Android Killed Windows Phone, Not Apple(theverge.com)
theverge.com
Android Killed Windows Phone, Not Apple
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970082/google-killed-windows-phone-not-iphone
114 comments
Wow. I can't believe there were all these restrictions and upheavals. I loved two of my Lumia devices. I didn't know you needed Windows 8 for development. Bad move. No less with the phone doing better in different parts of the world, having Windows 8 as a requirement is obviously bad.
The incompatibility of apps was lame the first go around. I had bad luck with my devices and so I was out by the time of Windows 10. I didn't know the incompatibility happened a second time.
I don't think the browser or "slow devices" as you say are the reason for its demise at all though. Windows on mobile was a great OS.
I believe even with all the faults you mention, if they were somehow able to get the top 25 to 50 apps onto their store, we would still have Windows mobile around today with a ~10% market share worldwide (varying greatly by country).
Of course getting the apps onto their store would be an undertaking so it's quite hypothetical. My main point is, I firmly believe that is what killed Windows and any other OS that arrived late or never got popular enough by 2011 or so, when a few major apps were already desired by many people or at least the hype and talk would tell people that.
P.S. I miss webOS even more than Windows 8 :/. So sad we are left with two mobile OS options knowing there were good ones that didn't survive.
The incompatibility of apps was lame the first go around. I had bad luck with my devices and so I was out by the time of Windows 10. I didn't know the incompatibility happened a second time.
I don't think the browser or "slow devices" as you say are the reason for its demise at all though. Windows on mobile was a great OS.
I believe even with all the faults you mention, if they were somehow able to get the top 25 to 50 apps onto their store, we would still have Windows mobile around today with a ~10% market share worldwide (varying greatly by country).
Of course getting the apps onto their store would be an undertaking so it's quite hypothetical. My main point is, I firmly believe that is what killed Windows and any other OS that arrived late or never got popular enough by 2011 or so, when a few major apps were already desired by many people or at least the hype and talk would tell people that.
P.S. I miss webOS even more than Windows 8 :/. So sad we are left with two mobile OS options knowing there were good ones that didn't survive.
Microsoft worked hard to get the top apps on the store, but you cant force a company to release an app for your OS. The biggest blow was google not giving them anything. No official YouTube app, no gmail, no maps etc. There were third party and even MS / Nokia apps that filled the gap just fine, but newcomers wanted to install gmail.
Google actively fought MS on windows phone. It seems silly now that they'd see WP as a threat at all, but even 2-3 years ago they were sabotaging MSs attempts to build a youtube app. MS released a great yt app for about a week and google changed the T&CS of their API and issued a take down (or maybe even blocked the app) because MS was suddenly in violation, even though their own ios and android apps also were. IIRC it was to do with displaying ads. At the time the official google apps did not do ads. MS had to revert to essentially a shortcut to YouTube in the browser.
Aside from that most of the big players were there, but when new trendy app would launch, it would launch on android and IOS. WP users would have to wait for a critical mass of popularity in the hope that there would be a port.
Google actively fought MS on windows phone. It seems silly now that they'd see WP as a threat at all, but even 2-3 years ago they were sabotaging MSs attempts to build a youtube app. MS released a great yt app for about a week and google changed the T&CS of their API and issued a take down (or maybe even blocked the app) because MS was suddenly in violation, even though their own ios and android apps also were. IIRC it was to do with displaying ads. At the time the official google apps did not do ads. MS had to revert to essentially a shortcut to YouTube in the browser.
Aside from that most of the big players were there, but when new trendy app would launch, it would launch on android and IOS. WP users would have to wait for a critical mass of popularity in the hope that there would be a port.
You can't force people to release an app, but you can incent them. Conduct market research to find out which missing services are the blocking factors for people to switch. Then approach those companies and guarantee a minimum revenue from WP. If the app makes less, Microsoft will make up the difference. Lend Microsoft engineers to those companies. Or contract it out and have Microsoft pay the bill. Or let Microsoft use public APIs to build third-party apps for those services. Don't take a 30% cut of the money users pay, temporarily.
There were many things Microsoft could do, but it seems they weren't fully committed to the platform.
There were many things Microsoft could do, but it seems they weren't fully committed to the platform.
They did that.
TheVerge reported them paying up to $100,000 to companies to port their apps to the store.
https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/15/4433082/microsoft-paying-...
That was back in 2013. Foursquare was one of those - MS covered the cost of porting it to WP. They even hired an outside developer team to do it.
TheVerge reported them paying up to $100,000 to companies to port their apps to the store.
https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/15/4433082/microsoft-paying-...
That was back in 2013. Foursquare was one of those - MS covered the cost of porting it to WP. They even hired an outside developer team to do it.
Thanks, I didn't know that.
> The biggest blow was google not giving them anything.
I wonder why they did that? Oh yeah, it's exactly like Microsoft not "giving" anything to the Linux desktop, ever.
I wonder why they did that? Oh yeah, it's exactly like Microsoft not "giving" anything to the Linux desktop, ever.
yes, its exactly like that. why help the competition?
ahem.
Visual Studio Code. Web Core Fonts.
"ever" is a strong word.
Visual Studio Code. Web Core Fonts.
"ever" is a strong word.
Come on, don't give me that. Fonts were literally ripped from the MS download site, they were never packaged or promoted to the Linux world, they couldn't even be redistributed. And VS Code is a tool for developers, mostly aimed at the Mac crowd, released in 2015, almost 20 years after KDE and more than 15 since GNOME started. VSC has nothing to do with the Linux desktop.
Microsoft fought the Linux desktop at every step and they are still fighting it, conscious that Office exclusivity is a key tool in keeping the enterprise and public-sector markets as their main cash cows. They opened to Linux-running developers just enough to promote their cloud strategy, but they will never do anything that could potentially endanger their desktop monopoly.
Microsoft fought the Linux desktop at every step and they are still fighting it, conscious that Office exclusivity is a key tool in keeping the enterprise and public-sector markets as their main cash cows. They opened to Linux-running developers just enough to promote their cloud strategy, but they will never do anything that could potentially endanger their desktop monopoly.
The fonts were not 'literally ripped'. The license could have stipulated "you must not ever use this on anything other than Microsoft Windows", but they didn't. They did not make it easy to put in linux distributions, but they did make it possible.
VSCode is indeed part of their cloud strategy. I do not for a moment claim that they did anything benevolent for linux desktop experience -- nor do I expect them to do anything especially for Linux (on the contrary, I expect them to try to kill it).
And still, all I objected was to your use of the word "ever", since VSCode is actually packaged for the linux desktop, and is, IMHO, at the moment the best IDE on linux for quite a few languages.
VSCode is indeed part of their cloud strategy. I do not for a moment claim that they did anything benevolent for linux desktop experience -- nor do I expect them to do anything especially for Linux (on the contrary, I expect them to try to kill it).
And still, all I objected was to your use of the word "ever", since VSCode is actually packaged for the linux desktop, and is, IMHO, at the moment the best IDE on linux for quite a few languages.
> It seems silly now that they'd see WP as a threat at all
It seems silly now partly because they fought it back then. Microsoft had their fare share of blunders, but they would have likely done better if Google did not act -- possibly much better.
> MS released a great yt app for about a week and google changed the T&CS of their API and issued a take down (or maybe even blocked the app) because MS was suddenly in violation, even though their own ios and android apps also were.
That's not what happened. MS's app was always in violation of Google's terms of service, and google indeed blocked them -- but there was no "sudden" violation. MS was using the same API that Google was, except it wasn't a public one -- and MS did not display ads on that app, a condition that Google actively enforced on every 3rd party YT app.
