8 ms·

This is a stretch IMO. I was working there too at the time and the focus on apps was never as strong as it should have been. Yes, they paid out lots of money to

This is a stretch IMO. I was working there too at the time and the focus on apps was never as strong as it should have been. Yes, they paid out lots of money to get devs to build apps, but they never really dedicated the resources to building quality apps. The prime example was Facebook. This was an app built by Microsoft with FBs blessing, but it was always far behind in terms of features and quality. Developement of that app and other flagship apps was not a core focus. Work was outsourced and not given enough resources. Had Microsoft put quality dev teams on building high quality third-party apps I think the chances of success would have greatly improved. From my prospective the focus was on filling the store with apps regardless of quality. This convinced the first generation of Microsoft loyalists to buy Windows Phones, but turned off many of those people. Most would not go on to buy a second WP or recommend them to friends and family. This includes many (dare I say most) Microsoft employees who where enthusiastic about the product at first, but when it came time to buy a second or third device moved on to Android or iPhone.

nova22033 9y ago
>Had Microsoft put quality dev teams on building high quality third-party apps I think the chances of success would have greatly improved. For one app? For an app they would have to give away for free? For an app that would always be behind the FB built ios/android apps?
- EpicEng 9y ago
  On the other hand, if all WP has is half-baked clones of better apps on Android/iOS, there's even less incentive to switch over. If they were serious about growing the user base and building these apps internally was their only course of action (seems like it was) then it should have been taking more seriously (assuming parent is spot on here, I have no idea really.)
- nathantotten 9y ago
  You have to consider this in the context at the time. Yes it would have been expensive, but Microsoft was investing BILLIONS into Windows Phone. Microsoft and partners spent something like $700 million dollars just on marketing for the launch of Windows Phone 7[1,2]. To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. And I am not saying they should have done this for only one app. I am saying they should have done this for many apps. If they had created quality versions of, say, the top 25 apps for mobile at the time they would have been in a much better position. I believe they could have made significant traction with business users. Remember, at the time Office wasn't available on other platforms and was (is) a huge draw for many people. If they had been successful with the strategy and gained market share the partners would have wanted to take over their own apps anyway to enable monetization. But they needed users for that and to get users they needed apps. You have to jump start it somehow. Now, would it have made any difference? Who knows. But IMO, you either need to not do it or you need to do all parts of it right. You can't go half way on the ecosystem and expect to succeed in an already challenging market. 1: https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dollars-windows-phone-7/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dol... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/microsoft-oems-pledging-200-million-for-windows-phone-marketing-push/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/microsoft-oems-pledging-20...
  - hinkley 9y ago
    To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. Sounds like a Hollywood strategy to me. Overadvertise a stinker to try to recoup your investment.
    - ameliaquining 9y ago
      That works for movies because they're trying to maximize the number of people who are interested enough to go see it once, more or less. A successful phone ecosystem requires building something that people want to use over the medium term.
      - leoc 9y ago
        And the expense and commitment of buying a phone is much greater than the cost of taking a chance on the Bearded Lady.
    - HillaryBriss 9y ago
      but marketing was always a core M$ strength. it's been a standard criticism of the company for a very long time.
      - thomasz 9y ago
        They were great at getting their OS preinstalled on nearly every PC. They were really good at backwards compatibility, and they were absolutely ruthless against their competition. But they always, always sucked at marketing.
        HillaryBriss 9y ago
        you don't view "getting their OS preinstalled on nearly every PC" as marketing?
        amigoingtodie 9y ago
- richardknop 9y ago
  For a small number of core apps. If they have invested heavily and put their best engineers to work on high quality core apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Messenger etc (maybe it would be 15-20 apps 90% of people install on their phones), they would have had a much better shot at gaining momentum. Other smaller apps would have followed and been made by independent developers but you need to cover the apps almost everybody is using and make them comparable feature and quality/performance wise to iOS and Android versions. Number one thing most people do on their new phone is download Facebook/Messenger/Twitter. If those apps suck they will immediately have a very bad impression and will switch back to iOS or Android as soon as they get a chance.
- randomfool 9y ago
  Usage numbers for FB are not that far behind IE. Perhaps they should have invested a proportional amount.
