4 ms·

> Sales are low Sales are falling off of a cliff (declining 50% YoY). Developers are not building (or updating) apps for these devices. No matter what brand na

by crabasa 11y ago

> Sales are low Sales are falling off of a cliff (declining 50% YoY). Developers are not building (or updating) apps for these devices. No matter what brand name they use, it isn't clear that anything is going to change these facts. Which should concern you if you are a happy user.

WorldMaker 11y ago
Prior to the 950 there wasn't a clear new "flagship" for nearly two years, of course it had a year over year decline. Again, this isn't new or surprising information. The possible news here is that the 950 probably isn't selling as well as we (happy users) would like. The app situation doesn't really concern me as a happy user, and I realize I'm in a bit of a minority opinion there. First of all, there is not a single "killer app" I feel I need and/or am missing out on. Mobile websites are largely reliable for most of the "app" things people need, and most of the major apps exist. Sure, some of these aren't seeing the updates they should be, and it does amuse me that Windows 10 Mobile is the last bastion of fave stars in an official Twitter app, but the UWP should help straighten out a lot of that sooner or later [1]. People are using the apps on Windows 10 Surfaces, laptops, and desktops, and devs should soon get better at realizing that getting a mobile app "for free" from the UWP is a good idea. [1] I assume Twitter, as the continued example, hasn't unified its Windows apps yet because some of the things like the People app integration haven't yet entirely made their way back into the larger UWP ecosystem. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later. (As a WP fan, I want the social integration for People working on my Surface again.)
- crabasa 11y ago
  I think you're missing the point. It takes a massive amount of effort to design, build and ship the operating system and device that you like. This is a tremendous resource drain on Microsoft, who could be using the money and manpower to do other things. There isn't one engineer on that team who is happy at the thought of their work being used by only 1% of people with mobile devices. Beyond being a business disaster, it is a morale disaster. Unless they can do something remarkable and turn around the trajectory, your device will go the way of the Zune.
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    I'm not sure I was explicit enough about part of my point: Microsoft has very clearly pointed its resources at making the Phone OS the same as the PC OS (the same as the Xbox OS, the same as the HoloLens OS). I think that leverage means that at least for the near future Microsoft has a lot of good reasons to continue to invest in phone, because, finally, a lot of those investments are also investments into the PC, the Xbox, the HoloLens, etc. You said I should be concerned about apps, but I'm not concerned about apps because developers unlike myself that don't care about Windows phones still likely care about PC users, Xbox users, and eventually HoloLens users, et al. If I have concerns it would be with hardware, but the 950 is still new and exciting and I likely have a few years before I start to worry about replacing it, if history repeats itself similarly to my 920. As for "morale disaster", the problem with percentage statistics (as with most statistics) is that it is a kind of lie. Sure, 1% (or more accurately 2-3%) of the smart phone market sounds small and scary, but keep in mind that 1% is still millions of devices, presumably used by millions of people. I don't know about you, but as an engineer I would be ecstatic to know my product was used by millions of people (many daily, many happy) I would certainly still feel that way even knowing that product was in a distant third place. It's a good old fashioned scrappy underdog story, with a chance to make millions of people happy, sign me up. As for the Zune, the "ancient Microsoft adage" is "Top 3 or Bust". Zune never quite hit the Top 3 in what became clear was a dying product category, so bust. Phone is in the Top 3, and barring some weird dark horse appearing from nowhere or a hard Android fork accidentally splitting the market (which seems perhaps more likely), it's likely to remain in the Top 3. I do hope they do something remarkable (and I'm kind of betting they will) to turn around sales on the 950 or bring in sales to new, potentially exotic hardware, but unlike you I don't think that Windows phones go by way of the Zune even if they fumble the ball a bit and don't do something truly remarkable in the near term.
  - jimbobimbo 11y ago
    What about Bing? It was a money pit for a very long time, until it wasn't.
dethswatch 11y ago
Hey, remember when the first phone came out and you couldn't even upload a ringtone? How about how it didn't have copy/paste functionality for about a year- I believe they stole this feature from the first iPhone. Then their apps used advanced controls like the carousel/panorama but the plebes had to wait? Then they wouldn't tell even the people who'd paid for beta access what apps would ship, so if you developed one that was similar by coincidence, boy were you screwed. Remember how they didn't bother to encrypt anything so pirating was as easy as rolling off a log? Then remember when their upgrade story was RSN for months because they couldn't get the carriers to allow them to upgrade it like they wanted? Then ultimately, you can GFY if you want to upgrade because they didn't bother with backwards compatibility on the phones as they upgraded the OS' major versions. OMG- I almost forgot the hw buttons that you couldn't disable so if, in the middle of a game, your thumb accidentally brushed up against it, you were dumped from that app. In theory you could have saved your game state for later, but come on. Ah-- good times.

