.

Honestly I'll never understand why MS even went into the mobile space, what
with having two enormous and well entrenched competitors (not that I'm saying
only having two is a _good thing_ overall, but you know) and coming into the
game so very, very late compared to them. Windows Phone was doomed from the
start I think, just by market forces, not even going into the faults with the
product itself.

~~~
pjmlp
Microsoft was already on the mobile space before Apple or Google even thought
about writing a mobile OS.

They just failed to properly capitalize on that.

In Europe we only had Symbian and Windows CE handsets to choose from.

------
tweedledee
Does anyone actually make money on the app Store? Either Desktop or Mobile?

I have a niche desktop app that I'm thinking about porting. It's probably a
few weeks worth of work. The 30% cut might be tolerable if I can increase the
sales.

~~~
tweedledee
Am I shadowbanned? I can't see my comment from another account.

~~~
executesorder66
I can see both your comments.

~~~
tweedledee
Thanks, I found out that there is a page fold on HN with 'more' at the bottom
that I was previously unaware of.

------
nocoder
I still remember one of the first HTC phones which had a mobile version of I
think windows xp. The phone came with a stylus and the windows felt like a
miniaturized version of desktop. This improved significantly in the Lumia
series, the UI was good and easy to use. But by then the app ecosystem had
already built strongly around android and ios so there was not much traction.
I feel microsoft lost the ecosystem battle rather than OS. With too big app
stores, the developers did not have much appetite for supporting another
ecosystem which was very small.

~~~
pjmlp
What?

Windows CE is older than Android.

------
steverb
It feels inevitable, but it's still a shame.

I think the Windows Mobile interface was the most functional of the mobile
UIs. I switched to Android years ago, but I still miss it.

~~~
kageneko
After my dad had a stroke, he needed a new phone that he could use easily. We
ended up with a Nokia using Windows Phone because the large tiles and keyboard
buttons were something he could handle. The iOS and Android interfaces
required more precision than he was able to do.

To be fair, this was 5 or so years ago and I didn't delve very far into
accessibility settings for anything. WP worked fine out of the box, though.

------
nu5500
It should also be noted that W10 Mobile was a slow running, bug ridden mess
when it was released and took well over a year to become usable. It was also
not compatible with most of the existing Windows Phone handsets in use, and at
the same time, Microsoft killed off their phone hardware (nothing released
since 2015) and pulled them out of stores. So anywhere that Windows phones
were gaining traction in were guaranteed to be short lived.

------
royge
It was already too late that MS embrace opensource and made their IDE(Visual
Studio) for free. Developers who can't afford it already moved on and used
free and opensource alternatives and then start to love it without looking
back at MS stuff. They then realize that MS technologies are not the only cool
tools and programming languages to write applications with and make money.

------
ocdtrekkie
Joe Belfiore wholly missed the problem. Microsoft didn't need apps. Most
people using Windows Mobile had enough apps. But the last Verizon phone which
could run Windows came out three years ago. People left Windows because they
didn't have any options. Had Microsoft kept Nokia intact, even in a reduced
size state, Windows Mobile would probably still have it's 5% or so market
share.

------
Accacin
Sad. I used to a have a Nokia 1520 and it was a great phone. However, there
were a few things that eventually just made me switch to an iPhone.

------
liglesias
I could have told them almost a decade ago that the whole Microsoft
mobile/phone thing was doomed from the very start. It's amazing to me that it
was so obvious to me then, and yet the smartest highest-paid people at
Microsoft couldn't figure it out. Unbelievable.

------
darkhorn
The webview in Windows Phone was I think Internet Explorer 10 or something
like that. Thus we were unable to port our Sencha Touch 1.1.1 app to Windows
Phone.

Then we have tried to rewrite the app with Sencha Touch 2 but because it was
time consuming my employer told me to work on other things.

------
convefefe
If you supported Edge or IE for Windows 10 Desktop then it would of supported
the mobile version since both use the same platform. So you are still going to
have to support this OS if you are targeting Windows for desktop and tablets.

