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Microsoft could still make an Android fork the same way they rebased Edge on chromium. Since android is mediocre on many aspects (e.g. no modern and performant

Microsoft could still make an Android fork the same way they rebased Edge on chromium. Since android is mediocre on many aspects (e.g. no modern and performant Java support) they could differentiate and create a market opportunity. Their name is big enough to create a store. They already have a linux distro BTW https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner

ramesh31 4y ago
>Microsoft could still make an Android fork the same way they rebased Edge on chromium. Since android is mediocre on many aspects (e.g. no modern and performant Java support) they could differentiate and create a market opportunity. Their name is big enough to create a store. They already have a linux distro BTW https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner I think this is what never made sense to me about the failure of Windows Phone. They have a store. They have an operating system. They have an unbelievably extensive list of hardware partners with decades of manufacturing experience. They have some of the best engineers in the world. And yet, they ceded the single largest consumer industry to Google and Apple. The only explanation is poor leadership.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  Windows phone had to introduce a store, operating system, and new hardware partners. The store was launched in tandem with Windows Phone and not added to the Desktop version until 2 years later. The OS and existing software base they had was irrelevant for small touch screens. The hardware partners they had weren't relevant to the mobile space and they weren't doing enough hardware development themselves to just rely on the in-staff hardware folks they had. Eventually they tried all these things but too late. They tried rebuilding the OS to be for more than just desktops, they tried rebuilding app platforms to not be platform specific, they tried rebuilding the interface to not be use type specific. It lead to a lot of angst due to the churn and a failure in the mobile space as their competitors already had working alternatives to all of these before they even launched. Poor leadership for sure but in waiting through all the 2000s and letting other's fill the space not because they already had everything made for them and let it fall apart. Xbox is one area that has seemed to really pan out for them which got all of these changes over time but again they launched that in the early 2000s not the early 2010s.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Windows Phone came out at a time when smartphones were still lifestyle products. Apple was the king of the hill in that respect and Google was still perceived as a pretty cool company even if having an Android phone wasn't as showy as having an iPhone. Having a phone from Microsoft meant you were probably a corporate weenie who wore pleated khakis and spent their day in a cubicle. The quality of the phone and the OS didn't really play into the perception of it. It's interesting that the perception wasn't the same in other parts of the world. Windows Phone seemed to be a premium product in Argentina. Think it had good acceptance in parts of Europe too, likely due to the Nokia versions. Perhaps trying to conquer the world except North America could have been a viable strategy but that's hard to really know and given the influence of the North American market on global culture, it might not have worked.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Android didn’t succeed because anyone thought Google was cool. Android succeeded because it was ubiquitous when Apple was only available on AT&T and because Androids phones were cheaper.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I still think the largest balkanization factor in the current duopoly was the cellphone carriers. They have to support the phones they sell. They want as few variables in their support matrix. QED: three options is too many. Windows Phone had several major opportunity positions where they had all the software the needed and all the hardware they needed to make a statement and then: cellphone carriers simply refused to sell SIM cards to them. For pretty much the entire lifespan of Windows Phone it generally only had one of two major US carriers reluctantly shipping its flagship and the other supposedly "angry" at Microsoft and refusing to even allow it SIM cards on its network, with flip flopping which one was which between different "flagship" phones. How does any product survive in an ecosystem that harsh?
  - blep_ 4y ago
    I still find it bizarre that phone carriers sell phones. This shouldn't be an issue, in much the same way "Comcast only supports Dell and Lenovo laptops" would be incredibly weird.
    - selectodude 4y ago
      But Comcast does only support Comcast modems. They’ll give you access but if you call with a question they’ll tell you tough shit and blame your hardware.
      - blep_ 4y ago
