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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Developers go where the money is and where the users are. No matter how great the “developer story” is for Microsoft, Windows Phone languished.

Microsoft to it’s credit, is also going to where the developers are.

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I think Microsoft's biggest mistake with Windows Phone was branding it with "Windows." I wish they would have called it an Xbox Phone and tightly integrated it with Xbox live. Early on, they could focus on getting some really great games built and the lack of "apps" wouldn't have been as big of a deal as it was.

On the other hand, I know a few big companies that initially went with Windows Phone only because of the "safe" image - no chance they would have done that with a gaming-related brand. The idea of going after the Blackberry-vacated market wasn't completely wrong.

The real issue was the repeated backward-compatibility break; it pissed off all their early partners and adopters and discouraged any serious investment in the platform. By the end, it wasn't a bad platform, but the trust was gone.

I didn't know there was an enterprise adoption. Could you name a few?

It was relatively common here in Europe, where higher management was getting their Blackberries replaced with iPhones and everyone else below got to choose between Android and WP.

A telecommunications company starting with V used to do that.

Thanks. There is one thing MS fucked up with and it was not capitalizing on European adoption.

They had like, 30% on business. WP was safer than Android, and cheaper than iPhone, and also had all Microsoft enterprise experience behind, with good MDM solution too.

Well it didn’t help that Windows Phones had worse support for Exchange than iPhones and Android phones.

https://www.infoworld.com/article/2617604/windows-phone-os/w...

I believe they were charging for the OS which got passed on to consumers. When they should have been giving it away with MS app store credits.

They tried that with universal apps. No one was going to invest money on good games without the users being there and no users were going to buy the phone without the apps.

Even if Windows Phone had Nintendo level third place success, what would it have gained them? No company besides Apple and to a lesser extent Samsung make any real money on phones. I doubt the phone division even makes any really money, Samsung makes most of its mobile money from the parts it sells.

Google doesn’t even make that much from Android. They make some from Google Play Services and advertising but they also pay Apple billions a year to be the default search engine for iOS.

Google likely makes well over $10 billion a year from Android. Only when comparing against iPhone revenue or Google's own advertising revenue does it look small.

This is the best number I could find from the Oracle vs google lawsuit. Google didn’t dispute the number.

Thanks to a lawyer, we know now that Google has made $31 billion in revenue and $22 billion in profit from its Android operating system....

That’s over Android’s entire existence.

But if the $31 billion total is correct, Google has earned less money from Android throughout its existence than Apple earned from iPhone sales in fourth quarter of 2015, when it brought in $32.2 billion in revenue.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/21/10810834/android-generate...

That's a pretty apple to oranges comparison. iPhone sales is selling physical hardware which obviously comes with a much higher total cost then just software. A much better comparison would be from how much Apple earns from it's app store and developer fees.

In the context of how much Microsoft could have made if it had come in as a successful third place, if Google can make only $31 billion over 10 years, how much could MS make in third place?

But to answer your question 11.5 billion last year

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples-ap...

Back in 2010, when Windows Phone first launched, the smartphone market was a very different place.

Microsoft could have leveraged the popularity of Xbox to market their phone as a mobile gaming system and I think that would have been hugely popular.

Back in 2010, Microsoft had sold 40 million Xboxes in total (https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-360-sales-top-40-mill...).

Apple sold that many iPhones a year back then. Of course now, Apple sells that many in a bad quarter.

They could have branded with both, effectively... "Windows Phone" for Business; "XBox Phone" for Personal Use .. same OS and tools under the covers. Developers could target both, and users would just get their skin version on top of the OS.

XBox Phone would have sign in for an XBox account... Windows Phone would tether to an exposed AD/SSO login system for business use.

I think Microsoft's biggest mistake was trying to go to bat with the US carriers: trying to trade more control over things like software updates for terrible mistakes like timed exclusive releases with only one specific carrier. (Windows Phones were AT&T exclusive for bit; then there were various "flagship" phones alternating exclusivities between AT&T and Verizon depending on whom Microsoft needed to court better that phone hardware generation.)

Apple was able to do that because of a combo of first mover advantage and trend demand. Android didn't even bother, which lead to the obvious problems of the version diaspora of Android installs (who knew which phones on which carriers would get which updates and when), but playing ball with the weird control issues of carriers ultimately served Android pretty well in eventual market penetration, because the carriers were happiest to sell things they felt like they could control.

It’s slightly more complicated. In most major markets, the dominant carrier wouldn’t agree to Apple’s demands. So Apple made a deal with the 2nd or 3rd place Cartier. People wanted iPhones badly enough to switch carriers. Then Apple was able to make a deal with the dominant carrier.

I agree. I also think it hampered their early tablet effort. But I think what they should have done is taken Windows 8 and Mobile and called it "Surface OS" and focus it entirely on mobile. They wouldn't have even had to change much code-wise, just marketing and developer relations.

Windows 8 should have continued to be desktop focused (normal start menu, etc) but also able to run and develop the universal apps.

Microsoft and Xbox seem to have a distanced relationship. For example, Microsoft could figure out a way to allow XBox AAA games to run on all Windows 10 machines, while creating an edge over Sony's PS4, but Microsofot has only allowed XBox indie games that are already available on Steam. An XBox-branded phone would have this expectation.

This is no longer the case[1]. You can play many, previously console exclusive, titles on Windows (Forza and Gears come to mind) - albiet via the Windows app store.

[1]: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/xbox-play-anywhere

That's what I was referencing to with games that are also available on Steam.

Microsoft isn't even attempting to join windows and Xbox, and is only selling games that developers already make available for windows - except as "Xbox play anywhere".

> is only selling games that developers already make available for windows

Forza and Gears were XBox exclusives before XBPA.

How could they have called it an Xbox phone when they didn't have any AAA titles to launch with?

I had WP7 back in the day when it seemed like IOS, Android, WP and WebOS could all share the pie. It didn't even have a file manager, something Androids came with on Day 1.

Luckily for Microsoft, there's many developpers that don't work on mobile. There's millions of developpers working for banks, governement, or other large organization, and many of them are choosing Microsoft technologies for their stacks. Mobile app had its gold rush in the early 2010s, but now Microsoft is investing into capturing developpers to use their cloud platform, and they are obviously doing very well in that area.

I am definitely not anti Microsoft, I’ve been developing with some version of Visual Studio for well over 20 years. But, it makes absolutely no sense to hang your hat on developing using Windows specific technologies in 2018. Even Azure is hosting more Linux VMs than Windows VMs. I’m at least moving toward .Net Core and if I were doing desktop apps I would use Xamarin.

But all of the money and energy is moving away from .Net. As much as I hate that JavaScript has taken over in mindshare, at least there is TypeScript.

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