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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

#211

Post by mobilio »

mgkimsal wrote: post #93
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 I remember some of this vaguely. A friend of mine deep in the MS world was showing me some of what was going on, but this "ran promotions" - I dunno. I don't think I'm way out in "non-MS" land - I keep my finger on the pulse of a lot of tech communities. I didn't hear much about this except from a few friends…

I remember that story for tablets. Same was with Amazon Fire Phone.

But i don't know how you can write off $1B... because honestly even iPod or iPhone wasn't successfully from the beginning. So they invest years for that status.

Competitors make clones, release them and after two months declaring abandoning market. Totally non-sence for me!

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#213

Post by ygra »

jmkni wrote: post #92
shadowmint wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IIRC Winforms relies on core, proprietary, parts of Windows which couldn't be feasibly ported to .net core. Not sure about WPF. It's a shame because it's a great development experience.

Windows Forms is a thin wrapper around the Win32 API and GDI+. Which is good if you want to customize things on a low level, but bad if you want to run it anywhere else. But cross-platform compatibility for a UI framework was probably a very low priority in 1999 or 2000. You could port it to .NET Core, but then you could only run it on Windows, since pretty much everything is a P/Invoke into user32.dll.

Generally, having something cross-platform either means you're terrible everywhere (Swing), terrible on non-primary platforms (GTK), or have to invest a lot of work in making things work well and still don't quite feel native (Qt). Or you go the Xamarin Forms route and have a few core controls that have to be implemented natively on every platform, which reduces their features to the lowest common denominator, often doesn't expose or enable low-level platform details that may sometimes be needed for customization, and means that you have to invest thrice as much effort into making everything work.

In my experience UI frameworks either are bound to a specific platform, or suck. Or both. But a cross-platform WPF would be awesome, but I'd rather expect UWP to become cross-platform instead of WPF.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#214

Post by cjsuk »

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…

We needed quality control as well, something which is very lacking at the moment. The sheer amount of bugs I hit trying to get my daughter's Lumia 650 up was ridiculous.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#215

Post by 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.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#216

Post by terminado »

nailer wrote: post #138
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #72

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 fa…

> Facebook fail (killed internally) Interesting. What was the Facebook mobile OS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Home

http://www.htc.com/us/smartphones/htc-first/

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#217

Post by WorldMaker »

melling wrote: post #7

“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 th…

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".

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#218

Post by Gaelan »

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…

Didn't the iPhone launch US-only?

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#219

Post by evilduck »

criddell wrote: post #155
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?

> 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.

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.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#220

Post by joenathanone »

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…

You don't know how untrue this is, couple of things. First lets start with this qoute

"According to Kantar's October 2013 report, Windows Phone accounted for 10.2% of all smartphone sales in Europe and 4.8% of all sales in the United States."

and then this one

"Microsoft announced new data from IDC indicating that Windows Phone is the second-most-used mobile platform in Latin America."

Lastly, do you not remember the launch of the iPhone? Not only was it only available in the US, you could only get it on AT&T.

There can be many reasons Windows Phone failed, but what you've mentioned isn't one of them.

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