        That hasn't been my experience, in lots of years of having to call them and make them fix dumb things. Once you get past the "no, I am quite sure there is no wifi interference on this cat5e cable" bit of the Generic Support Script, they do seem to be capable of understanding where the problem could plausibly be. (Ability to do anything about it varies.) They even helpfully provide a compatibility list: https://www.xfinity.com/support/devices/#unauth https://www.xfinity.com/support/devices/#unauth
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      Well, it's not just selling phones that is the issue but selling SIM cards. That's closer to the "Comcast only supports cable modems with Mac addresses they've identified and Command & Control functionality they need" analogy. (Which are things that cable modems support. Cable company operators can force certain cable modem operations similar to the way SIM cards support such things.) But also, it really isn't all that bizarre, it's got long precedent: For most of a century all phones were leased and the phone company controlled every bit of hardware on the network. That's not even the distant past, that's still in living memory, my parents grew up in households with leased phones. It took major anti-trust/monopoly breakup work to change that. So far the "use whatever phone you want" is the anomaly in the history of phone networks. (Cable companies too; most of their history all of their equipment was only leased and the era of being able to buy your own set top boxes and/or cable modems is a relatively brief anomaly versus the longer history of those networks.) The US is back down to only two/three major cell carriers (no matter how many "brands" you see; so many of them are just resellers), depending on how you want to count them (by network compatibility: two; by parent company: three). It may be time to trust-bust again.
KoftaBob 4y ago
Between their introduction of Surface phones like the Duo, and their Microsoft Launcher, it seems like they're aiming for that down the road.
WorldMaker 4y ago
What would be the point of Microsoft failing with Android in the same ways that Amazon and Samsung have already failed here? (Admittedly, I still don't se a lot of the point in Microsoft running Chromium Edge other than sadness and defeat. I use Chromium Edge on my work machine because they block Firefox and I dislike Chrome and Chromium Edge is such a sad shell of what Edge once was.)
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  The point you're missing is that Microsoft is actively improving chromium
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    I don't think I'm "missing" that point, but I do think you are missing mine: Amazon has tried to improve the Android ecosystem since day one, on the taking things at face value that Android was supposed to be an open platform for innovation, and instead has failed in just about every possible way. More than any other company, Amazon continues to prove that you cannot improve Android without Google's rubber stamp and that no one wants an AOSP-based phone without "Play Services" or Google's App Store. Amazon's App Store is still the next biggest Android App Store after Google's and it can barely be listed as an "Also Ran" on the scorecard way below Google's numbers. Samsung similarly has spend nearly as much effort trying to improve Android and seen all sorts of failures. They've proved that few care about AOSP hardware improvements if it doesn't have Google's rubber stamp. They've proved in their own attempts no one wants an AOSP-based phone without "Play Services" or Google's App Store. They've proved that you can't use AOSP certified hardware to bypass the cellphone carriers' extreme aversion to a Third option in the ecosystem and continue to fail at trying to bring Tizen phones to market (because the cell carriers don't care about AOSP, they care about "Android" TM, Google Style). What kind of "active improvement" can Microsoft bring to Android that Amazon and Samsung haven't already tried and failed at? What would be any sort of point in Microsoft investing in AOSP-based products when they have no easier time of selling them through today's cell carriers than they had with a proven Kernel and software stack that they own entirely? Especially without Google's complete consent and access to "Play Services" and the Google App Store moat, what can Microsoft possibly offer in Android that they couldn't better offer in "Windows Phone 11" that wouldn't also see the same extraordinary bad luck/worse market conditions than Windows Phone <= 10? (ETA: Especially all that as opposed to by the time Edge switched to Chromium there were already a half-dozen other browsers using Chromium as their base and also Microsoft had already contributed multiple improvements to Chromium for years. There's no "success stories" in "Open Source" Android. There's very few people running de-Gooogled Android successfully and no one has been able to market one successfully in stores. Microsoft themselves even contributed cash for some of the hard lessons of Cyanogen, Inc.'s funding for their eventual burnout.)

