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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

This is Microsoft, they can wait. The first IEs were born dead and they were mediocre products.

Microsoft seems to have no patience anymore. Normally I would agree with you -- and honestly the slow and steady approach is the only way they'd ever make an impact -- but Microsoft just keeps resetting this platform over and over.

This. I don't know what happened (that trend was already well underway before Ballmer stepped down) but lately they've been acting like kids suffering from ADHD.

Developers want stability. They had a good thing going with .NET which they could have simply used as the platform for making Windows Mobile apps as soon as the iPhone took off.

Instead they chose to introduce a whole new platform (Windows Phone 7), then kill it off to make way for Windows RT (Windows Phone 8), then kill it off for Universal Apps (Windows 10 Mobile). You can't expect to build a good ecosystem when you establish a pattern like that.

They have been waiting. IE1 - IE6 was six years. It's been just over 5.25 years since Windows Phone came out

Microsoft is not competing against Netscape-caliber companies in the mobile phone race.

IE was a product in a platform where they were already dominant. Without Windows IE would have been a non-starter. This situation is completely different. It's closer to the XBox in that it's a platform and there are/were 2-3 established competitors. Unfortunately, the success hasn't been there, and at this point in its life, the XBox would have been written off.

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