------
davidson_1974
This reminds me of
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U)
(Ballmer Laughs at iPhone)

------
Illniyar
That's heartbreaking, they are two minutes away from singularity -a usable os
that works on mobile, tablet and desktop.

It's stupid to stop now, they managed to take on the iPad with surface, I'm
sure a mobile success is possible.

------
jumpkickhit
That's too bad.

I had an old HP Ipaq running Win CE back years before Apple did their first
iPhone.

Microsoft was first, and it worked pretty well. Another case of MS getting
into things too soon, and somehow missing the boat again as time moves by.

------
ghostbrainalpha
I loved the look of the tiles... but outside of that I never really understood
the value proposition.

It's great to have more competitors but did they ever really shoot for 1 key
differentiation that would make people switch?

------
shmerl
Not something I'll regret about. I'm looking forward to Librem 5 running
Plasma Mobile with native Wayland and baseband separated from the CPU (they've
just succeeded in crowdfunding).

------
Pxtl
It's a shame, I had a win7 device and it had some great ideas, they had the
groundwork laid for a solid platform... But from what I've heard, it didn't
get better as it progressed.

------
Shorel
I still don't understand why they killed MSN Messenger. Everyone I knew, we
used messenger to communicate. Now we use WhatsApp or something else.

It was the door to do all they can't do now.

------
bolelang
It has been a slow death for Windows Mobile. To think that my very first
smartphone was an HP Windows phone way before we even imagined that there will
be something called Android.

------
bootcat
If Microsoft can't make things happen, I am not sure who can ! They have
money, influence, power and user base with personal computers and cloud, and
still they failed !

------
bad_user
I used a Nokia Lumia with Windows Phone 8. People say that the UI was better
than Android or iOS, but I disagree.

The flat UI of Windows Phone was completely unintuitive. In the real world
it's many times easy to distinguish objects you can interact with, by shape,
texture or touch. With feature phones or remote controls you had hardware
buttons.

With PC monitors and touch screens all controls are virtual, you get no 3D or
touch feedback, so you have to rely on visual clues and visual patterns.

The flat UI of Windows Phone was pretty bad, providing no visual clues
whatsoever, so you where left to touch text randomly on the screen, in the
hope that some of it will click.

I see people here giving examples of technically illiterate wives and
grandparents successfully using the Windows Phone, but guys, you're kind of
missing the forest from the trees.

It's not that hard to learn how to make a phone call, or write an SMS, given
that it's an operation that you're doing _every couple of hours_. You simply
have to learn the path from home screen to whatever you want to do. Ask any
child and he'll tell you that this is best done by trial and error and it is
never a problem for repetitive operations, because we've got good memories.

The problems happens when you interact with an application UI that you've
never seen before. And to be honest, even though I've been primarily an iOS
user for the past 3 years, the best of the bunch in this regard is Android.

By comparison Android's material design provides intelligent clues about what
can be pressed, or about what interaction just happened. And the design of
Android applications is pretty flat, in the sense that available options are
clearly laid out in front of you, no need to guess or to trigger hidden menus.

My favorite example was RunKeeper for iOS versus Android. The Android version
had clear action buttons for starting a race, allowing me to easily select the
type, whereas the iOS interface had the options hidden behind a menu that
would appear when I tapped on the logo, which was a pretty dumb idea. I'm not
even going to mention the dedicated Back button of Android, because people
that don't have an Android just don't get it.

But back to Windows Phone, I don't know what you folks have been smoking, but
it had terrible UI. And the apps where horrible. Its only saving grace where
those Nokia Lumia phones that had a good quality/price ratio, but Android was
already dominating the cheap smartphone market and a cheap Android might have
been worse, but at least it had apps.

------
watmough
The weird thing is that Win Phone 8 (ish) was pretty nice with great
animations, and nice fit and finish, then they seemed to throw all that away
in later versions.

