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Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 724 posts

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every enterprise I have worked at had both linux and mac available to developers. Is this not your experience? You seem to present as truth the opposite of what I have lived.

I never worked on an enterprise with GNU/Linux worstations on their IT policy, on some companies IT tolerated rebel developers provided they took care 100% of integration issues with the company network and official tools.

Macs are usually only available to upper management, unless required for iOS development, in which case they are part of a pool shared among project teams.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every enterprise I have worked at had both linux and mac available to developers. Is this not your experience? You seem to present as truth the opposite of what I have lived.

In my (bigcorp) experience, its all windows all the way with macs available only to developers who have a need (iOS dev usually). And don’t forget that developers are a tiny minority of employees.

As seemingly ubiquitous as Macbooks are, their market share has never really budged. It's been 3-5% for the entirety of the OS X era.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#23

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 onl…

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.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#24
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.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every enterprise I have worked at had both linux and mac available to developers. Is this not your experience? You seem to present as truth the opposite of what I have lived.

Is this not your experience?

Not at all. Linux can sometimes be made available on servers if necessary, but if you want Linux on your desktop you have to use a VM (ideally without telling IT). Never worked at a large place where Macs where readily available. Macs used to be more popular ~10 years ago or so with the marketing and communications people doing a lot of DTP and design work, but even that seems to have greatly decreased.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every enterprise I have worked at had both linux and mac available to developers. Is this not your experience? You seem to present as truth the opposite of what I have lived.

"Developers" are a miniscule share of "enterprise". We are talking about the billion computers on corporate office workers' desks, not about the maybe-a-million computers of web/network/systems developers.

Counter-anecdote: every place I worked at including 4-5 major companies in various industries had compulsory windows desktops for everyone. The few of us that also had a Linux (or AIX/HP-UX/...) machines that we did our work on, SSHd into those machines.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#27
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.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#28
post #19

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 battl…

What?

Windows CE is older than Android.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#29

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 W…

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.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#30
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.

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