Yes, Google's iOS and Android apps used Google's non-public API, and the iOS app at the time did not display ads (the android one did). So? I do not know what kind of agreement Apple and Google had in place at the time, not was one made public -- it is possible that Apple paid for the no-ad experience, and it is possible that Google forgo iOS ad revenue in return for access to iOS users. Whatever - Microsoft was in no position to demand favorable treatment with respect to YouTube, but they gave it to themselves anyway (and suffered Google's hand as a result). Google never was under an obligation to give all 3rd parties the same API they use themselves.
One should also note that the website version of YouTube was perfectly serviceable on iPhones and Androids at the time, but was horrible on Windows Phone because the MS browser was not implementing neither standards or de-facto standards at the time; if MS invested in a reasonable moble browser (or allowed 3rd party ones), their users would likely have had a reasonable YouTube experience.
Another thing that happened more or less at the same time, which I am sure is intimately related: Microsoft asserted patents to make Google pay to make Exchange protocol available on gmail accounts, and threatening Android manufacturers left and right on infringements. Then, more or less a week after Windows Phone came out, an capitalized on the Exchange protocol (everything else wasn't as well implemented or executed -- but who cares, Gmail, Exchange and outlook supported it), Google announced that "due to Microsoft's licensing fees, users of the free tier of Gmail will no longer get Exchange protocol on a new device" -- meaning that no Windows Phone user could get a proper gmail experience on their phone. Microsoft immediately replied with "no no no, please, have it free for all users", but Google did not change their stance.
Microsoft made the bed, completely on their own.
It seems silly now partly because they fought it back then. Microsoft had their fare share of blunders, but they would have likely done better if Google did not act -- possibly much better.
> MS released a great yt app for about a week and google changed the T&CS of their API and issued a take down (or maybe even blocked the app) because MS was suddenly in violation, even though their own ios and android apps also were.
That's not what happened. MS's app was always in violation of Google's terms of service, and google indeed blocked them -- but there was no "sudden" violation. MS was using the same API that Google was, except it wasn't a public one -- and MS did not display ads on that app, a condition that Google actively enforced on every 3rd party YT app.
Yes, Google's iOS and Android apps used Google's non-public API, and the iOS app at the time did not display ads (the android one did). So? I do not know what kind of agreement Apple and Google had in place at the time, not was one made public -- it is possible that Apple paid for the no-ad experience, and it is possible that Google forgo iOS ad revenue in return for access to iOS users. Whatever - Microsoft was in no position to demand favorable treatment with respect to YouTube, but they gave it to themselves anyway (and suffered Google's hand as a result). Google never was under an obligation to give all 3rd parties the same API they use themselves.
One should also note that the website version of YouTube was perfectly serviceable on iPhones and Androids at the time, but was horrible on Windows Phone because the MS browser was not implementing neither standards or de-facto standards at the time; if MS invested in a reasonable moble browser (or allowed 3rd party ones), their users would likely have had a reasonable YouTube experience.
Another thing that happened more or less at the same time, which I am sure is intimately related: Microsoft asserted patents to make Google pay to make Exchange protocol available on gmail accounts, and threatening Android manufacturers left and right on infringements. Then, more or less a week after Windows Phone came out, an capitalized on the Exchange protocol (everything else wasn't as well implemented or executed -- but who cares, Gmail, Exchange and outlook supported it), Google announced that "due to Microsoft's licensing fees, users of the free tier of Gmail will no longer get Exchange protocol on a new device" -- meaning that no Windows Phone user could get a proper gmail experience on their phone. Microsoft immediately replied with "no no no, please, have it free for all users", but Google did not change their stance.
Microsoft made the bed, completely on their own.
> I miss webOS even more than Windows 8 :/. So sad we are left with two mobile OS options knowing there were good ones that didn't survive.
My first smartphone was a Palm Pre. I then switched to some of the first kind-of-mature android phones, like the HTC Desire and the Galaxy S2.
I remember feeling like I had taken a huge leap forward in hardware, but a backwards leap in software.
Even today I miss some things of WebOS. WebOS nailed the experience of having two documents of the same app. Each "card" could be a document, or a view into something, and each app could have several of those.
A short while ago I tried to write an email for which I needed to look often at another previous email. This is trivial on any desktop, but was a mayor pain on the mobile device I tried it (can't remember if Android tablet or iPad, but I doubt it's very different).
(If I recall correctly, Android today allows apps to expose several "Cards", or several views at the same time in the task switcher, but no apps do. For a while Chrome had an option to treat every tab as an independent card, which I liked but was messy for many people...
Every time I use a mobile device for anything serious, I think "This would be so much more comfortable and natural on Mac/Windows/Linux" every 5 minutes. May be it's just I'm antiquated.)
My first smartphone was a Palm Pre. I then switched to some of the first kind-of-mature android phones, like the HTC Desire and the Galaxy S2.
I remember feeling like I had taken a huge leap forward in hardware, but a backwards leap in software.
Even today I miss some things of WebOS. WebOS nailed the experience of having two documents of the same app. Each "card" could be a document, or a view into something, and each app could have several of those.
A short while ago I tried to write an email for which I needed to look often at another previous email. This is trivial on any desktop, but was a mayor pain on the mobile device I tried it (can't remember if Android tablet or iPad, but I doubt it's very different).
(If I recall correctly, Android today allows apps to expose several "Cards", or several views at the same time in the task switcher, but no apps do. For a while Chrome had an option to treat every tab as an independent card, which I liked but was messy for many people...
Every time I use a mobile device for anything serious, I think "This would be so much more comfortable and natural on Mac/Windows/Linux" every 5 minutes. May be it's just I'm antiquated.)
I suspect the basic problem is that to support much of the new stuff in Android app management, one have to embrace Fragments. And few apps have, as best i can tell.
I didn't know you needed Windows 8 for development. Bad move.
As opposed to Apple requiring you to buy a Mac to develop for iOS? I doubt that having to install Windows 8 - especially since you could use a VM - was a large deterrent to a lot of people.
As opposed to Apple requiring you to buy a Mac to develop for iOS? I doubt that having to install Windows 8 - especially since you could use a VM - was a large deterrent to a lot of people.
Hobby developers (which were the vast majority of apps int the first days of the ios app store) were most definitely deterred. That was Windows 8, not even 8.1, which was a complete joke of an operating system.
The first wave of ios apps came from Mac developers; then people started buying macs to build ios apps. The first wave of WP apps didn't come .... because there were very few people who could build an app on their existing dev environment (win8 uptake among developers was abysmal).
Furthermore, the first ios wave actually came from the homebrew scene, which organically grew and produced ios apps even before Apple provided an SDK; There was never such enthusiasm for MS to build on. The WP8 requirement was just adding insult to injury.
The first wave of ios apps came from Mac developers; then people started buying macs to build ios apps. The first wave of WP apps didn't come .... because there were very few people who could build an app on their existing dev environment (win8 uptake among developers was abysmal).
Furthermore, the first ios wave actually came from the homebrew scene, which organically grew and produced ios apps even before Apple provided an SDK; There was never such enthusiasm for MS to build on. The WP8 requirement was just adding insult to injury.
Bah, even though Symbian was a bit workaday, think it was killed off too early.
Microsoft killed S60 (Symbian) and kept S40 for their lower phones, when S60 could have just become the base.
Microsoft killed S60 (Symbian) and kept S40 for their lower phones, when S60 could have just become the base.
Sadlly, S40 platform hasn't been used for many years. Nokia/Microsoft feature phones use badly rewritten S30 platform for Mediatek hardware that doesn't even support Bluetooth hands-free headsets or any kind of synchronization capabilities while having Bluetooth hardware.
I never messed with Symbian too much. You think it actually had a chance at being decent in the post iOS world?
Symbian was great as user OS, for developers not so much.
It used a C++ dialect called Symbian C++, basically Hungarian notation everywhere, special semantics how objects were created (Two-phase creation), strings could not be used directly, ARM trap errors instead of exceptions, and so on.
They also rebooted the SDK multiple times, initially Code Warrior based, then a set of Eclipse CDT plugins, then they rebooted it and created another Eclipse attempt called Caride.