------
elkhourygeorges
Android released couple of months after the iPhone. Windows Phone couple of
years later. This is it. Microsoft could have easily been the leading mobile
platform.

~~~
freehunter
Microsoft _was_ the leading mobile platform. They even had apps, real apps,
desktop-caliber (for the time) apps. 10 years before the iPhone.

Microsoft had the lead for a while and they got disrupted by a shinier, more
consumer-friendly device. Their mistake was thinking that consumers didn't
want a smartphone and aiming it at an enterprise market, like Blackberry. That
"mistake" made them possibly billions of dollars over its life.

Apple took a huge risk going in the opposite direction. It's easy to look back
and realize Microsoft gave up a huge market segment, but at the time things
were going well for them. Their only competitor back then (Palm) bet the
company on trying to make the transition to compete with Apple and... well. We
all know what happened there.

------
denisehilton
This is really sad. They shouldn't have given up so early. They could have
improved a lot. People still trust Microsoft even with mobile phones.

------
hugh4life
If I was Microsoft I'd work on something like a browser based mobile OS like
Firefox OS. Firefox OS failed but that was before ES6 and asmjs.

------
ezioamf
MS need to create a windows phone that runs Android + Windows apps + can be
turned on a full Windows Desktop running on ARM when docked up.

------
miketery
What if Microsoft open sourced it? Maybe with the understanding that the
default search engine would be Bing and browser edge?

------
chx
Great. But the "unified UI" lead to touchscreens which are now a staple on
laptops and they won't go away alas :(

------
dzonga
if I was Microsoft's CEO, I would have donated $ billions to Mozilla. Then let
Mozilla to build the best mobile browser. The Web can easily abstract the OS.
As WeChat has shown. That way I can sell more handsets and also bespoke
"Microsoft Services" based on the web.

------
mariushn
Microsoft, please invest instead in [https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-roadmap-to-
imx8/](https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-roadmap-to-imx8/)

so that you cut into your competitors cash cows, even if you don't have a
profit. Just like Google did to you with Google Docs, cutting into MS Office.

This way, you'd at least have a voice on mobile, instead of fully out.

------
fetbaffe
On what hardware platform does Microsoft earn money on? Xbox and keyboards?

Will Microsoft go back to a pure software maker?

~~~
aloisdg
Surface

~~~
fetbaffe
Not sure if Microsoft has earned back it's investment on the Surface line yet.
First years it was a big loss, then it has started to earn money, but it has
started falling again.

Compared to Xbox, Surface revenue is about a 25% of Xbox.

Of total earnings Surface is about 3%.

------
hehno
I honestly thought they did pretty bad trying to enter the market. It was
already flooded.

------
mtgx
That was kind of obvious a year or two ago when Microsoft gutted 99% of the
Nokia division.

------
kanishkdudeja
Isn't there a Surface Phone in the works? I've heard lots of rumours about it.

------
Animats
Does this mean that Groove Music will go the way of Zune and PlaysForSure?