- GeekyBear 9y ago
  This was the strategy that Apple followed when OS X first came out. Third party developers were moving slowly (or not at all) so Apple started developing and giving away (or selling) apps that showed off what you could do with the new platform. They developed Safari when Microsoft lost interest in further development of Internet Explorer. The iLife suite had iTunes, iCal, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand. The iWork suite had Numbers, Pages, and Keynote. They created (or bought) professional apps like Logic Pro, Final Cut, Shake, Motion and Aperture. If you have a new platform and third party developers don't step up, then you need to start filling those holes yourself in a way that shows off your platform's advantages, and keep at it.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Not just one app. They would need Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and a number of other staple apps.
ssully 9y ago
I was going to chime in a little on it being a stretch. One of the promotions for students they did was near the summer of 2012 or 2013. The promotion was you got paid 100 dollars for every app published on the Microsoft store limit 5 for the mobile store and 5 for the regular store. So a total limit of $1000. My school actually had a Microsoft rep run a workshop over a weekend showing students how to publish an app on the store. He gave us a template for a number of apps to "test" with. I made about $300 that weekend by publishing 3 different variants of a wackamole game. The workshop I attended had about 25 students total and we all left publishing at least one app. Idk how wide spread this outreach was. I checked on my apps sometime last year and they were all still up. I ended up pulling them out of a mix of shame and embarrassment.
- wmeredith 9y ago
  Did everything they could... Ah, yes. $100 per app. I'm sure that's what most apps cost to produce. /s It seems like they did a few things, but never actually, you know, paid app developers to build out their ecosystem.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Hey, if you're optimizing for "number of apps on our store" I bet it worked great! Why spend $100,000 developing something one app when you could get 1000 for the same price?!
    - zuminator 9y ago
      Instead of paying per app, would make more sense to let devs keep 90% of store revenue, which would incentivize the development of apps that are actually popular and make money.
      - wlesieutre 9y ago
        Hell, let developers keep 100% of store revenue, at least until you have a customer base. It's not much worse for MS than 90%, and it makes a much nicer marketing story if you're trying to convince developers to get on your platform.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
The problem with WP was that it was late and offered nothing very special to consumers over android/iOS (and ya, I loved my 920). Consumers had no reason to buy it, developers had no reason to dev for it, a huge vicious circle that would have been difficult to break under the best of circumstances. The war was lost when the WinMo 7 team decided to after Blackberry in 2007, ignoring the iPhone as consequential, requiring that dev/design reset later that was just too late.
hitekker 9y ago
Agreed. The parent post reads like "the overwhelming numbers of our competitors beat poor Microsoft despite our talent, ability and courage!" No, Microsoft beat Microsoft. It was their game to lose.
- burnte 9y ago
  It was their game to lose ten years ago, but only barely and not recently. In 2007 when the iPhone was launched, Windows Mobile had about 40% of the smartphone market, RIM had about 20%. But the smartphone market was nothing compared to today, the vast majority of phones were feature phones. Nokia's array of candybar phones absolutely dominated in 2007, with the Moto Razr was still big. Then Apple unveiled the iPhone, and the guys at Android said, "Oh shit." Meanwhile Steve Ballmer said the iPhone would never succeed. Ballmer drove MS into the ground. Everyone pivoted to the iPhone model except MS, who spit out WinMo 6.5 in 2009, and finally WinMo 7 in 2010. By 2010, the race was pretty much over. The rest of what MS did was half-assed at best. You're 100% right, MS beat MS.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    And frankly Winmo 7 was the bad move, not 6.5. Because 7 burned the app bridge with 6.5, thus making it ever easier for someone to justify moving to a different platform. Never mind that at launch iphone was more fancy featurephone than smartphone.
    - smitherfield 9y ago
      > Never mind that at launch iphone was more fancy featurephone than smartphone. Not really. iPhone was the first phone ever that shipped with a real, full-featured, non-crippled web browser. This was an astonishing achievement at the time, and one which made its existing competition look like "fancy featurephones," not the reverse. (Really an astonishing achievement period, considering it had 128MB of RAM).
      - v-yadli 9y ago
cm2187 9y ago
Intead they staffed their quality dev team on the Windows Mail app and Skype...
nunez 9y ago
Man the more comments I read the more I begin to remember. There was ONE dev who was churning out VERY high quality apps to popular platforms. I think Snapchat or Instagram was what he got known for. Instead of MS embracing his work and helping it flourish, they let him get taken down by a C&D. LOTS of people got heated when that happened.
- anontrot 9y ago
  Rudy Hyn
  - nunez 9y ago
    That’s the one

