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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

#201

Post by teekert »

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…

I loved it too, but my Nokia Lumia 800 never got updated. Loved the flow of things, it was fast, Whatsapp worked basically all I needed. But I did feel screwed as an early adopter. Why was I never able to run APKs? That would have helped so much...

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#203

Post by pjc50 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #173
philliphaydon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. W…

> someone releasing a phone "for enterprise" that didn't work on Verizon, the main carrier of enterprise users

Whose fault is this though? Was it missing a particular radio band, or was it anti-competitive behaviour by Verizon? I'm used to just buying phones and slipping in the SIM.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#205

Post by cjsuk »

arenaninja wrote: post #196
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…

I bought someone a Windows phone and they had the same feedback - big name apps not available (whatsapp, instagram, etc.) I wanted to buy a Windows phone since I use none of these apps, but there was no hardware refresh or major announcements around Windows phones and that deterred me. I don't understand how MS went on to a successful Surface and failed phones, I would think they're similar markets - hype-driven, tak…

I think that's close to the truth but really there has never been any product direction or commitment from MSFT. why would you build a product on that?

Surface isn't successful. It's a disaster. Just a well covered up one so far. Give it a couple of years and it'll be down the toilet as well. Consumer Reports dumped on them last year with a 25% failure rate within 2 years. Rather than deal with this, they go into denial and market market market mode.

The problem is that they're building products they want, not what the user wants. And when the user asks for something, they just say NOTHING and drown out all the negativity with blogs and hype and pointless communication paths to pacify the users who are pissed off.

On top of all that there is this personality cult around Satya where everyone is saying he's the second coming, the saviour and all that junk. Turns out that it's blinded marketing, the enterprise customers are getting shafted (me) and footing the bill for cock up after cock up after cock up.

Quality is gone. Privacy is gone. No one says anything. Everyone is voting with their feet.

Same turd of a company as ever.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#206

Post by pwdisswordfish »

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…

I loved my Lumia 920, and if only there were apps, I would not be using iPhone right now. Major things I've missed that were available on android/iOS:

banking app - some other banks had an app for WP, but I didn't want to switch banks

public transit route planner - there were some, iOS and android had THE app for my city with really good bus arrival estimates

official public transit app - I couldn't buy tickets from my phone

official city parking app - had to go to parking teller and pay there in friggin cash, now I just set the zone and am done with it

even the most popular taxi app was not available

Hearthstone - I like this rng card game

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#207

Post by Clubber »

camus2 wrote: post #45
pritambarhate wrote: post #33

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 inste…

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. Wh…

>it should have tried to copy its own strategy on PC, which is creating a OS and letting other companies build Windows Phones.

Google/Android beat them to the punch. I don't think that would work for a third entrant.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#208

Post by pjc50 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #188
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 threw about $500k at my employer at the time to hire some Eastern European company to build an app. They ended up stringing something together that got deployed on like 10 phones. The problem was that a big enterprise customer is clueless about mobile apps, and Microsft’s endemic NIH syndrome made it difficult to work with business systems that aren’t Microsoft platforms. O365 is a great example... the office pl…

Outlook+Exchange is really the thing keeping Microsoft alive.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#209

Post by richardknop »

nova22033 wrote: post #65
nathantotten wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stretch IMO. I was working there too at the time and the focus on apps was never as strong as it should have been. Yes, they paid out lots of money to get devs to build apps, but they never really dedicated the resources to building quality apps. The prime example was Facebook. This was an app built by Microsoft with FBs blessing, but it was always far behind in terms of features and quality. Developement o…

>Had Microsoft put quality dev teams on building high quality third-party apps I think the chances of success would have greatly improved. For one app? For an app they would have to give away for free? For an app that would always be behind the FB built ios/android apps?

For a small number of core apps. If they have invested heavily and put their best engineers to work on high quality core apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Messenger etc (maybe it would be 15-20 apps 90% of people install on their phones), they would have had a much better shot at gaining momentum.

Other smaller apps would have followed and been made by independent developers but you need to cover the apps almost everybody is using and make them comparable feature and quality/performance wise to iOS and Android versions.

Number one thing most people do on their new phone is download Facebook/Messenger/Twitter. If those apps suck they will immediately have a very bad impression and will switch back to iOS or Android as soon as they get a chance.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#210

Post by WorldMaker »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
naikrovek wrote: post #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 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.

UWP apps that work by accident on phones is not a bad strategy, though. Good application design is responsive, same reason responsive became a huge buzzword in web dev. Even if you are just designing with Desktop in mind: there are hundreds of combinations of monitor resolutions and DPI settings, and everyone has their own personal preferences for how they arrange applications on those monitors. Windows apps have always been resizable and there are always people that will want to shrink app windows to tiny phone sizes while they work on other things.
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