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Comment by nova22033 | Hacker News Reader

nova22033

>Had Microsoft put quality dev teams on building high quality third-party apps I think the chances of success would have greatly improved.

For one app? For an app they would have to give away for free? For an app that would always be behind the FB built ios/android apps?

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You have to consider this in the context at the time. Yes it would have been expensive, but Microsoft was investing BILLIONS into Windows Phone. Microsoft and partners spent something like $700 million dollars just on marketing for the launch of Windows Phone 7[1,2].

To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. And I am not saying they should have done this for only one app. I am saying they should have done this for many apps. If they had created quality versions of, say, the top 25 apps for mobile at the time they would have been in a much better position. I believe they could have made significant traction with business users. Remember, at the time Office wasn't available on other platforms and was (is) a huge draw for many people.

If they had been successful with the strategy and gained market share the partners would have wanted to take over their own apps anyway to enable monetization. But they needed users for that and to get users they needed apps. You have to jump start it somehow.

Now, would it have made any difference? Who knows. But IMO, you either need to not do it or you need to do all parts of it right. You can't go half way on the ecosystem and expect to succeed in an already challenging market.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dol... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/microsoft-oems-pledging-20...

    To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish.

Sounds like a Hollywood strategy to me. Overadvertise a stinker to try to recoup your investment.

That works for movies because they're trying to maximize the number of people who are interested enough to go see it once, more or less. A successful phone ecosystem requires building something that people want to use over the medium term.

And the expense and commitment of buying a phone is much greater than the cost of taking a chance on the Bearded Lady.

but marketing was always a core M$ strength. it's been a standard criticism of the company for a very long time.

They were great at getting their OS preinstalled on nearly every PC. They were really good at backwards compatibility, and they were absolutely ruthless against their competition. But they always, always sucked at marketing.

you don't view "getting their OS preinstalled on nearly every PC" as marketing?

Nope. Windows 95 had a huge promotion, but most PCs already came with the OS installed, unless you built your own PC.

> the top 25 apps for mobile at the time

This list keeps changing every month. Remember Pokemon Go?

6 million daily active users remember Pokémon Go and spent $1B on it in 2016.

They did manage to get many of the top 50 apps to their platform, however, top 50 isn't enough. When all your friends have the latest and greatest on their iOS and Android and you have to wait a year or two for a WP port you get tired of that. Plus there are many industry-specific and workplace apps that never made it to WP. You can only face so many let downs in the app store before you give up on a platform. Nokia did make some damn good hardware though.

For a small number of core apps. If they have invested heavily and put their best engineers to work on high quality core apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Messenger etc (maybe it would be 15-20 apps 90% of people install on their phones), they would have had a much better shot at gaining momentum.

Other smaller apps would have followed and been made by independent developers but you need to cover the apps almost everybody is using and make them comparable feature and quality/performance wise to iOS and Android versions.

Number one thing most people do on their new phone is download Facebook/Messenger/Twitter. If those apps suck they will immediately have a very bad impression and will switch back to iOS or Android as soon as they get a chance.

This was the strategy that Apple followed when OS X first came out.

Third party developers were moving slowly (or not at all) so Apple started developing and giving away (or selling) apps that showed off what you could do with the new platform.

They developed Safari when Microsoft lost interest in further development of Internet Explorer. The iLife suite had iTunes, iCal, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand. The iWork suite had Numbers, Pages, and Keynote. They created (or bought) professional apps like Logic Pro, Final Cut, Shake, Motion and Aperture.

If you have a new platform and third party developers don't step up, then you need to start filling those holes yourself in a way that shows off your platform's advantages, and keep at it.

On the other hand, if all WP has is half-baked clones of better apps on Android/iOS, there's even less incentive to switch over.

If they were serious about growing the user base and building these apps internally was their only course of action (seems like it was) then it should have been taking more seriously (assuming parent is spot on here, I have no idea really.)

Not just one app. They would need Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and a number of other staple apps.

Usage numbers for FB are not that far behind IE. Perhaps they should have invested a proportional amount.

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