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There’s nothing stopping Microsoft from coming out with a new phone line, other than poor management.
Replace "new phone line" with pretty much anything 'positive' and it fits Microsoft.
Better OS? Nope! Shit management. Better productivity software? Nope! Shit management. Better cloud and virtualization platform? Nope! Shit management.
The first day I used Windows 8 RC, I was flabbergasted that anyone approved that dumpster fire for release. They've been trying to unfuck that ever since, and at dead snail's pace. Thanks, shit management! You're why I left systems administration to be a bad programmer!
For real. AOSP is open source, and Google is taking more things private. MS could start driving AOSP since FOSS projects go where the group contributing the most wants it to go.
It's not that easy on the hardware side. Keep in mind that the way both Google and Microsoft previously entered this market was by buying an established manufacturer (Motorola and Nokia, respectively). But Microsoft squandered Nokia's manufacturing assets and would need to either start from scratch or acquire somebody else. But there aren't many manufacturers left that are decent, non-Chinese, and willing to sell.
There's also the option to pair with a manufacturer and ask them to put Microsoft's OS on their phones, but Google would most likely lean on anybody attempting that and threaten to revoke their access to Android trademark and Google Services. Samsung is the only manufacturer in a position to tell them to suck it but they're locked into a complex struggle with Google and it's anybody's guess if taking Microsoft on board would help or hinder their position.
Windows Phone failed because there were no apps for it. There was no YouTube app, no Facebook app, no Twitter app, etc until very late or never at all. They should have just paid developers to make the apps so that people would buy the phones. The OS was great and worked on a wide range of hardware. It could have been a great enterprise solution and they seemed to be heading that direction but the lack of third party made it little more than A Microsoft feature phone.
They literally couldn’t pay the devs. Netflix for instance flat out refused to have blackberry pay for 2 full time devs to maintain an app.
Netflix looked at the market share and determined that there was 0 benefit. The people that were on blackberry devices already had a Netflix account.
Additionally Blackberry store apps were compelling for devs. Dev feedback included ease of development and more importantly they made a lot more money on the blackberry store than on iOS/android, both because the cut was better and they could jack the prices up because the customers were not nearly as frugal.
To get into mobile would require a massive overhaul of windows apps to get them mobile-friendly
Oh look, that’s exactly what they did and now we have PWAs for lots of apps. Maybe MS is getting ready to take a stab at mobile again.
Netflix have a different relationship with Microsoft than they did with Blackberry, MS would have had much more clout.
Actually, the main cause it failed was because Microsoft bullied the manufacturers until they said enough and bailed out. So they were forced to buy a manufacturer to keep going (Nokia) then gave up halfway through after buying it.
Microsoft has stupid amounts of cash and could have kept Windows Phone going indefinitely, even at a loss. It's how they broke into the console market, by keeping the Xbox going at a loss for a decade.
Yeah the lack of apps would have been a problem initially but everybody would have relented given enough time, and in the meantime most of the missing services could have been accessed in a browser.
They couldn’t even be bothered developing their own apps for it. The mail app began to lag behind Outlook on Android, Minecraft was never ported to it when it could have been a killer exclusive app.
Serves them right for what they did to Nokia.
Maemo and Meego were so good
Yes, they were. These bastards destroyed the biggest European tech company for nothing. And Nokia had all the services required and the technical know-how to rival Google.
Windows phone was the best phone OS I ever experienced. Features were years ahead of iOS and Android.
I remember it being good hardware and the OS was actually really good. It felt very fast when a lot of Android phones still felt sluggish. What they really screwed up was the third party apps. Nobody was making anything for it and they didn’t give developers a reason to. It was a product that should have succeeded if not for bad management.
My brother had one and loved it! But outside of basic tasks he couldn't do anything with it. Eventually he switched to Android just to have apps.
By the time he was CEO it was already dead. He was right to kill it.
I have my doubts that a three-horse phone race would have been stable in the first place, as one of those three (Android, iPhone was too established) would have likely fallen out of favor. And then, you all would be complaining about monopolistic practices Microsoft would inevitably be doing.
Google is not a good company, but they have treated Android much better than they could be.
Remember when Microsoft had an awkward funeral for the iPhone?
https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsofts-funeral-for-the-iphone-photos/
I worked selling cellphones when Windows Phone was trying to compete. Their failure was lack of apps. From what I understand, it was difficult to port apps from Android or iOS to Windows Phone OS. It's a shame because the user experience was bar none. Hell, I installed a Windows OS theme on my Android for years. I still think they could make a comeback if they made an actual, honest to God Windows Phone that ran all Windows apps.
Xamarin was supposed to solve this. They even bought the fucking company.
Microsoft had every advantage. They were in the mobile space for years before Apple with PocketPC. They also had a freaking tablet.
They fucked it up with uninspired design (a start menu and task bar on a mobile?!) and lack of follow through.
Part of their issue is their desktop and x86 legacy apps ecosystem was no use on ARM touch devices.
But more competition than 2 would have been nice. We need stuff to move back to mobile web apps instead of apps. Then it's platform independence and the sandbox is interchangable.
He finally admitted to it. I was a Windows Phone user until the end. It’s sad that it was discontinued.
Dropping their plans for Continuum was foolish. Now we have fully featured Linux-based phones like the PinePhone that succeed where Microsoft's plans for Continuum failed. (As in you can plug the PinePhone into peripherals for a desktop experience.)
Phones are pushing CPUs and RAM that are on par with laptops and desktops at this point. It seems a little superfluous if we're not allowed to do real computing on these machines. Continuum was what I saw as the future of General Purpose Computing, by taking the locked down OS design of smart phones and giving them a desktop experience when plugged into peripherals.