They eventually added POSIX support (PIPS), but just nowadays with Android, due to lack of updates, not every device could take apps that made use of PIPS.
Then came Qt, but it was pretty much WIP by the time the burning platform memo came to be.
It used a C++ dialect called Symbian C++, basically Hungarian notation everywhere, special semantics how objects were created (Two-phase creation), strings could not be used directly, ARM trap errors instead of exceptions, and so on.
They also rebooted the SDK multiple times, initially Code Warrior based, then a set of Eclipse CDT plugins, then they rebooted it and created another Eclipse attempt called Caride.
They eventually added POSIX support (PIPS), but just nowadays with Android, due to lack of updates, not every device could take apps that made use of PIPS.
Then came Qt, but it was pretty much WIP by the time the burning platform memo came to be.
Symbian was one really good OS for the pre-iOS world. A basic S60 button-phone was capable of multitasking, copy-paste, profiles (which Android and iOS still lack) and could even pull off some decent graphics in games that weren't seen till years later on iPhone/Android devices. I even remember writing an app to SSH into my computer in the rather awful implementation of C++ it supported. But it transitioned to touch interfaces poorly, at least initially. The first few versions of S60v5 for the Nokia 5800 were horrid, with basic things such as drag to scroll unimplemented. It did improve considerably over time (by late 2011-2012), but by then the market had moved on.
Also, it was a great OS for tinkerers because it wasn't hard to gain access to the OS files and play around with stuff, install sis and jar files, modify signatures (alright, that's a bit shady but I was ten, give me a break) and whatnot, but I imagine the lack of a central app store until much later did the platform no good either, because apps were slightly hard to find for a general user, and carriers (where I lived) often scammed users by offering free jar apps picked from the web on their portals for absurd amount of money.
Also, it was a great OS for tinkerers because it wasn't hard to gain access to the OS files and play around with stuff, install sis and jar files, modify signatures (alright, that's a bit shady but I was ten, give me a break) and whatnot, but I imagine the lack of a central app store until much later did the platform no good either, because apps were slightly hard to find for a general user, and carriers (where I lived) often scammed users by offering free jar apps picked from the web on their portals for absurd amount of money.
Another great feature for tinkerers was PyS60, the official Nokia port of Python, which had a decent API for many of the phone functions (GPS, camera, etc).
Plus it had ask-on-use permissions built-in before the iPhone was even a thing.
Plus it had ask-on-use permissions built-in before the iPhone was even a thing.
That said, Symbian didn't just have Nokia's S60 UI.
There was also UIQ. Used by Sony Ericsson on their P series, and Motorola in various models.
There was also UIQ. Used by Sony Ericsson on their P series, and Motorola in various models.
The last version, Belle, was quite nice to use.
With Nokia's purchase of Qt it had a shot, Symbians main failing was a really awful SDK IMHO - if they hadn't spread themselves so thin with Maemo/meego and just used Symbian as an underlying platform for new Qt apps and added touch support quickly they may have survived.
Well sure there were fast devices but those were at the same price you could get an iPhone or high-end Android and those were already proven to be good, while Microsoft was still unknown. People don't usually throw ~700$ at a device they're not sure about.
Yes Microsoft made a series of terrible decisions, but if Android hadn't existed they would have been able to lose that time and still come out on top. The problem wasn't just that it took Microsoft executives about a year to even recognise that the iPhone was a credible threat, it was also that they took even longer to recognise Android was even more of a threat. By then, it was too late.
When Windows Phone 7 and 8 came out, other than Android what other alternatives existed for OEMs to use as an OS to compete head to head with the iPhone? There was only Android. Without Android, in 2010 and 2012 they'd have had no choice but to form a queue and sign licensing agreements with Microsoft for 7 and 8.
Even if the Pre had succeeded, that wouldn't fundamentally have changed anything because it wasn't a licensed OS, aside from the persistent hardware and software quality issues that held it back. Microsoft would still have been the only viable option for companies like Samsung, Sony, HTC, etc and Windows Phone 7 and 8 were fine platforms. They could absolutely have competed with the iPhone just as successfully as Android did. They were just too late because Android was already out there and already had the apps.
When Windows Phone 7 and 8 came out, other than Android what other alternatives existed for OEMs to use as an OS to compete head to head with the iPhone? There was only Android. Without Android, in 2010 and 2012 they'd have had no choice but to form a queue and sign licensing agreements with Microsoft for 7 and 8.
Even if the Pre had succeeded, that wouldn't fundamentally have changed anything because it wasn't a licensed OS, aside from the persistent hardware and software quality issues that held it back. Microsoft would still have been the only viable option for companies like Samsung, Sony, HTC, etc and Windows Phone 7 and 8 were fine platforms. They could absolutely have competed with the iPhone just as successfully as Android did. They were just too late because Android was already out there and already had the apps.
>if Android hadn't existed they would have been able to lose that time
lol, but it did exist. TBH, when MS started their phone efforts, I think even Symbian was still around, and other operators had their own pet projects here and there - which is what the status quo was like before the iPhone anyway. So MS knew very well from the start that they had to be better than existing competition, they couldn't just stroll in and hoover up the market.
WP was a pretty bad MS fumble. They had the brand and the market clout to nail it, and they lost it to a competitor that all but followed their original Windows blueprint: give the OS more or less away (with Windows, through tolerated piracy; with Android, through opensource licensing) to get de-facto monopoly, and then leverage it in more lucrative areas (for Windows, Office and enterprise software; for Android, Google's own services and datamining).
lol, but it did exist. TBH, when MS started their phone efforts, I think even Symbian was still around, and other operators had their own pet projects here and there - which is what the status quo was like before the iPhone anyway. So MS knew very well from the start that they had to be better than existing competition, they couldn't just stroll in and hoover up the market.
WP was a pretty bad MS fumble. They had the brand and the market clout to nail it, and they lost it to a competitor that all but followed their original Windows blueprint: give the OS more or less away (with Windows, through tolerated piracy; with Android, through opensource licensing) to get de-facto monopoly, and then leverage it in more lucrative areas (for Windows, Office and enterprise software; for Android, Google's own services and datamining).
One big thing, that helped Android among early adopters was the ability to install apps originating outside app store (and also easy rooting).
This gave them the sense of ownership of the devices. It was theirs and the device did whatever they wanted. If you didn't want anything to do with Google - you could.
iOS was walled garden. Microsoft also tried to make WP into walled garden, controlling, what's running on the device and getting their cut.
This gave them the sense of ownership of the devices. It was theirs and the device did whatever they wanted. If you didn't want anything to do with Google - you could.
iOS was walled garden. Microsoft also tried to make WP into walled garden, controlling, what's running on the device and getting their cut.
Very few early adopters did any of those things.
Many early adopters did these things. I haven't seen a phone with 1.0/1.5/1.6/2.0 that didn't have either. It was so bad, that many thought that you must root your phone to make it usable.
It changed during 2.2/2.3 era, when it became mainstream. With 4.0, even the hardcore early adopters didn't bother anymore. At that age, the OS was already well established.
It changed during 2.2/2.3 era, when it became mainstream. With 4.0, even the hardcore early adopters didn't bother anymore. At that age, the OS was already well established.
Quite a bit of that had to do with storage management.
Back when 1.x shipped, all internal storage (emmc?) was dedicated to the firmware/os and apps.
user data like images and music were expected to be stored on an SD card.
But later OEMs started partitioning the emmc in two, with the smaller partition housing the firmware and apps, and the larger being mounted as if it was an SD card.
Come 2.x this got official blessing, with the introduction of "move to SD" (more like "copy some static data to SD").
But people found this to be constrained, so they would root and use tools like LinkToSD to basically set up a EXT partition on an SD card and move whole apps there, using symlinks or something to make them appear to still be in the firmware partition.