nova22033 9y ago

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

EpicEng 9y ago
On the other hand, if all WP has is half-baked clones of better apps on Android/iOS, there's even less incentive to switch over. If they were serious about growing the user base and building these apps internally was their only course of action (seems like it was) then it should have been taking more seriously (assuming parent is spot on here, I have no idea really.)
nathantotten 9y ago
You have to consider this in the context at the time. Yes it would have been expensive, but Microsoft was investing BILLIONS into Windows Phone. Microsoft and partners spent something like $700 million dollars just on marketing for the launch of Windows Phone 7[1,2]. To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. And I am not saying they should have done this for only one app. I am saying they should have done this for many apps. If they had created quality versions of, say, the top 25 apps for mobile at the time they would have been in a much better position. I believe they could have made significant traction with business users. Remember, at the time Office wasn't available on other platforms and was (is) a huge draw for many people. If they had been successful with the strategy and gained market share the partners would have wanted to take over their own apps anyway to enable monetization. But they needed users for that and to get users they needed apps. You have to jump start it somehow. Now, would it have made any difference? Who knows. But IMO, you either need to not do it or you need to do all parts of it right. You can't go half way on the ecosystem and expect to succeed in an already challenging market. 1: https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dollars-windows-phone-7/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dol... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/microsoft-oems-pledging-200-million-for-windows-phone-marketing-push/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/microsoft-oems-pledging-20...
- hinkley 9y ago
  To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. Sounds like a Hollywood strategy to me. Overadvertise a stinker to try to recoup your investment.
  - ameliaquining 9y ago
    That works for movies because they're trying to maximize the number of people who are interested enough to go see it once, more or less. A successful phone ecosystem requires building something that people want to use over the medium term.
    - leoc 9y ago
      And the expense and commitment of buying a phone is much greater than the cost of taking a chance on the Bearded Lady.
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    but marketing was always a core M$ strength. it's been a standard criticism of the company for a very long time.
    - thomasz 9y ago
      They were great at getting their OS preinstalled on nearly every PC. They were really good at backwards compatibility, and they were absolutely ruthless against their competition. But they always, always sucked at marketing.
      - HillaryBriss 9y ago
        you don't view "getting their OS preinstalled on nearly every PC" as marketing?
        amigoingtodie 9y ago
richardknop 9y ago
For a small number of core apps. If they have invested heavily and put their best engineers to work on high quality core apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Messenger etc (maybe it would be 15-20 apps 90% of people install on their phones), they would have had a much better shot at gaining momentum. Other smaller apps would have followed and been made by independent developers but you need to cover the apps almost everybody is using and make them comparable feature and quality/performance wise to iOS and Android versions. Number one thing most people do on their new phone is download Facebook/Messenger/Twitter. If those apps suck they will immediately have a very bad impression and will switch back to iOS or Android as soon as they get a chance.
randomfool 9y ago
Usage numbers for FB are not that far behind IE. Perhaps they should have invested a proportional amount.
GeekyBear 9y ago
This was the strategy that Apple followed when OS X first came out. Third party developers were moving slowly (or not at all) so Apple started developing and giving away (or selling) apps that showed off what you could do with the new platform. They developed Safari when Microsoft lost interest in further development of Internet Explorer. The iLife suite had iTunes, iCal, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand. The iWork suite had Numbers, Pages, and Keynote. They created (or bought) professional apps like Logic Pro, Final Cut, Shake, Motion and Aperture. If you have a new platform and third party developers don't step up, then you need to start filling those holes yourself in a way that shows off your platform's advantages, and keep at it.
s73ver_ 9y ago
Not just one app. They would need Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and a number of other staple apps.

