Stick a fork in ’em: Windows Phones are done
venturebeat.com
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And even if it was a minus business and Microsoft would subsidize all Windows phones, you could argue that they have good reasons to do so. A few years ago, there was a good article arguing "Android is a Moat" - namely that the main reason Google develops Android is to protect it's search engine castle in mobile against Apple. Windows phone could be Microsoft's way of ensuring Bing (and the Windows Store) have a foothold in the mobile world.
If I look at my Android phone, there are maybe 5 external apps that I use regularly, 3 of which are probably available on Windows. If developers don't want to port their apps, Microsoft is in a position to just f'ing do it themselves if they really wanted.
Network effects are very helpful. Also remember to distinguish fixed costs from variable costs. The development effort is pretty much a fixed cost, whether you sell few or many. Each additional product sold reduces the fixed costs per device. Generally the more you sell, the cheaper you can make the product, the more profitable you can be, the better deals you can negotiate etc.
And then the bigger customer base you have, the easier it is to continue to do well financially. There are more opportunities for a longer term sustainable business.
> If I look at my Android phone, there are maybe 5 external apps that I use regularly ...
The power of defaults! What you are also implying is that the apps that came with the Android phone are all you need, plus those 5 external ones. This gives great power to the provider of the builtin/default ones.
> If developers don't want to port their apps, Microsoft is in a position to just f'ing do it themselves if they really wanted.
Not really. Microsoft doesn't have the source to the apps, would have to stick to rules about trademarks (eg calling an app "Google Search" would be problematic), would have to develop against public APIs and their requirements, would have to maintain the apps, and a heck of a lot of other stuff. For example see http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/09/microsoft-re-releases-its-y...
An aside/anecdote was a developer colleague who worked at a company that made a music player. They were paid $100k by Microsoft to port to Windows Phone in its earlier days. The Microsoft app review team then rejected the resulting app, because it kept running as music players need to, and Microsoft didn't have any rules yet about apps that needed to keep running in the background. It did eventually get sorted out, but still rather amusing.
No, they can't. Firstly and obviously, they can't just appropriate someone else's trademark and make a clone app, and if they make a clone with a different name, it won't have the draw that the original has. But more importantly, a lot of apps rely on network connections to do stuff. For instance, if Facebook doesn't have their app for WinPhones, MS can't exactly make their own Facebook app that easily. Or look at Tinder, the most popular dating app right now. There's no way MS could make a clone of that which actually works with Tinder's servers and network. They could make their own MS-Dating app, but what's the point? There's tons of alternatives to Tinder out there, but they don't have any users so they're useless, just like Google+ is useless because all your friends and relatives are on Facebook and not G+.
For simple standalone apps like a calculator app or a magnetometer app, sure, MS could just make those themselves. But those aren't what draw people to smartphones, it's the networked apps like Google Maps, Waze, Tinder, Facebook, apps for your bank, etc.
If there is a logical argument here, I am missing it.
Microsoft dropped a (albeit semi-profitable) division that had nothing to do core competencies nor with what Microsoft is actually interested in in the the mobile space. This should be cause for celebration for Windows Mobile.
Windows Phone is better in a lot of ways, too bad they couldn't make it stick. It just seems like to me they mostly had a marketing problem and they needed to incentivize the mobile carriers to actually try to sell them. I remember going into the Verizon store and watching the sales people actively steer people away from the phones and push them towards Android. I don't know why that was but it seemed like a huge problem to me.
They had a marketing problem all right: they're Microsoft. Their brand has negative value. No one actually wants to buy consumer gadgets from Microsoft. Remember Zune? How many billions did they pour into Xbox before it finally became profitable (and remember they really downplayed the "Microsoft" name there)?
It wouldn't matter if Windows Phone were better than the competition in every way; people still wouldn't buy them, because of the Microsoft name.
But I can't imagine how they'd ever make their phones that good anyway. MS has a reputation for their software being buggy and having clunky UIs, and for good reason. That's how their phones are too: some things work nicely, other things are clunky and broken, and the UI is ugly as hell. just like every UI MS makes.
>I remember going into the Verizon store and watching the sales people actively steer people away from the phones and push them towards Android.
Probably because they actually wanted to make a sale and get a commission, instead of showing them a phone with a butt-ugly UI that has no apps and having them walk out in disgust.
I'll be the first to admit that Android (and iOS) both have severe problems of various sorts. But being "better in [some] ways" is not enough. Android and iOS have the advantage of already dominating the market, and also (and relatedly) of having all the apps. MS should understand this better than anyone, because this is precisely what props up their desktop monopoly. Toppling entrenched competitors with those advantages is ridiculously hard for anyone, but trying to do it with a name-brand that no one likes much, and a product that has no apps and a clunky and ugly UI, is a guaranteed failure, even if it is snappy and responsive as many claim.
It was the first phone I'd bought since 2003 that didn't let you add your own ring tones- you couldn't even buy them.
It took them about a year to add copy and paste capabilities- as if cargo-cult-wise, this was the key to Apple's success with the iPhone.