by crabasa 11y ago

WorldMaker 11y ago

Prior to the 950 there wasn't a clear new "flagship" for nearly two years, of course it had a year over year decline. Again, this isn't new or surprising information. The possible news here is that the 950 probably isn't selling as well as we (happy users) would like. The app situation doesn't really concern me as a happy user, and I realize I'm in a bit of a minority opinion there. First of all, there is not a single "killer app" I feel I need and/or am missing out on. Mobile websites are largely reliable for most of the "app" things people need, and most of the major apps exist. Sure, some of these aren't seeing the updates they should be, and it does amuse me that Windows 10 Mobile is the last bastion of fave stars in an official Twitter app, but the UWP should help straighten out a lot of that sooner or later [1]. People are using the apps on Windows 10 Surfaces, laptops, and desktops, and devs should soon get better at realizing that getting a mobile app "for free" from the UWP is a good idea. [1] I assume Twitter, as the continued example, hasn't unified its Windows apps yet because some of the things like the People app integration haven't yet entirely made their way back into the larger UWP ecosystem. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later. (As a WP fan, I want the social integration for People working on my Surface again.)

crabasa 11y ago
I think you're missing the point. It takes a massive amount of effort to design, build and ship the operating system and device that you like. This is a tremendous resource drain on Microsoft, who could be using the money and manpower to do other things. There isn't one engineer on that team who is happy at the thought of their work being used by only 1% of people with mobile devices. Beyond being a business disaster, it is a morale disaster. Unless they can do something remarkable and turn around the trajectory, your device will go the way of the Zune.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  I'm not sure I was explicit enough about part of my point: Microsoft has very clearly pointed its resources at making the Phone OS the same as the PC OS (the same as the Xbox OS, the same as the HoloLens OS). I think that leverage means that at least for the near future Microsoft has a lot of good reasons to continue to invest in phone, because, finally, a lot of those investments are also investments into the PC, the Xbox, the HoloLens, etc. You said I should be concerned about apps, but I'm not concerned about apps because developers unlike myself that don't care about Windows phones still likely care about PC users, Xbox users, and eventually HoloLens users, et al. If I have concerns it would be with hardware, but the 950 is still new and exciting and I likely have a few years before I start to worry about replacing it, if history repeats itself similarly to my 920. As for "morale disaster", the problem with percentage statistics (as with most statistics) is that it is a kind of lie. Sure, 1% (or more accurately 2-3%) of the smart phone market sounds small and scary, but keep in mind that 1% is still millions of devices, presumably used by millions of people. I don't know about you, but as an engineer I would be ecstatic to know my product was used by millions of people (many daily, many happy) I would certainly still feel that way even knowing that product was in a distant third place. It's a good old fashioned scrappy underdog story, with a chance to make millions of people happy, sign me up. As for the Zune, the "ancient Microsoft adage" is "Top 3 or Bust". Zune never quite hit the Top 3 in what became clear was a dying product category, so bust. Phone is in the Top 3, and barring some weird dark horse appearing from nowhere or a hard Android fork accidentally splitting the market (which seems perhaps more likely), it's likely to remain in the Top 3. I do hope they do something remarkable (and I'm kind of betting they will) to turn around sales on the 950 or bring in sales to new, potentially exotic hardware, but unlike you I don't think that Windows phones go by way of the Zune even if they fumble the ball a bit and don't do something truly remarkable in the near term.
- jimbobimbo 11y ago
  What about Bing? It was a money pit for a very long time, until it wasn't.

dethswatch 11y ago

Hey, remember when the first phone came out and you couldn't even upload a ringtone? How about how it didn't have copy/paste functionality for about a year- I believe they stole this feature from the first iPhone. Then their apps used advanced controls like the carousel/panorama but the plebes had to wait? Then they wouldn't tell even the people who'd paid for beta access what apps would ship, so if you developed one that was similar by coincidence, boy were you screwed. Remember how they didn't bother to encrypt anything so pirating was as easy as rolling off a log? Then remember when their upgrade story was RSN for months because they couldn't get the carriers to allow them to upgrade it like they wanted? Then ultimately, you can GFY if you want to upgrade because they didn't bother with backwards compatibility on the phones as they upgraded the OS' major versions. OMG- I almost forgot the hw buttons that you couldn't disable so if, in the middle of a game, your thumb accidentally brushed up against it, you were dumped from that app. In theory you could have saved your game state for later, but come on. Ah-- good times.