ssully 9y ago

I was going to chime in a little on it being a stretch. One of the promotions for students they did was near the summer of 2012 or 2013. The promotion was you got paid 100 dollars for every app published on the Microsoft store limit 5 for the mobile store and 5 for the regular store. So a total limit of $1000. My school actually had a Microsoft rep run a workshop over a weekend showing students how to publish an app on the store. He gave us a template for a number of apps to "test" with. I made about $300 that weekend by publishing 3 different variants of a wackamole game. The workshop I attended had about 25 students total and we all left publishing at least one app. Idk how wide spread this outreach was. I checked on my apps sometime last year and they were all still up. I ended up pulling them out of a mix of shame and embarrassment.

wmeredith 9y ago
Did everything they could... Ah, yes. $100 per app. I'm sure that's what most apps cost to produce. /s It seems like they did a few things, but never actually, you know, paid app developers to build out their ecosystem.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Hey, if you're optimizing for "number of apps on our store" I bet it worked great! Why spend $100,000 developing something one app when you could get 1000 for the same price?!
  - zuminator 9y ago
    Instead of paying per app, would make more sense to let devs keep 90% of store revenue, which would incentivize the development of apps that are actually popular and make money.
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      Hell, let developers keep 100% of store revenue, at least until you have a customer base. It's not much worse for MS than 90%, and it makes a much nicer marketing story if you're trying to convince developers to get on your platform.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

The problem with WP was that it was late and offered nothing very special to consumers over android/iOS (and ya, I loved my 920). Consumers had no reason to buy it, developers had no reason to dev for it, a huge vicious circle that would have been difficult to break under the best of circumstances. The war was lost when the WinMo 7 team decided to after Blackberry in 2007, ignoring the iPhone as consequential, requiring that dev/design reset later that was just too late.

hitekker 9y ago

Agreed. The parent post reads like "the overwhelming numbers of our competitors beat poor Microsoft despite our talent, ability and courage!" No, Microsoft beat Microsoft. It was their game to lose.

burnte 9y ago
It was their game to lose ten years ago, but only barely and not recently. In 2007 when the iPhone was launched, Windows Mobile had about 40% of the smartphone market, RIM had about 20%. But the smartphone market was nothing compared to today, the vast majority of phones were feature phones. Nokia's array of candybar phones absolutely dominated in 2007, with the Moto Razr was still big. Then Apple unveiled the iPhone, and the guys at Android said, "Oh shit." Meanwhile Steve Ballmer said the iPhone would never succeed. Ballmer drove MS into the ground. Everyone pivoted to the iPhone model except MS, who spit out WinMo 6.5 in 2009, and finally WinMo 7 in 2010. By 2010, the race was pretty much over. The rest of what MS did was half-assed at best. You're 100% right, MS beat MS.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  And frankly Winmo 7 was the bad move, not 6.5. Because 7 burned the app bridge with 6.5, thus making it ever easier for someone to justify moving to a different platform. Never mind that at launch iphone was more fancy featurephone than smartphone.
  - smitherfield 9y ago
    > Never mind that at launch iphone was more fancy featurephone than smartphone. Not really. iPhone was the first phone ever that shipped with a real, full-featured, non-crippled web browser. This was an astonishing achievement at the time, and one which made its existing competition look like "fancy featurephones," not the reverse. (Really an astonishing achievement period, considering it had 128MB of RAM).
    - v-yadli 9y ago

cm2187 9y ago

Intead they staffed their quality dev team on the Windows Mail app and Skype...

nunez 9y ago

Man the more comments I read the more I begin to remember. There was ONE dev who was churning out VERY high quality apps to popular platforms. I think Snapchat or Instagram was what he got known for. Instead of MS embracing his work and helping it flourish, they let him get taken down by a C&D. LOTS of people got heated when that happened.

anontrot 9y ago
Rudy Hyn
- nunez 9y ago
  That’s the one