3 ms·

As someone who owned a windows phone and switched to Android, the reason was simple - no apps. Everyone would advertise the latest thing as on iPhone and Droid,

As someone who owned a windows phone and switched to Android, the reason was simple - no apps. Everyone would advertise the latest thing as on iPhone and Droid, windows phone literally wasn't mentioned. I can't speak to the bigger picture but as far as I could see there was little reason to further spend money on a platform no one cared for.

toyg 7y ago
But that happened because MS was late to the party, as parent poster said. By the time their “good” OS was ready, everyone was already writing apps for iOS and Android and nobody wanted yet another different platform to develop for. They tried hard to entice developers, even paying pretty good money, but it was just too late. Nokia had the same problem a bit earlier (well, among many other problems Nokia had...).
- vezycash 7y ago
  Many developers HATED Microsoft. The anti-Microsoft chant was at an all time high. Android developer registration fee was a ONE TIME FEE of (?). The Android operating system was just like Windows - anything goes, no restrictions! How Microsoft lost Developers Shitty & Successful VS Secure & Failure Microsoft decided to recreate IOS because they'd been (and are still being) ridiculed for the security nightmare called Windows. Balmer announced the developer fee and the scream (even here on HN) was enormous. Add the api restrictions and developers just said fuck it! People on this thread are saying how nice it was to develop for Windows Phone compared to Android - bull. Screams about how you couldn't accomplish simple tasks - compared to Android was high. Till today, there are apps that show the message - due to Microsoft's restrictions (something) can't be accomplished - when the same thing was possible on IOS. How Microsoft lost OEMs Android was free. Windows Phone wasn't. OEMs could modify Android and add whatever crap they wanted to make pennies. But WP couldn't. You didn't need Google's permission to build an Android device. With WP - you couldn't. MS gave preferential treatment to Nokia. Karma - MS's reputation With Windows bit it hard on the ass here. How Microsoft lost Users NOKIA - Nokia was in the habit of releasing this year's flagship with last year's specs. Only their cameras was worth something. MS was SLOOW to respond to feature requests that IOS and Android got eons ago. Feature envy was high. Peeps celebrated addition of notification bar like the release of a new phone. NIH syndrome - Apple and Google copied each other extensively and copied from Windows Phone when it made sense. WP stood like a statue Pissing off developers resulted in fewer apps. They couldn't survive writing brand new OSes 3 times. Windows phone 7 was different from CE. WP 8 - different from 7. And finally, 10 was different from 8. There were minor issues Within sub versions. MS got the enmity of users who got burned and couldn't upgrade Media, Influencers & Trolls I don't know what these guys had against Microsoft however, their role in killing Wp can't be understated - and Microsoft/Nokia helped. Nokia kept releasing dated hardware - media ignored the fact that the OS didn't need it. In fact, at the time IOS devices ran lower clock speed and used 500mb ram. Everything MS/Nokia did was SHIT and the same shit became gold whenever Apple ended up doing the same thing. Nokia was trolled for the camera bulge on Lumia 920, but that's what companies are doing right now. The Lumia 920 weighed 180g and was called the "BRICK." They said 920 was best used as a weapon against burglars. Fast forward to iPhone XS Max which weighs 208g and they love it. They hated the flat design on WP but loved it when Apple co-opted it. Everyone loves wireless Charging but Nokia was trolled for it. This intense media hate made fans create windowsphone central and microsoft-news to balance the emotion. The final nail in the curtain was the interface. WP was very intuitive to smart phone virgins. However for people already corrupted by Android and IOS, WP was alien, weird and difficult to use.
  - matthewdgreen 7y ago
    Lumia 920 had a 4.5in screen size and iPhone XS Max is a ginormous phablet with a 6.5in screen. Lesson of this entire post: you can’t release things that have feature parity and worse specifications, but specifications aren’t a barrier when you’re providing features.
maxxxxx 7y ago
As far as I remember the dev tools for Windows Phone weren't free back then. I think this was another reason why a lot of hobbyists didn't touch Windows Phone.
omosubi 7y ago
A former coworker once said that MS reps came to his school around 2013 and paid students to write apps and submit them to the windows store. He even gave them a sample app and said "copy and paste this into a new project and submit it with a different name, we'll give you $500". They were just trying to pad the number of apps in the store to compete with Google and Apple lol

toyg 7y ago

But that happened because MS was late to the party, as parent poster said. By the time their “good” OS was ready, everyone was already writing apps for iOS and Android and nobody wanted yet another different platform to develop for. They tried hard to entice developers, even paying pretty good money, but it was just too late. Nokia had the same problem a bit earlier (well, among many other problems Nokia had...).