~~~
pducks32
It already did. They are shutting down the streaming service.

~~~
Animats
Microsoft is not part of the music ecosystem.

("PlaysForSure is not part of the Zune ecosystem" \- Microsoft flack, 2006)

------
jicea
In 2009, when announcing Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft launched the Windows
Marketplace, a tentative to catch up with the App Store Gold rush. We were a
french Windows Mobile game company back then, so we decided to submit our
games to the Windows Marketplace. The process was really not smooth, on the
technical side, on the "marketing" side and the process side.

On the technical side, the apps submission was crippled with bugs, with
cryptic messages that we couldn't figure. A lot of developers were having the
same troubles and we painfully figured out what were the problems while
searching Microsoft forums. It gave me a really bad impression, and I
remembered not being impressed at all. We were also in the process of
submitting our first app to the iOS App Store and comparing the two
experiences was not good for Microsoft, even with the complexity of
certificates/signatures of the App Store.

On the marketing side, the entry price for submitting 5 apps to the
Marketplace was $99. Then, you had to pay $10 for each new app, or for a new
localised version of your app (you had to create a new entry for each
localised version). Once again, on the iOS store, you just had to pay $99/year
for a developper certificate and then you could submit any number of
apps/version you want. I didn't understand back then why Microsoft had chosen
theses rules: they just had to copy a successful model from their competitor.
We did what almost all developers did at this time : we paid $99, submitted 5
apps and waited to see how successful was the Marketplace.

Our game, a puzzle game called Meon, began to be downloaded a lot. We saw
purchases going up in the Marketplace vendor interface. We were super happy,
but there was a problem. We couldn't figure how to fill the paiement account.
All instructions seemed to be written for a US developper : you had to provide
a proof of identity signed by a notary, you had to fill a W8-BEN form etc...
We kept trying to submit our W8-BEN form but kept receiving email about our
W8-BEN that told-us something was bad with it. For 6 months, we couldn't fill
our paiement information, while we saw the royalties climbed up. At the same
time, Microsoft launched the "Race to Market Challenge" to boost the
Marketplace and motivate developer to submit apps. Ironically, we won the race
in the 'Most Downloaded Free Application' (and accessory a really really big
Microsoft Surface Table). As winner, we were invited in August in Seattle,
among other developers, to attend to a private presentation of what will be
the next Microsoft platform, Windows Phone 7. It was really cool from
Microsoft to invite us, a small game company (3 persons) among big name like
Bank of America. In the Microsoft office, I managed to explain our payment
problem to one of the presenter, he sent a mail and few days later, our
payment information was validated and we finally got our money.

What I learned then was to not trust Microsoft when you’re a small developer :
if I hadn't been able to contact a Microsoft manager in person, I wouldn't be
able to get my money. The whole process was not ready, and not in the same
league of the growing App Store. As a 3 developers company, we prioritised to
work on iOS and Android. Microsoft sent us Lumia phone to develop apps for
Windows 7: It was too late, you never get a second chance to make a first
impression.

------
baldfat
Technically was good perhaps even better platform than iOS and Android.

To Late To Market

------
perseusprime11
The lack of a Youtube App from Google killed the Windows Phone.
[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/)

~~~
roryisok
definitely helped. MS put a lot of effort into building a slick YouTube app
and Google changed the T&Cs the week after it launched or something. Basically
issued a takedown of the MS app because it didn't conform to the new standard
they'd just introduced. I believe it was that third party apps had to allow
ads, even though the iOS and Android apps did not.

~~~
bitmapbrother
Naw, you have it all wrong. They reversed engineered the YouTube API's and
then suppressed YouTube ads. They deserved what they got for doing something
that stupid and not thinking Google wouldn't find out.

~~~
roryisok
have you got a link to the original story? I really thought they were
following the T&Cs and then those T&Cs were changed within days

~~~
bitmapbrother
[https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft-
google-...](https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft-google-
battle-over-youtube-windows-phone)

------
fa17
MS has gotten really good with hardware off late. Why not a Surface phone with
Stock android and regular updates? If it works out, gives MS a platform to try
different services like Samsung with bixby etc.

------
wintorez
Microsoft is a joke, and not even a good one.

------
gressquel
Windows phone didnt fail because of Microsofts efforts, it failed because of
other companies efforts.

Let me name some of them: Instagram (fb), facebook, Snapchat.

Especially the last one has an agenda.

------
insulanian
It was just a matter of time.

------
DoodleBuggy
This is very disappointing. Apple and Google needed the competition.

------
dang
Url changed to this (via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15433098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15433098))
from [http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-mobile-microsoft-
jus...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-mobile-microsoft-just-put-the-
final-nail-in-the-coffin/), a slightly less substantive article.

------
201709User
At least they did it with a tweet. It's a sign of respect, right?

------
madmulita
Oh boy, Nokia's gonna be pissed!

------
coldtea
> _Microsoft has told its die-hard Windows 10 Mobile fans_

All 5 of them?

~~~
buddapalm
It's at least 5X larger than that. ;)

~~~
huffpopo
There are literally dozens of us.

------
holydude
Well Windows phone was just different. And being different does not always
mean being the best. Windows on mobile should have been more modular when it
came to looks. Enforcing tiles on mobile when people were used to traditional
icons on screen was a terrible decision. I am not going to write about the
other issues like incompatibilities , lack of apps and other chicken and egg
problems.

You can experiment when you have the user base and even then you need to be
super careful.

