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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

At this point is there really a viable path to daylight for Windows Phone? I don't know a single person who uses one. A few had prior versions a few years ago but all have moved to Android or iPhone by now.

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It is concerning to me that WP seems to be dead in the water. I'd wadger that an essential duopoly in mobile platforms is harmful to most people. BB (had a phenomenal start and lost it) and WP (late to the party and then constantly confused once it got to the party) would nicely round out the mobile platform choices.

Honorable mentions go out to FirefoxOS (maybe as viable as WP?), Tizen (OK, maybe that will be in some cars or TVs), and Maemo/Meego/Sailfish (oh how I wish you would have been successful!).

Edit: I guess I forgot about Pocket PC. Maybe MSFT can be considered to be an early starter that lost the picture?

I think MS should open source Windows Phone OS and support more devices to get more developers interested in the OS.

How would open sourcing get people interested if there are no users?

I didn't say people. I said 'developers'.

I just bought Lumia 640. :/ Gonna give it a try. It's still getting Windows 10 mobile so there's that. I think in the long run, WP's success will depend on how easy MSFT can make it for developer to deploy onto it. Xamarin's getting pretty close. I would love to see UWP app be unified with Xamarin.Forms and be called something else. Unified Xamarin App or something.

I have one and I like it but I too am probably going to switch to Android with the next phone I buy (which may be sooner rather than later, since the USB charger seems flaky now!)

The app selection is really, really surprisingly bad. Not just for the popular missing apps (snapchat, etc) but just about anything has a ton of dreck, and if you're lucky one or two functional ones.

I'm pretty surprised at how badly Microsoft has courted app developers on this platform.

> At this point is there really a viable path to daylight for Windows Phone?

Business. If I recall, the NYPD bought a huge load of them for deployment with officers a while back. Is there a viable path to consumer daylight? Nah. But PWA stuff would at least allow business users to get something.

How do they have any advantage over Android or iOS for business?

In many countries it was starting to be the only viable alternative to Android, as many cannot afford iOS devices with pre-paid phones.

However given the current announcements, me and others will have to focus only on Android, it seems.

I think the only thing that It had going for it when I tried it a few years ago myself atleast on the Lumia models was the 42mp camera. I agree with you though, the app selection and the UI design are just huge turnoffs

Surface Phone.

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