Come 4.x the user data partition was replaced with a union mount. Thus writes to /sdcard ended up somewhere else in the FS. Later versions piggybacked on this to provide support for multiple users.
Note that 4.x was also the intro of MTP for wired data transfers. This because earlier the "SD card" had to be unmounted from Android to allow a PC to access it over USB.
And now we have the Storage Access Framework, that piggyback on the plumbing introduced with MTP to offer apps limited RW access to storage areas without the need for certain permissions.
Back when 1.x shipped, all internal storage (emmc?) was dedicated to the firmware/os and apps.
user data like images and music were expected to be stored on an SD card.
But later OEMs started partitioning the emmc in two, with the smaller partition housing the firmware and apps, and the larger being mounted as if it was an SD card.
Come 2.x this got official blessing, with the introduction of "move to SD" (more like "copy some static data to SD").
But people found this to be constrained, so they would root and use tools like LinkToSD to basically set up a EXT partition on an SD card and move whole apps there, using symlinks or something to make them appear to still be in the firmware partition.
Come 4.x the user data partition was replaced with a union mount. Thus writes to /sdcard ended up somewhere else in the FS. Later versions piggybacked on this to provide support for multiple users.
Note that 4.x was also the intro of MTP for wired data transfers. This because earlier the "SD card" had to be unmounted from Android to allow a PC to access it over USB.
And now we have the Storage Access Framework, that piggyback on the plumbing introduced with MTP to offer apps limited RW access to storage areas without the need for certain permissions.
As someone who doesn't install many apps at all, I also think Microsoft killed Windows Phone with WP10 just by making it awful. They awkwardly copied a bunch of junk from Android and it lost the reasons I actually loved the platform: it was minimalistic, consistent, and rarely alerted me about anything.
Agreed, for me WM10 was the point where I decided to jump ship even though before that I was a fanboy to the bone.
More like three times. The intro of phone 7 gave the middle finger to the pocketpc platform that by then were fairly well established.
It was really sad to see the established players freak out like that.
It was really sad to see the established players freak out like that.
I actually think WP7 was genuinely fantastic. It had the beginnings of some really interesting concepts (like "hubs" rather than separate apps for every messaging network) along with a genuinely different UI. It had real potential, but MS would have had to absolutely double down on it, and they never seemed to want to.
Oh god I would love this. I deal with whatsapp, email, slack, Instagram, and FB messages on iPhone and wish the OS had one damn place to deal with it all.
I used to have Windows Phone up until 2012, and can tell you that the Hubs things did not really work as intended, as changes to the Twitter/FB/whathaveyou API usually broke functionality.
I especially remember FB messages taking hours to arrive sometimes...at its fastest there would be a delay of several minutes. So much for "instant messaging". At least back then you could still access messages in the browser.
Blackberry also implemented the Hubs feature in its BB10 and Android devices, but again functionality is pretty limited, by design. IM is a big business, and the companies behind it aren't interested in your using them outside of their own app, as you'd be deprived of using "innovations" like Stories, GIF addons and emoji packs.
I especially remember FB messages taking hours to arrive sometimes...at its fastest there would be a delay of several minutes. So much for "instant messaging". At least back then you could still access messages in the browser.
Blackberry also implemented the Hubs feature in its BB10 and Android devices, but again functionality is pretty limited, by design. IM is a big business, and the companies behind it aren't interested in your using them outside of their own app, as you'd be deprived of using "innovations" like Stories, GIF addons and emoji packs.
I still have a Windows mobile device and it has been hard to watch the Hubs eaten up by Twitter, Facebook, and even Skype, because they were such a good idea.
Facebook and Twitter want you using their apps, so they aren't incentivized to play nicely with a concept like Hubs. Towards the end of Windows Phone 8.1 they opened it up to the apps themselves to implement Hub support, rather than Microsoft's team having to keep up to date with the API, but then again Facebook and Twitter don't have any incentive to support the Hubs that well (or even at all) when they really want your eyeballs directly in their own app.
The true death of the Hubs, though was the teams in question being handed over to the Skype brand and new features that would have gone to the hubs going instead to Skype-branded apps. It makes sense for Microsoft to attach a real brand to it, especially if they are making a play to bring more of those features cross-platform (which it sounds like is the goal: the Timeline stuff that's been announced is a differently organized, more app-centric approach to some of the Hubs; the People Hub is now on the Windows 10 taskbar, with deeper Skype integration; etc).
It's sad to see some defining features of Windows Phone 8 get broken up and parceled out into different apps, and there's definitely a question that if those things become way more cross-platform (including iOS and Android support) what becomes of Windows mobile, what is left for its unique and/or flagship features? (Other than maybe being a full Windows PC given the x86 on ARM rumors?)
Facebook and Twitter want you using their apps, so they aren't incentivized to play nicely with a concept like Hubs. Towards the end of Windows Phone 8.1 they opened it up to the apps themselves to implement Hub support, rather than Microsoft's team having to keep up to date with the API, but then again Facebook and Twitter don't have any incentive to support the Hubs that well (or even at all) when they really want your eyeballs directly in their own app.
The true death of the Hubs, though was the teams in question being handed over to the Skype brand and new features that would have gone to the hubs going instead to Skype-branded apps. It makes sense for Microsoft to attach a real brand to it, especially if they are making a play to bring more of those features cross-platform (which it sounds like is the goal: the Timeline stuff that's been announced is a differently organized, more app-centric approach to some of the Hubs; the People Hub is now on the Windows 10 taskbar, with deeper Skype integration; etc).
It's sad to see some defining features of Windows Phone 8 get broken up and parceled out into different apps, and there's definitely a question that if those things become way more cross-platform (including iOS and Android support) what becomes of Windows mobile, what is left for its unique and/or flagship features? (Other than maybe being a full Windows PC given the x86 on ARM rumors?)
The first android Gtalk, that was shipped with Android 1.x, had plugin system for third parties.
The plugins never materialized. Every third party wanted complete control over it's app, which later developed into stores for digital goods, wallets, etc.
The situation was not helped by the fact, that there was no such system on iOS and the only way for a messenger to wait for messages on the background were push notifications from Apple servers. Here people expected separate apps for separate chat networks.
So basically what we have today is exactly what the market wanted.
The plugins never materialized. Every third party wanted complete control over it's app, which later developed into stores for digital goods, wallets, etc.
The situation was not helped by the fact, that there was no such system on iOS and the only way for a messenger to wait for messages on the background were push notifications from Apple servers. Here people expected separate apps for separate chat networks.
So basically what we have today is exactly what the market wanted.
> So basically what we have today is exactly what the market wanted.
If "the market" means "companies" then yes. "Users", not so much.
Much like Apple getting rid of Flash, if MS had a dominant market position they could have forced a user-friendly trend. Alas.
If "the market" means "companies" then yes. "Users", not so much.
Much like Apple getting rid of Flash, if MS had a dominant market position they could have forced a user-friendly trend. Alas.
Users didn't care either, companies used the opportunity.
When it was pointed to them, what they could have ("all the instant messaging in a single app"), the answer was a blank stare and a reply, why would they want that, they are perfectly fine launching separate apps.
When it was pointed to them, what they could have ("all the instant messaging in a single app"), the answer was a blank stare and a reply, why would they want that, they are perfectly fine launching separate apps.
Specially having XNA to play with.
>the dev environment required Windows 8
Dear god. As someone who just had to battle Win8 on a corporate laptop from a vendor... I'm shocked WP did as well as it did if this is true.
Dear god. As someone who just had to battle Win8 on a corporate laptop from a vendor... I'm shocked WP did as well as it did if this is true.
Microsoft doesn't only make super mediocre products, but then services the customers of those products in a super mediocre way.
My most recent pain is O365 customers that signed up in the US but no longer use US credit cards, forced to migrate their tenancy with no warning or thought for the disruption that causes.