vezycash 7y ago
Many developers HATED Microsoft. The anti-Microsoft chant was at an all time high. Android developer registration fee was a ONE TIME FEE of (?). The Android operating system was just like Windows - anything goes, no restrictions! How Microsoft lost Developers Shitty & Successful VS Secure & Failure Microsoft decided to recreate IOS because they'd been (and are still being) ridiculed for the security nightmare called Windows. Balmer announced the developer fee and the scream (even here on HN) was enormous. Add the api restrictions and developers just said fuck it! People on this thread are saying how nice it was to develop for Windows Phone compared to Android - bull. Screams about how you couldn't accomplish simple tasks - compared to Android was high. Till today, there are apps that show the message - due to Microsoft's restrictions (something) can't be accomplished - when the same thing was possible on IOS. How Microsoft lost OEMs Android was free. Windows Phone wasn't. OEMs could modify Android and add whatever crap they wanted to make pennies. But WP couldn't. You didn't need Google's permission to build an Android device. With WP - you couldn't. MS gave preferential treatment to Nokia. Karma - MS's reputation With Windows bit it hard on the ass here. How Microsoft lost Users NOKIA - Nokia was in the habit of releasing this year's flagship with last year's specs. Only their cameras was worth something. MS was SLOOW to respond to feature requests that IOS and Android got eons ago. Feature envy was high. Peeps celebrated addition of notification bar like the release of a new phone. NIH syndrome - Apple and Google copied each other extensively and copied from Windows Phone when it made sense. WP stood like a statue Pissing off developers resulted in fewer apps. They couldn't survive writing brand new OSes 3 times. Windows phone 7 was different from CE. WP 8 - different from 7. And finally, 10 was different from 8. There were minor issues Within sub versions. MS got the enmity of users who got burned and couldn't upgrade Media, Influencers & Trolls I don't know what these guys had against Microsoft however, their role in killing Wp can't be understated - and Microsoft/Nokia helped. Nokia kept releasing dated hardware - media ignored the fact that the OS didn't need it. In fact, at the time IOS devices ran lower clock speed and used 500mb ram. Everything MS/Nokia did was SHIT and the same shit became gold whenever Apple ended up doing the same thing. Nokia was trolled for the camera bulge on Lumia 920, but that's what companies are doing right now. The Lumia 920 weighed 180g and was called the "BRICK." They said 920 was best used as a weapon against burglars. Fast forward to iPhone XS Max which weighs 208g and they love it. They hated the flat design on WP but loved it when Apple co-opted it. Everyone loves wireless Charging but Nokia was trolled for it. This intense media hate made fans create windowsphone central and microsoft-news to balance the emotion. The final nail in the curtain was the interface. WP was very intuitive to smart phone virgins. However for people already corrupted by Android and IOS, WP was alien, weird and difficult to use.
- matthewdgreen 7y ago
  Lumia 920 had a 4.5in screen size and iPhone XS Max is a ginormous phablet with a 6.5in screen. Lesson of this entire post: you can’t release things that have feature parity and worse specifications, but specifications aren’t a barrier when you’re providing features.

maxxxxx 7y ago

As far as I remember the dev tools for Windows Phone weren't free back then. I think this was another reason why a lot of hobbyists didn't touch Windows Phone.

omosubi 7y ago

A former coworker once said that MS reps came to his school around 2013 and paid students to write apps and submit them to the windows store. He even gave them a sample app and said "copy and paste this into a new project and submit it with a different name, we'll give you $500". They were just trying to pad the number of apps in the store to compete with Google and Apple lol