ramesh31 4y ago

>Microsoft could still make an Android fork the same way they rebased Edge on chromium. Since android is mediocre on many aspects (e.g. no modern and performant Java support) they could differentiate and create a market opportunity. Their name is big enough to create a store. They already have a linux distro BTW https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner I think this is what never made sense to me about the failure of Windows Phone. They have a store. They have an operating system. They have an unbelievably extensive list of hardware partners with decades of manufacturing experience. They have some of the best engineers in the world. And yet, they ceded the single largest consumer industry to Google and Apple. The only explanation is poor leadership.

zamadatix 4y ago
Windows phone had to introduce a store, operating system, and new hardware partners. The store was launched in tandem with Windows Phone and not added to the Desktop version until 2 years later. The OS and existing software base they had was irrelevant for small touch screens. The hardware partners they had weren't relevant to the mobile space and they weren't doing enough hardware development themselves to just rely on the in-staff hardware folks they had. Eventually they tried all these things but too late. They tried rebuilding the OS to be for more than just desktops, they tried rebuilding app platforms to not be platform specific, they tried rebuilding the interface to not be use type specific. It lead to a lot of angst due to the churn and a failure in the mobile space as their competitors already had working alternatives to all of these before they even launched. Poor leadership for sure but in waiting through all the 2000s and letting other's fill the space not because they already had everything made for them and let it fall apart. Xbox is one area that has seemed to really pan out for them which got all of these changes over time but again they launched that in the early 2000s not the early 2010s.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Windows Phone came out at a time when smartphones were still lifestyle products. Apple was the king of the hill in that respect and Google was still perceived as a pretty cool company even if having an Android phone wasn't as showy as having an iPhone. Having a phone from Microsoft meant you were probably a corporate weenie who wore pleated khakis and spent their day in a cubicle. The quality of the phone and the OS didn't really play into the perception of it. It's interesting that the perception wasn't the same in other parts of the world. Windows Phone seemed to be a premium product in Argentina. Think it had good acceptance in parts of Europe too, likely due to the Nokia versions. Perhaps trying to conquer the world except North America could have been a viable strategy but that's hard to really know and given the influence of the North American market on global culture, it might not have worked.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Android didn’t succeed because anyone thought Google was cool. Android succeeded because it was ubiquitous when Apple was only available on AT&T and because Androids phones were cheaper.
WorldMaker 4y ago
I still think the largest balkanization factor in the current duopoly was the cellphone carriers. They have to support the phones they sell. They want as few variables in their support matrix. QED: three options is too many. Windows Phone had several major opportunity positions where they had all the software the needed and all the hardware they needed to make a statement and then: cellphone carriers simply refused to sell SIM cards to them. For pretty much the entire lifespan of Windows Phone it generally only had one of two major US carriers reluctantly shipping its flagship and the other supposedly "angry" at Microsoft and refusing to even allow it SIM cards on its network, with flip flopping which one was which between different "flagship" phones. How does any product survive in an ecosystem that harsh?
- blep_ 4y ago
  I still find it bizarre that phone carriers sell phones. This shouldn't be an issue, in much the same way "Comcast only supports Dell and Lenovo laptops" would be incredibly weird.
  - selectodude 4y ago
    But Comcast does only support Comcast modems. They’ll give you access but if you call with a question they’ll tell you tough shit and blame your hardware.
    - blep_ 4y ago
      That hasn't been my experience, in lots of years of having to call them and make them fix dumb things. Once you get past the "no, I am quite sure there is no wifi interference on this cat5e cable" bit of the Generic Support Script, they do seem to be capable of understanding where the problem could plausibly be. (Ability to do anything about it varies.) They even helpfully provide a compatibility list: https://www.xfinity.com/support/devices/#unauth https://www.xfinity.com/support/devices/#unauth
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Well, it's not just selling phones that is the issue but selling SIM cards. That's closer to the "Comcast only supports cable modems with Mac addresses they've identified and Command & Control functionality they need" analogy. (Which are things that cable modems support. Cable company operators can force certain cable modem operations similar to the way SIM cards support such things.) But also, it really isn't all that bizarre, it's got long precedent: For most of a century all phones were leased and the phone company controlled every bit of hardware on the network. That's not even the distant past, that's still in living memory, my parents grew up in households with leased phones. It took major anti-trust/monopoly breakup work to change that. So far the "use whatever phone you want" is the anomaly in the history of phone networks. (Cable companies too; most of their history all of their equipment was only leased and the era of being able to buy your own set top boxes and/or cable modems is a relatively brief anomaly versus the longer history of those networks.) The US is back down to only two/three major cell carriers (no matter how many "brands" you see; so many of them are just resellers), depending on how you want to count them (by network compatibility: two; by parent company: three). It may be time to trust-bust again.

KoftaBob 4y ago

Between their introduction of Surface phones like the Duo, and their Microsoft Launcher, it seems like they're aiming for that down the road.

WorldMaker 4y ago

What would be the point of Microsoft failing with Android in the same ways that Amazon and Samsung have already failed here? (Admittedly, I still don't se a lot of the point in Microsoft running Chromium Edge other than sadness and defeat. I use Chromium Edge on my work machine because they block Firefox and I dislike Chrome and Chromium Edge is such a sad shell of what Edge once was.)

SemanticStrengh 4y ago
The point you're missing is that Microsoft is actively improving chromium
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I don't think I'm "missing" that point, but I do think you are missing mine: Amazon has tried to improve the Android ecosystem since day one, on the taking things at face value that Android was supposed to be an open platform for innovation, and instead has failed in just about every possible way. More than any other company, Amazon continues to prove that you cannot improve Android without Google's rubber stamp and that no one wants an AOSP-based phone without "Play Services" or Google's App Store. Amazon's App Store is still the next biggest Android App Store after Google's and it can barely be listed as an "Also Ran" on the scorecard way below Google's numbers. Samsung similarly has spend nearly as much effort trying to improve Android and seen all sorts of failures. They've proved that few care about AOSP hardware improvements if it doesn't have Google's rubber stamp. They've proved in their own attempts no one wants an AOSP-based phone without "Play Services" or Google's App Store. They've proved that you can't use AOSP certified hardware to bypass the cellphone carriers' extreme aversion to a Third option in the ecosystem and continue to fail at trying to bring Tizen phones to market (because the cell carriers don't care about AOSP, they care about "Android" TM, Google Style). What kind of "active improvement" can Microsoft bring to Android that Amazon and Samsung haven't already tried and failed at? What would be any sort of point in Microsoft investing in AOSP-based products when they have no easier time of selling them through today's cell carriers than they had with a proven Kernel and software stack that they own entirely? Especially without Google's complete consent and access to "Play Services" and the Google App Store moat, what can Microsoft possibly offer in Android that they couldn't better offer in "Windows Phone 11" that wouldn't also see the same extraordinary bad luck/worse market conditions than Windows Phone <= 10? (ETA: Especially all that as opposed to by the time Edge switched to Chromium there were already a half-dozen other browsers using Chromium as their base and also Microsoft had already contributed multiple improvements to Chromium for years. There's no "success stories" in "Open Source" Android. There's very few people running de-Gooogled Android successfully and no one has been able to market one successfully in stores. Microsoft themselves even contributed cash for some of the hard lessons of Cyanogen, Inc.'s funding for their eventual burnout.)