I, in fact, wanted to buy Office 365 for my startup, but it was too hard to buy, so I bought GSuite: https://medium.com/@karti/office-365-was-too-hard-to-buy-so-...
Phone 8 apps aren't compatible with 10? Are you sure about that?
It was Steve Ballmer and Steven Sinofsky that killed Windows Phone. They killed it first by being late: Android released September 2008, Windows Phone was released November 2010. Two years behind Android!! They killed it also by being not sufficiently differentiated. Then they also killed it with the bland Metro look & feel. Microsoft learned nothing from previous failures such as Zune.
Microsoft has learned nothing from the failure of Windows Phone, and is now in the process of killing Windows. Yes, Windows 10 is pretty good, but as an app platform it is a failure. Even Microsoft products such as Teams and Azure Storage Explorer use Electron, not native Windows APIs. And why would any developer make native Windows apps? Ordinary users can't tell an app built using Electron from a native Windows app. Thanks to Metro and its bland flatness, Windows apps does not have a differentiated look & feel, so end users don't know to demand Windows native apps. So developers are better off using cross-platform technologies such as Electron. (Yes, Electron is bloated but if your application is substantial this is not a deal breaker.)
Microsoft has learned nothing from the failure of Windows Phone, and is now in the process of killing Windows. Yes, Windows 10 is pretty good, but as an app platform it is a failure. Even Microsoft products such as Teams and Azure Storage Explorer use Electron, not native Windows APIs. And why would any developer make native Windows apps? Ordinary users can't tell an app built using Electron from a native Windows app. Thanks to Metro and its bland flatness, Windows apps does not have a differentiated look & feel, so end users don't know to demand Windows native apps. So developers are better off using cross-platform technologies such as Electron. (Yes, Electron is bloated but if your application is substantial this is not a deal breaker.)
I've had interest in writing native Windows (desktop) apps in the recent past, but the confusing messaging/lack of commitment to any particular direction was a real turnoff. On Apple platforms, the only real choice you make is between Swift and Objective-C because either way you'll be using Cocoa. Microsoft would do well to bring that sense of clarity to their dev scene.
The other problem is that after they finally showed a direction (xaml/UWP) no backwards compatibility was offered, you had to choose between the now deprecated libraries and have an app that worked on windows 7+, or you could choose the new ones and have it only work on windows 10.
Had UWP run on windows 7 we might have seen some more take-up.
Had UWP run on windows 7 we might have seen some more take-up.
XAML/WPF is close enough to XAML/UWP that you could keep a codebase for both relatively clean and easy to support. (As someone that had to do a bunch of work to maintain a codebase with both XAML/WPF and XAML/Silverlight front-ends, I have very little sympathy to give to anyone that thinks otherwise.)
These days it's getting even easier with Xamarin adding support for WPF, but even without that sort of hand-holding there have always been options.
XAML/WPF is much better than "no backwards compatibility" if you needed to support a UWP-first application on Windows 7. Certainly there were more issues moving the other direction, but particularly/mostly if you had skipped architecting for Silverlight as an intermediate step.
These days it's getting even easier with Xamarin adding support for WPF, but even without that sort of hand-holding there have always been options.
XAML/WPF is much better than "no backwards compatibility" if you needed to support a UWP-first application on Windows 7. Certainly there were more issues moving the other direction, but particularly/mostly if you had skipped architecting for Silverlight as an intermediate step.
UWP cannot run on Windows 7 because it requires a container model, which I doubt they could just patch on Windows 7.
They probably couldn't just port the patches, but there's no reason why they couldn't write a runtime environment on W7, even if it didn't provide the same security guarantees.
[deleted]
> I've had interest in writing native Windows (desktop) apps in the recent past, but the confusing messaging/lack of commitment to any particular direction was a real turnoff.
Seconded. The previous times I wanted/needed to do Windows development, the first step was ridiculously simple:
Nowadays, that gives "Programming Windows Sixth Edition", from 2013, which "focuses exclusively on writing Windows Store applications", for Windows 8, almost always in XAML and C#. He says that "Plenty of other books already exist for writing Win32 desktop applications, including the 5th edition of Programming Windows. I’ll occasionally make reference to Win32 API and desktop applications, but this book is really all about writing new Windows 8 applications".
If I use this book, will it work for Windows 10 also? Are these applications only distributable via the Windows Store or can I host them for download from anywhere? If I want to distribute an application through the Windows Store does it have to be this type, or can I also distribute Win32 desktop applications via the store?
I have one specific application I miss from my old 3rd generation iPad that I have not found a good equivalent for on my Surface Pro 4, and so would like to write it myself, but I have not found a clear explanation of just what my options are, so have not started.
Seconded. The previous times I wanted/needed to do Windows development, the first step was ridiculously simple:
BUY book
FROM bookstore
WHERE author = 'Charles Petzold'
AND title CONTAINS 'Programming Windows'
ORDER BY publication_date DESC
LIMIT 1
Nowadays, that gives "Programming Windows Sixth Edition", from 2013, which "focuses exclusively on writing Windows Store applications", for Windows 8, almost always in XAML and C#. He says that "Plenty of other books already exist for writing Win32 desktop applications, including the 5th edition of Programming Windows. I’ll occasionally make reference to Win32 API and desktop applications, but this book is really all about writing new Windows 8 applications".
If I use this book, will it work for Windows 10 also? Are these applications only distributable via the Windows Store or can I host them for download from anywhere? If I want to distribute an application through the Windows Store does it have to be this type, or can I also distribute Win32 desktop applications via the store?
I have one specific application I miss from my old 3rd generation iPad that I have not found a good equivalent for on my Surface Pro 4, and so would like to write it myself, but I have not found a clear explanation of just what my options are, so have not started.
It seems that Microsoft's moat is shrinking. If people don't develop Windows native applications, then what is the power of the Windows Operating System as Business Moat? It seems like their future is Windows Azure or bust.
No it's not shrinking just yet although they clearly don't see Windows as a cash cow like you are suggesting. Their moat is in having diversified but complementary business units.
Microsoft made $21bn on $90bn in revenues [1] and the stock market responded by sending the stock to an all-time high of ~$74 [2].
Microsoft is still a very healthy business and will remain so for a while.
[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/7/21/16008618/microsoft-all-time...
[2] https://www.google.com/finance?cid=358464
Microsoft made $21bn on $90bn in revenues [1] and the stock market responded by sending the stock to an all-time high of ~$74 [2].
Microsoft is still a very healthy business and will remain so for a while.
[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/7/21/16008618/microsoft-all-time...
[2] https://www.google.com/finance?cid=358464
they still have their office powerhouse for now
and the corporate. Windows will not dissapear so soon from corporate desktops.
> Even Microsoft products such as Teams and Azure Storage Explorer use Electron, not native Windows APIs.
You forgot the big one, Visual Studio Code - a runaway success, and an electron app. The reason they don't build these as UWP apps is because they are cross-platform. UWP is currently only available on Windows, and they want VSCode etc to run on MacOS and Linux.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if they bring the UWP platform to MacOS and Linux in the near future. It makes perfect sense (apart from the name, but MS is no stranger to renaming things)
> Ordinary users can't tell an app built using Electron from a native Windows app. Thanks to Metro and its bland flatness, Windows apps does not have a differentiated look & feel, so end users don't know to demand Windows native apps.
I'm really not sure what you mean here. Metro is bland and flat if you design your app that way, and a lot of people design electron apps specifically "flat" to avoid them looking like a particular OS. android and ios apps look like this, I think its just a natural trend of the software / UI industry that apps are starting to look homogenous.
I personally don't like it though. I like file menus like old school forms apps. If that's what you mean then I agree.
> So developers are better off using cross-platform technologies such as Electron.
Not for design reasons!
