3 ms·

Windows Phone, once they got over to the Metro UI, was quite good. I would say from a design, UI and system perspective, it was significantly superior to Androi

Windows Phone, once they got over to the Metro UI, was quite good. I would say from a design, UI and system perspective, it was significantly superior to Android and within striking distance of Apple and iOS. The issue with MS isn't whether or not they can build a quality mobile OS (they can), but rather it's whether or not MS can build an ecosystem with enough buy-in from companies to build apps and services. I'm sad to see MS do so poorly with their mobile OS, considering how good it is.

wvenable 9y ago
The way I see it, MS had a great product for the corporate/business market and could have put a nail in the coffin of Blackberry a few years sooner. But instead they wanted a piece of the consumer app market so badly that they rebooted their platform 3-4 times chasing an impossible dream.
- pwthornton 9y ago
  The thing is there really isn't a corporate/business market anymore. The company I worked for stopped buying corporate phones and plans and just gives us money every month to put to a BYOD solution. We just need to use a phone with certain security requirements. We also have started procuring software and services to fit into this world.
  - wvenable 9y ago
    We still have people buying Blackberries on their own. There are plenty of people who want a phone that's good for work. A phone that works great with corporate networks, allows for editing Word and Excel documents, could have gone very far a few years ago. Even getting corporate app developers to port their apps to Windows phone would have been easier than chasing Zynga down.
    - chucksmash 9y ago
      > We still have people buying Blackberries on their own. There are plenty of people who want a phone that's good for work. This article[1] seems to run counter to your intuition: > In the fourth quarter of 2016, more than 432 million smartphones were sold, according to a report published on Wednesday by the research firm Gartner. Of those, just 207,900 were BlackBerry devices running its own operating system. > That gives the Canadian smartphone company a share of the overall phone market of less than a single percentage point. To be precise, it's 0.0481%. > Even when you include BlackBerry's devices running Android, its numbers are still incredibly low. Last year, CEO John Chen said the company sold only about 400,000 devices in the second quarter. Blackberry's market share is much nearer my own (i.e. 0 phones manufactured or sold) than it is Apple's or Google's. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-smartphone-marketshare-zero-percent-gartner-q4-2016-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-smartphone-markets...
yourapostasy 9y ago
> ...it's whether or not MS can build an ecosystem with enough buy-in from companies to build apps and services. I think there might be a titanic fight shaping up in the economy to build out and secure ecosystems in a more Net-centric future. The WalMart diktats to truckers to not drive Amazon loads are just opening salvos in this war, for example. I see healthy, vibrant ecosystems with a bidirectional value exchange as a way for very large companies to mitigate much of the damage inflicted by their own size. Unfortunately, most large companies are trying their damnedest to build out ecosystems as command and control bot networks, and see it only as a profit source to unidirectionally squeeze. That's tempting because it's so easy, but it means your command and control decisions must be better and more timely than the ecosystem's wisdom of crowds, or you'll suffer the consequences.

wvenable 9y ago

The way I see it, MS had a great product for the corporate/business market and could have put a nail in the coffin of Blackberry a few years sooner. But instead they wanted a piece of the consumer app market so badly that they rebooted their platform 3-4 times chasing an impossible dream.

pwthornton 9y ago
The thing is there really isn't a corporate/business market anymore. The company I worked for stopped buying corporate phones and plans and just gives us money every month to put to a BYOD solution. We just need to use a phone with certain security requirements. We also have started procuring software and services to fit into this world.
- wvenable 9y ago
  We still have people buying Blackberries on their own. There are plenty of people who want a phone that's good for work. A phone that works great with corporate networks, allows for editing Word and Excel documents, could have gone very far a few years ago. Even getting corporate app developers to port their apps to Windows phone would have been easier than chasing Zynga down.
  - chucksmash 9y ago
    > We still have people buying Blackberries on their own. There are plenty of people who want a phone that's good for work. This article[1] seems to run counter to your intuition: > In the fourth quarter of 2016, more than 432 million smartphones were sold, according to a report published on Wednesday by the research firm Gartner. Of those, just 207,900 were BlackBerry devices running its own operating system. > That gives the Canadian smartphone company a share of the overall phone market of less than a single percentage point. To be precise, it's 0.0481%. > Even when you include BlackBerry's devices running Android, its numbers are still incredibly low. Last year, CEO John Chen said the company sold only about 400,000 devices in the second quarter. Blackberry's market share is much nearer my own (i.e. 0 phones manufactured or sold) than it is Apple's or Google's. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-smartphone-marketshare-zero-percent-gartner-q4-2016-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-smartphone-markets...

yourapostasy 9y ago

> ...it's whether or not MS can build an ecosystem with enough buy-in from companies to build apps and services. I think there might be a titanic fight shaping up in the economy to build out and secure ecosystems in a more Net-centric future. The WalMart diktats to truckers to not drive Amazon loads are just opening salvos in this war, for example. I see healthy, vibrant ecosystems with a bidirectional value exchange as a way for very large companies to mitigate much of the damage inflicted by their own size. Unfortunately, most large companies are trying their damnedest to build out ecosystems as command and control bot networks, and see it only as a profit source to unidirectionally squeeze. That's tempting because it's so easy, but it means your command and control decisions must be better and more timely than the ecosystem's wisdom of crowds, or you'll suffer the consequences.