Once every phone is also a desktop, you suddenly have opened all kinds of options for people who only have a phone, and not a full computer. Which, last I checked, is the majority of internet users who access it via their phones. Continuum would have been a literal game changer, and they gave up on it.
It would become a situation where everyone is like "I already have my phone, I'm not even going to bring my laptop unless I need it for specific function." Because once your phone can be an on-the-go desktop, laptops will have less allure.
I don't even care about other features. The tiling home screen of the OS was really nice to use and when used properly by the apps could result in a "live" OS unlike the iconographic interfaces of iOS and Android. The homescreen was also old-age friendly and really a pleasure to use.
The OS ram like really smooth on 512mb RAM, unlike their counterpart android phones which were struggling back then with 2-3GB RAM.
The lumias themselves had a ton of useful features like tap to wake etc, which didn't consume much battery and in general the Nokia cameras were top notch for the time.
Basically, the OS got killed because of a chicken and egg problem with the apps, and the OS being from Microsoft, got a death knell because of the reputation. Also for some fucking reason, Microsoft decided that the already low userbase WP7s were to be depreciated rather than provide an upgrade path fo WP8 and WP10.
As much as I dislike Microsoft, back in 2015 I used Windows Phone 8.1 for about 6 months and I absolutely loved it, the UI was so smooth and polished, even on low end phones, until WP10 came out and it ran like trash and I went back to LineageOS.
Microsoft didn't even provide a proper upgrade path for it's users. WP7 couldn't go to 8 and same for Windows Mobile 10.
It is funny to me that they gave up on the Windows phone right when it was starting to actually kinda work and gain some market traction.
my favourite windows phone moment was when they had a funeral for the iphone lol
There really was something about the windows phone UI though. If you weren't around to try it, it's hard to properly explain how different and fresh the flat pane interface felt compared to iOS and Android. It really was a phenomenal design language compared to the same old thing in the market.
I honestly believe it they had just sucked it up and subsidized the cost of doubling the ram on those last Nokia devices, it could have been good enough to break through. Microsoft had everything possible to gain from integrating the desktop-to-mobile workflow for business clients. Then they threw it out the window...
Seriously, I doubt many people here who aren't used to corporate environments can fully understand how big the market was, that Microsoft gave up, by not spending enough to fill the BlackBerry hole that formed. They had 98% of the solution already developed, and fumbled the ball with a single yard left to go.
There was room for three players, if one of them actually serviced the business environment; and nobody was better positioned to do so than Microsoft at the time. Excel and PowerPoint that synced from your work machine, to the field, in a zero trust environment... Gah.. they were so close.
De-Googled android is what you want.
My first smart phone was a windows phone
Same, a Nokia Lumia 710. Lack of app support is what killed them. Even mainstream apps you had to have a third party version, Facebook, Insta, etc.
THANK YOU! That's what we were all saying when you stopped caring about it.
In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones.
I'm sorry but no, Microsoft was never going to be capable of reinventing any category of computing. They've never done it before and it's just not within their expertise. I think Nadella was right at the time to cut their losses. Windows Phone represented Microsoft's best efforts in that space and, while it had its fans, it just wasn't enough.
Meanwhile, they've done really well with their "apps and services on every platform" approach. How many millions of people use Outlook on their phone? How many apps are running their back end on Azure? Microsoft may have given up on an aspect of "mobile," but is still raking in piles of cash from what people actually do on mobile devices. Take the win where you can find it.
The windows phone was not out for very long. It is unknown if it would have succeed, but at the time Android was an also ran as well, and non-smart phones still dominated. Blackberry was still a major player to beat at the time. Windows if they stuck with it might have done reasonably well. It would never have become a monopoly, but we cannot know how well it would have done.
They also botched the implementation of Android on Windows. They just don't understand the market.
Windows Phone was my favourite phone OS. I loved my Lumia 925.
It's never too late for another try, when you got a few billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket. There is a market for it, if done right.
I think they can still reboot with an Android base. They can just do what they did for edge. Pull a Google. Sell hardware with very polished software. Android would give them full access to all Android apps. Also they already have outlook and office apps made for android.
Honestly I would rather see a large company like Microsoft build their own OS from the ground up. Without play services you wouldn't be able to use a lot of play store apps even if you installed the apk file. I think Google provides a lot of baked in services to developers to lock their apps into the google ecosystem. Microsoft wouldn't really add anything of value to android in my opinion, we already have one big company looking over our shoulder, I don't think we need a second. I think the Amazon Fire phone proves that even with a lot of money to burn it's hard to break into google's market.
Microsoft making their own platform that is not UNIX-like would probably get a lot more interest than just modifying android.
The UI seemed really good, I was really tempted. But I was ultimately thrown off by App support in general. Wasn't there a thing, that Apps often weren't equal to their Android and iOS counterparts?
Google actively blocked a ton of their stuff from being accessed from windows phones. They even deprecated some communication protocols in gmail to ensure some features of Microsoft's mail app would not work with Gmail (and then Microsoft found a way to make it work with an alternative protocol and Google went ahead and dropped that too).
YouTube could only be used in internet Explorer. Google refused to let Microsoft make a client for it or do one themselves. Some folks created third party clients for it but Google was quick to block them too.
Then Pokémon Go came out for iOS and Android and it was the nail on the coffin.
Edit: I forgot to mention Instagram, it was a big part of it too. I think this was before Facebook acquired them, because Facebook (and Twitter) were VERY well integrated into Microsoft apps on top of having their own apps available.
In general windows phone was the easiest platform to make apps for (I made a few), but there was a lot of sabotage from those big names. I was very conflicted because in one hand, Microsoft was tasting a bit of their own venom - as they had done the same sort of stuff so many times before, but in the other hand windows phone really felt like the best mobile OS and I wanted it to stay relevant.