You forgot the big one, Visual Studio Code - a runaway success, and an electron app. The reason they don't build these as UWP apps is because they are cross-platform. UWP is currently only available on Windows, and they want VSCode etc to run on MacOS and Linux.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if they bring the UWP platform to MacOS and Linux in the near future. It makes perfect sense (apart from the name, but MS is no stranger to renaming things)
> Ordinary users can't tell an app built using Electron from a native Windows app. Thanks to Metro and its bland flatness, Windows apps does not have a differentiated look & feel, so end users don't know to demand Windows native apps.
I'm really not sure what you mean here. Metro is bland and flat if you design your app that way, and a lot of people design electron apps specifically "flat" to avoid them looking like a particular OS. android and ios apps look like this, I think its just a natural trend of the software / UI industry that apps are starting to look homogenous.
I personally don't like it though. I like file menus like old school forms apps. If that's what you mean then I agree.
> So developers are better off using cross-platform technologies such as Electron.
Not for design reasons!
«I wouldn't be at all surprised if they bring the UWP platform to MacOS and Linux in the near future.»
Xamarin announced support for Linux and macOS at BUILD, and from what I hear most of the work is fairly far along (on GitHub).
So if Xamarin is the "React Native" to the UWP's C#/XAML platform, Electron and Cordova are still useful cross-platform runtimes for the UWP's JS/HTML stack.
I think the messaging from Microsoft seems pretty clear that web-based apps of all sorts (PWAs, Electron, Cordova, UWP JS/HTML, etc) are still welcome on Windows as "first-class" apps and that it's up to team productivity and preference which platform to use. It shouldn't be a surprise to see a bunch of Microsoft-built Electron apps now, because JS/HTML has always been in the UWP "big tent".
(There has even been some cool work done to bring more of the Electron apps more directly into UWP containers, and making them more directly first class UWP citizens, and I hope that work continues.)
Xamarin announced support for Linux and macOS at BUILD, and from what I hear most of the work is fairly far along (on GitHub).
So if Xamarin is the "React Native" to the UWP's C#/XAML platform, Electron and Cordova are still useful cross-platform runtimes for the UWP's JS/HTML stack.
I think the messaging from Microsoft seems pretty clear that web-based apps of all sorts (PWAs, Electron, Cordova, UWP JS/HTML, etc) are still welcome on Windows as "first-class" apps and that it's up to team productivity and preference which platform to use. It shouldn't be a surprise to see a bunch of Microsoft-built Electron apps now, because JS/HTML has always been in the UWP "big tent".
(There has even been some cool work done to bring more of the Electron apps more directly into UWP containers, and making them more directly first class UWP citizens, and I hope that work continues.)
Well one reason to build native UWP apps is that you do animation on the composition layer, thus ensuring 60 fps. It makes quite a difference in the feeling of animated UI, side menus etc.
I agree though that app stores for desktop apps, seems to be the case for OS X as well. Not quiet sure why.
I agree though that app stores for desktop apps, seems to be the case for OS X as well. Not quiet sure why.
> And why would any developer make native Windows apps?
For the same customers that require WPF/Windows Forms nowadays, and there are tons of them in industrial settings.
Their Windows XP and Windows 7 computers won't last forever, but they still need to plug hardware devices, OS specific APIs, and COM based drivers into their native apps.
For the same customers that require WPF/Windows Forms nowadays, and there are tons of them in industrial settings.
Their Windows XP and Windows 7 computers won't last forever, but they still need to plug hardware devices, OS specific APIs, and COM based drivers into their native apps.
Zune and WP were about five years ahead of the trend in digital first design. They're more minimal that what we have now (flat backgrounds not subtle gradients) but we're still far ahead of pre version 4 Android.
[deleted]
Back in the days, I thought Nokia with its Meego OS will run away with the 3rd OS title. It was an OS that was much hyped when its still in development.
Thanks to Elop and Microsoft we never see that happening. It was killed before it was even born.
I bought the Nokia N9(the only Meego phone released) a couple of month after its launch, knowing the OS is coming to its end. The Meego OS was a very polished and well-made OS. It was smooth, very intuitive, and simply the best touchscreen smartphone experience I've ever had. Thats was why Elop and WP infuriate me so much. It was a missed opportunity. Nokia took the easy route of getting paid by Microsoft to use its OS, and that bite them in the ass.
And so I'm glad that trash WP and Nokia failed spectacularly
Thanks to Elop and Microsoft we never see that happening. It was killed before it was even born.
I bought the Nokia N9(the only Meego phone released) a couple of month after its launch, knowing the OS is coming to its end. The Meego OS was a very polished and well-made OS. It was smooth, very intuitive, and simply the best touchscreen smartphone experience I've ever had. Thats was why Elop and WP infuriate me so much. It was a missed opportunity. Nokia took the easy route of getting paid by Microsoft to use its OS, and that bite them in the ass.
And so I'm glad that trash WP and Nokia failed spectacularly
Old school N800/N810 owner here. Nokia failed long before the N900, let alone the N9. You had the Symbian business unit veto-ing the release of any Maemo (Meego's name before they tried to align with the other players that had a desktop OS along the same lines.) Every release was incompatible with the last.. for example NIT2006 (N770) was incompatible with NIT2007 (N800, and a bleeding edge port for N770 because som many users were upset the device got dropped) was incompatible with NIT2008 (N800) was incompatible with NIT2008 R2/Diablo (N800, N810) - this lost a massive amount of packaged software, and alienated the community. I mean, the N770 had many hundreds of packages. The N800 had a few hundred (like, half, maybe less), the N810 was getting to the point were Nokia's own repo was looking bare, and third parties were the only real support. Then the next OS version (Harmatten?) was for the N900 only. Then they were moving to Qt, even though we were promised that GTK+ would always be the UI tool kit. Nokia management bungled everything. Made supporting the device a horrible experience, and people left. I'm happy that you liked the N9, but the writing was on the wall maybe 2 or 3 years prior to that, around when the N900 appeared.
Funny, i only recall the N900 being a compatibility break.
The 770 to N810 issue was hardware performance, not platform breakage. The 770 was simply too damn hardware constrained compared to the N800/810 (basically a N800 with a keyboard, and just a single SD slot).
The N900 on the other hand introduced a whole new UI, QT as the primary UI framework, and beefed up the hardware on top.
Yes you could still attempt to run N900 programs on the N800, but they would rarely fit the screen etc.
The 770 to N810 issue was hardware performance, not platform breakage. The 770 was simply too damn hardware constrained compared to the N800/810 (basically a N800 with a keyboard, and just a single SD slot).
The N900 on the other hand introduced a whole new UI, QT as the primary UI framework, and beefed up the hardware on top.
Yes you could still attempt to run N900 programs on the N800, but they would rarely fit the screen etc.
I don't think there is a single smoking gun- many things contributed to the downfall of Windows Phone. Microsoft had a decent market share with the old Windows CE based smart phones.
- Microsoft didn't care about mobile, thinking Windows CE was fine (they had ~42% marketshare in 2007)
- Windows Phone 7 was great, but it was too late by then (2010... 3 years after iPhone was release and 2 years after first Android phone)
- There were two resets (7 => 8, 8 => 10) which screwed customers hard. With the 7 => 8 upgrade, not only were apps incompatible, the OS was incompatible with previous hardware.
- The App Store was mostly full of garbage apps (lots of fake apps- hard to fine the genuine app)
- Carriers didn't do a very good job pushing Windows Phone (can you blame them? :P )
From my perspective (former WP user, 2011 - 2015), the biggest WTF to me was when Microsoft bought Nokia. That seems to be about the time they just completely gave up
- Microsoft didn't care about mobile, thinking Windows CE was fine (they had ~42% marketshare in 2007)
- Windows Phone 7 was great, but it was too late by then (2010... 3 years after iPhone was release and 2 years after first Android phone)
- There were two resets (7 => 8, 8 => 10) which screwed customers hard. With the 7 => 8 upgrade, not only were apps incompatible, the OS was incompatible with previous hardware.
