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Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#171

Post by MBCook »

pier25 wrote: post #122

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?

I think that was the idea of Nokia. You get high end hardware with MS services.

But MS services weren’t as good years ago, and they didn’t have many apps, and they kept burning people by not letting them upgrade to a new major OS release.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#172

Post by zild3d »

woodada wrote: post #154
wodenokoto wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

but isn't Wechat basically all the apps?

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#173

Post by ocdtrekkie »

philliphaydon wrote: post #156
itsmenotyou wrote: post #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 pr…

The problem with windows phone / mobile is not the apps. It was Microsoft. When Apple launches an Phone, it’s avaliable world wide. When Microsoft launches a phone, it’s avaliable in America. My last windows phone was a Lumia 925, the last Lumia announced I waited 7 months for it to reach singapore before throwing in the towel and going android. There were no phones avaliable outside America, uk, Australia. Now I use…

This. I knew everyone from seniors, the a police chief, to tech folks carrying Windows phones. The apps we needed were there. But Microsoft had a nearly-useless approach to hardware releases, they constantly missed the boat.

I currently carry the last Windows Mobile phone on Verizon (the US' largest carrier). It is from 2014. (Actually, a new Elite x3 is coming out next week, three years later.) This is ridiculous. When the Elite x3 originally came out, we wondered what insanity was someone releasing a phone "for enterprise" that didn't work on Verizon, the main carrier of enterprise users.

We didn't need apps, we needed phones.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#174

Post by sametmax »

itsmenotyou wrote: post #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 pr…

They tried everything, except for open standards, foss, focus on user privacy or anything that would have have made them different.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#175

Post by tomaskafka »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #158
itsmenotyou wrote: post #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 pr…

>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. The one thing MS didn't try to incentivize independent app developers was to eliminate the 30% revenue cut MS would take on the sale of paid apps. I always thought it would have been a good differentiation as there were always…

Not sure it would have helped. Any rational high-profile dev will compute that 70 % * 100 000 downloads is better that 100 % of 1000 downloads.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#177

Post by zelos »

ransom1538 wrote: post #77
itsmenotyou wrote: post #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 pr…

"but the lack of apps ultimately made us move to another ecosystem" Nuts. People don't even use apps [i]. They may have facebook or netflix installed - but then it gets real thin. https://www.apptentive.com/blog/2017/06/22/how-many-mobile-a...

> They may have an additional 25 to 30 apps installed, but only five of those are heavily used. The five non-native apps vary from user to user

Doesn't that suggest that while individual users only use a few apps, the union of apps that see significant use is much larger? So you need a wide variety of high quality apps to please a majority of users.

So it's not "none of my apps are available". It's more like "that one app that my gym uses for booking is iOS/Android only" or whatever. Finding a decent WM8 podcast app was virtually impossible back when I had a Lumia, IIRC.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#178

Post by cubano »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #88
itsmenotyou wrote: post #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 pr…

They even held a funeral for their competitors devices: https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-win... This didn't age well.

Without a doubt this stunt marked the absolute death knell for WP...my God the arrogance of those people.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#179

Post by usaphp »

shubhamjain wrote: post #163
itsmenotyou wrote: post #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 pr…

> 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. From my experience, that wasn't the case. I didn't own a Windows Phone but one of my friends did. According to him, what forced him to move was an overload of animations which became very irritating. I can recall a comment that sugg…

Yep, that’s exactly the reason why I hated it. Those animations looked nice at first but after a while they get so annoying and even launching a dialer took much longer than needed because of those flight animations.

Also I did not like the flat look and flat colors. All the apps looked the same, so did the icons. The best thing about App Store on iOS was the colorful variety of apps where each of them had a unique distinct look and it was a joy to expolore new wild apps on the marketplace.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#180

Post by throwaway7645 »

shubhamjain wrote: post #163
itsmenotyou wrote: post #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 pr…

> 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. From my experience, that wasn't the case. I didn't own a Windows Phone but one of my friends did. According to him, what forced him to move was an overload of animations which became very irritating. I can recall a comment that sugg…

Several of my friends and I loved Windows phone and I hate Windows (prefer Linux). Sounds weird, but I've always thought Windows Phone to be more elegant than Android.
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