- The App Store was mostly full of garbage apps (lots of fake apps- hard to fine the genuine app)
- Carriers didn't do a very good job pushing Windows Phone (can you blame them? :P )
From my perspective (former WP user, 2011 - 2015), the biggest WTF to me was when Microsoft bought Nokia. That seems to be about the time they just completely gave up
Actually three resets, 8 => 8.1 was also a kind of reset with the introduction of universal apps.
That's a great point- while consumers may not have been affected by this heavily, developers had to update their apps. Lots of companies just stopped supporting their apps rather than invest time updating
> - Microsoft didn't care about mobile, thinking Windows CE was fine (they had ~42% marketshare in 2007)
This was perhaps the big one. The CE/PocketPC lineage had been going since the 90s, but Phone 7 was a sharp break with that.
Thus existing users knew they were hosed, and so no longer had a reason to be loyal to MS.
It is weird seeing MS forgo their biggest trump card in this way. Their continued grip on a market has been thanks to backwards compatibility. Yet they squandered that on mobile, and seems poised to squander it on desktop as well.
This was perhaps the big one. The CE/PocketPC lineage had been going since the 90s, but Phone 7 was a sharp break with that.
Thus existing users knew they were hosed, and so no longer had a reason to be loyal to MS.
It is weird seeing MS forgo their biggest trump card in this way. Their continued grip on a market has been thanks to backwards compatibility. Yet they squandered that on mobile, and seems poised to squander it on desktop as well.
> Microsoft didn't care about mobile, thinking Windows CE was fine (they had ~42% marketshare in 2007)
Are you taking about US market? I don't think they ever exceeded 15% globally.
Are you taking about US market? I don't think they ever exceeded 15% globally.
I disagree with this blogger's analysis. Instead, I believe Windows Phone commited suicide. When you osbourne your platform repeatedly, change your development strategy numerous times and alienate current and potential developers you have no one to blame but yourself. So, when Windows Phone saw the end coming it decided to end its struggle and quit trying to fight the inevitable.
>osbourne your platform repeatedly
Heh, Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Just got done watching a bunch of 8-bit Guy videos on the topic.
I also strongly agree. Two reboots was ridiculous in the time period that the phone was relevant.
Heh, Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Just got done watching a bunch of 8-bit Guy videos on the topic.
I also strongly agree. Two reboots was ridiculous in the time period that the phone was relevant.
Windows Desktop also went through these reboots, I feel the phone team had their hand forced.
The DOJ killed Windows Phone. If Microsoft wasn’t worried about antitrust suits, they would have given Windows away for free on phones to build up market share and OEMs wouldn’t have had to go to Google to get a free OS.
Source? In a country as lobbied and lawyered up as USA what kind of crazy antitrust laws can affect a mobile OS that is an absolute underdog with single digit market share and two HUGE competitors?
From what I gather (and I don't have any more source than word of mouth/rumor, either): at that point of Windows Phone it wasn't any laws or direct legal reasons, but the ghosts of the US DOJ and EU Court of Justice rulings that had Microsoft still worried about changing business models and giving anything Windows related away for free.
Though a lot of that was still momentum/inertia, too. Microsoft had always charged for Windows on every platform, that business model was largely sound and safe.
In Windows 10 there was enough push to change that business model, but the hesitancy in the Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 timeframes to do that probably did lead a lot of handset manufacturers to "free" Android SKUs.
Though a lot of that was still momentum/inertia, too. Microsoft had always charged for Windows on every platform, that business model was largely sound and safe.
In Windows 10 there was enough push to change that business model, but the hesitancy in the Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 timeframes to do that probably did lead a lot of handset manufacturers to "free" Android SKUs.
Back then, it was said they earned more money per device from OEMs making Android through patents (e.g. FAT) than OEMs making Windows phones.
I believe WP/MS committed suicide. They did not listen to their market and apart from the obvious app compatibility and lack of apps in general they totally forgot about people not really liking the unified design of the phones (you can't go the apple way if your audience does not like your defaults).
Tiles were really meh and people still prefer app icons a la ios/android.
I believe Microsoft still has a chance but they need to 1) talk to samsung and other big android/smartphone manufacturers 2) make a killer feature
I believe Microsoft still has a chance but they need to 1) talk to samsung and other big android/smartphone manufacturers 2) make a killer feature
The thing people liked most about wp was it had a different UI. There were people that didn't like it, sure, but WPs main cheering point was the original UI. That was absolutely not the problem
"talk to Samsung"? Samsung dominate android phone sales. They are single handedly winning the phone wars against iphone. Why would they now support a potential challenge to that?
"talk to Samsung"? Samsung dominate android phone sales. They are single handedly winning the phone wars against iphone. Why would they now support a potential challenge to that?
They also have their own OS to worry about, which they are rebooting once more, now with .NET Core as SDK.
The Universal Apps idea makes a lot of sense, and I don't think the refactors are what harmed it. Getting a late start is the primary problem, since it is all about getting apps. Windows succeeded on the desktop for that reason, and failed on mobile so far for the same reason.
But they have made all the right moves over the past five years, and have lots of momentum, cash, and goodwill from the tech community. They will do some sort of big mobile push in the near future. Probably some kind of Surface Phone, which can double as a desktop.
But they have made all the right moves over the past five years, and have lots of momentum, cash, and goodwill from the tech community. They will do some sort of big mobile push in the near future. Probably some kind of Surface Phone, which can double as a desktop.
I agree this is likely. Windows 10 is very successful, thanks to answering what people hated about 8, huge marketing effort, and the surface hardware. UWP will continue to grow because it is the way to build apps on win10, xbox and hololens.
A surface phone would leverage the surface brand, retain compatibility from wp10 (and wp8/8.1 despite what some seem to believe), and be able to run a full Desktop OS via continuum, the killer feature that never killed.
Windows 10 S is a clear attempt to push UWP going forward. I think this is with a view to future arm devices. It really seems like winRT again from the other direction. Right now you can upgrade 10S to run full Desktop apps but on future devices (ARM) who knows?
There's also talk of x86 emulation on ARM now that Intel has given up on mobile.
A surface phone would leverage the surface brand, retain compatibility from wp10 (and wp8/8.1 despite what some seem to believe), and be able to run a full Desktop OS via continuum, the killer feature that never killed.
Windows 10 S is a clear attempt to push UWP going forward. I think this is with a view to future arm devices. It really seems like winRT again from the other direction. Right now you can upgrade 10S to run full Desktop apps but on future devices (ARM) who knows?
There's also talk of x86 emulation on ARM now that Intel has given up on mobile.
I'm a weird optimist, but I don't see Windows 10 on mobile devices "dying", even if it is in a zombie state, precisely for these reasons that they've been making a lot of the right moves. With Windows 10 on mobile just being another SKU of mainline Windows now and with Windows 10 S being a very similar SKU, it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to "kill" anything so long as there are devices that want to run it.
So too with x86 on ARM emulation there's a bridge for that gap that "ARM Windows is not real Windows" now.
I expect Microsoft will continue to make plays in the space for Windows 10 on mobile/pocket PCs, especially when the timing is right (the right hardware combo, perhaps; or more of the mobile-intended "Redstone" features finish out, maybe).
So too with x86 on ARM emulation there's a bridge for that gap that "ARM Windows is not real Windows" now.
I expect Microsoft will continue to make plays in the space for Windows 10 on mobile/pocket PCs, especially when the timing is right (the right hardware combo, perhaps; or more of the mobile-intended "Redstone" features finish out, maybe).
I wonder how the fight between Android and iOS will go on. I kind of never liked Android and never owned one, but my wife had several Android devices and I always considered them inferior comparing to iOS. Mostly talking about operating system and how you "feel" using the device. But just yesterday I bought Siemens A3 2017 model to my daughter, for 300 eur, and I was surprised how similarly the phone felt to my iPhone 6s, which I paid 800 eur for... if this will continue, I am not sure if I stay with iOS after my next phone upgrade.
Also, I don't fully buy the argument that Windows Phone was unsuccessful because it was late. I think that doesn't matter that much - changing phones and even phone operating system isn't such a big deal. After using iOS for about 8 years, I have no problem to switch to something else, if it proves to be better, or equal but cheaper. If Windows Phone would be better back then, more people would switch to it after their next phone upgrade.
Also, I don't fully buy the argument that Windows Phone was unsuccessful because it was late. I think that doesn't matter that much - changing phones and even phone operating system isn't such a big deal. After using iOS for about 8 years, I have no problem to switch to something else, if it proves to be better, or equal but cheaper. If Windows Phone would be better back then, more people would switch to it after their next phone upgrade.
I don't regret MS messing up their mobile strategy, except for them directing Nokia to kill Meego. That was a pretty bad loss.
One can only foolishly hope Nokia'd consider pulling in Sailfish again for some devices. The circle would be complete and "Meego" would be back to where it was just before the board sold the company to Microsoft. Perhaps not on the road to world domination, but there's got to be some market share for a mobile OS that is not Android or iOS...
I read this on my Lumia 925, which I continue to build apps for. I have a newer android phone for testing and building apps, but the wp is still my day to day phone. I think there will continue to be a niche market for wp, for the people that love it, and that see it as a superior UI.
IOS and android are the future, but WP is vinyl
IOS and android are the future, but WP is vinyl
I watched the tech news about Windows Phone over the years it was released as 7 and 8.
The paid-for hype was obvious and hollow. Commentators sprung up in tech-related forums everywhere, singing the praises of the development experience of WP 7 with personal testimony of how awesome it was, months before it was available to developers. Then scarcely a year later, when it was clear that WP7 was not setting the world on fire, exactly the same obvious, transparent marketing hype started being produced for WP8. When challenged about this, it was declaimed that WP7 had only ever been meant as a transition phase, and 8 was where it was really the future!
It was so blatant, and so pointless.
The paid-for hype was obvious and hollow. Commentators sprung up in tech-related forums everywhere, singing the praises of the development experience of WP 7 with personal testimony of how awesome it was, months before it was available to developers. Then scarcely a year later, when it was clear that WP7 was not setting the world on fire, exactly the same obvious, transparent marketing hype started being produced for WP8. When challenged about this, it was declaimed that WP7 had only ever been meant as a transition phase, and 8 was where it was really the future!
It was so blatant, and so pointless.
What ever happened to the project to port iOS and Android apps to Windows? Neither of them working out sucks. I thought if one of them could work out, as long as the porting didn't require more than 10 or 15 percent of a code base to be changed, that could've saved Windows mobile enough to have maybe a 10% market share and perhaps stay in the game. But maybe being that small was never going to be worth it for Microsoft.
They abandoned the android port version before the ios port version, reportedly because the android version took 4x as many developers and any app worth emulating on wp would have both an ios and android version, so doing both was wasted work.
I did try out the windows phone emulation though, and was pretty impressed wrt speed. Video and camera wasn't working yet, but they had an intelligent strategy to stub and reimpment play services and billing.
Amusingly, I had to buy a $50 wp on ebay, because the one microsoft gave me when they flew a bunch of mobile devs to redmond to ask what tools we wanted, the one they gave us was not one of the two models that supported the beta. I'm only salty because, like wp itself, it was never officially killed, and we just had to figure it out when the program stopped updating.
I did try out the windows phone emulation though, and was pretty impressed wrt speed. Video and camera wasn't working yet, but they had an intelligent strategy to stub and reimpment play services and billing.
Amusingly, I had to buy a $50 wp on ebay, because the one microsoft gave me when they flew a bunch of mobile devs to redmond to ask what tools we wanted, the one they gave us was not one of the two models that supported the beta. I'm only salty because, like wp itself, it was never officially killed, and we just had to figure it out when the program stopped updating.
Project Astoria, the Android bridge, also known as the Windows Subsystem for Linux was repurposed for Developer tools/environments (the Ubuntu/OpenSUSE/Fedora on Windows tools we can use now) when the Windows mobile community mostly agreed, based on market experience of BlackBerry 10, that just running Android apps as-is without forcing the developers to port them, and without the availability of Google Play Services, could be a death sentence for the platform. (If Windows 10 is just a bad Android, why not get a real Android?)
The project to port iOS apps to WP was called Project Islandwood. Unfortunately, no iOS developers wanted to waste their time porting their apps to a platform that had no users. So it was a bridge to nowhere.
That's not true. At the time, we gave a serious thought of supporting the platform. A quick inspection of Islandwood, however, was enough to convince us otherwise—be it the frameworks that were missing, hilariously bad implementations of those that were there, dubious choices of the ObjC runtime, the fact that only handful of people from Microsoft actually worked on it, etc. It was an immensely embarrassing project, to be honest. Providing a clean–room implementation of such a mature ecosystem is no small task, of course, but what Microsoft presented was just embarrassing.
King has been using Islandwood to port all their iOS coin-eating games to Windows. (It's part of why even when running on a Windows 10 Desktop PC the games lovingly stick to a strange iOS portrait resolution, because while they can be bothered to port them they aren't worried about making them all that great. ;)
We wouldn't have that default "install me" tile for Candy Crush Saga in Windows 10 if it weren't for Islandwood. :P
We wouldn't have that default "install me" tile for Candy Crush Saga in Windows 10 if it weren't for Islandwood. :P
Hah. Makes sense.
I think they iced Astoria, like many of the good ideas. They seem to enjoy chaining restarts and broken promises/ideas.
I still remember Lumia 800, the bastard child. MeeGo smartphone with pre-installed Windows Phone version which hadn't even lived one year. Microsoft killed Windows Phone. When it comes to operating systems, without public administration and corporate clients they are unable to attract individual consumers and gain any significant market share.
Someone approached us for building multiple apps for windows phone presumably on behalf of Microsoft.
We would get paid for having our app on store. Seems the person who reached was a middle man and was more interested in making money for himself than getting good apps built.
I knew there was no way they could recover from that situation.
We would get paid for having our app on store. Seems the person who reached was a middle man and was more interested in making money for himself than getting good apps built.
I knew there was no way they could recover from that situation.
I would also wager that a lack of a thriving app store eco-system was/is a major factor that played Windows down.
By the time Windows entered the Market, Android and iOS had the critical mass of developers and users in downloading games and apps from their respective apps stores and Windows could not break into the network effect.
By the time Windows entered the Market, Android and iOS had the critical mass of developers and users in downloading games and apps from their respective apps stores and Windows could not break into the network effect.
Well, really it ended up boiling down to how late they were to enter the market. By the time they had set a toe in, the app gap was already far too wide to make a difference.
They could have built an OS that was light-years ahead of iOS and Android and it still wouldn't have mattered because no apps, no sale.
They could have built an OS that was light-years ahead of iOS and Android and it still wouldn't have mattered because no apps, no sale.
When I look back at the spectacular mobile OS implosions of that era I feel like Windows Phone deserved to die, but Palm's WebOS I'm still a bit sad about.
Their hail mary was impressive and ahead of it's time, but there was no room for a #3 in the market with Google giving away everything for free.
Their hail mary was impressive and ahead of it's time, but there was no room for a #3 in the market with Google giving away everything for free.
This is basically stratechery's line of writing on Android...
When you've got little apps to start with obviously the best idea was to throw them all out twice and hope the developers are still interested. Not to mention the dev environment required Windows 8 - personally this is what discouraged me from even trying to develop on the platform, I wasn't going to give up my perfect Windows 7 installation for a toy OS that will allow me to create apps for a toy phone while getting in my way when I tried to do real work.
Add to that a shitty web browser and quite slow devices and obviously its failure must be the fault of the competition, I mean how can such a great product fail?
The only good thing I can remember about my Windows Phone is that it handled IMAP push notifications, something iOS is still lacking.