Microsoft confirms 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 handsets sold since launch | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft confirms 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 handsets sold since launch

thenextweb.com

27 pointspierrefar48 comments

so now the days of being able to use HTML5 targeting mostly Webkit to build amazing Mobile Web Apps are over.

Back are the days of ugly IE hacks, frustrating testing and rewriting stuff so it works in IE6.

A heartfelt "thank you" to Micrsoft for screwing over countless web developers who finally felt that they were able to really express themselves at least in the mobile world.

Also, dear customers, please understand that from now on any mobile work you are giving us will be much more expensive because Microsoft decided to release a phone OS in 2010 with a browser engine basically from 2001 (I hear it's not quite IE7).

And, dear end users, please understand that because of Microsoft, we won't be able to supply you with all the amazing new features in your mobile apps as quickly any more because, now, we developers will have to do additional work to make sure that whatever we are creating works in that new OS Microsoft released that runs a browser from 2001.

Myself? I'm off to hide in a dark corner and cry.

It's actually somewhere between IE7 and IE8. Obviously still not good, but we're not talking about IE6 here.

I heard different statements about this.

Officially it's IE7, but some people said it has some old IE6 bugs in it.

Basically, it's probably just another mess that needs to be specifically targeted.

Closer to the IE7 side of things. And while IE7 was an improvement on IE6 it still lacks a large portion of the fun stuff that’s for the past couple of years made smartphone-focused web development a breath of fresh air.

I wholeheartedly agree and share the frustration. This only detracts from web apps in favor of native apps.

At this point a solution (or a way to mitigate the problem) would be something like phonegap. You still have to endure the pain of deploying the app (app stores, customers that don't upgrade, etc.) but at least you have to only support the browser that phonegap integrates (webkit, if I recall).

Couldn't you bundle webkit with your app?

Yeah. I could.

But do I want to create an app? Right now, many possible web applications could be done as just that.

Web applications. No need for an installation, no need to deal with approval issues, no dealing with people not upgrading either OS or app. Just a plain website.

Being forced into a local installation again is a huge hit against the open web.

Isn't it a .Net only platform? No native code?

At this point, for most developers the choice is Silverlight (.net/c#) and XNA (for games). I think only a limited amount of publishers are able to publish native c/c++ applications.

TorchMobile had a good port of webkit on WindowsCE with a good browser. RIM bought them and killed the application. Lots of users were sad but the port is not dead from the webkit repository perspective.

That's how many iPhone 4s Apple sold in its first 3 days. Google is activating that many Androids every 5 days. It's not a huge deal.

That said, the browser is apparently better than an "IE6.5"

According to Andy Lees the browser is "halfway between IE7 and IE8" which is a considerable improvement. Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10452710-56.html

Elsewhere there have been mentions that the next big software update, codenamed "Mango", which will apply to all WP7 devices, will bring the browser closer to IE9 with support for many HTML5 and CSS3 features.

It's a big deal because it means WP7 is in the game, which is not what some were predicting.

It really isn't. There are two separate issues which are being mixed here.

1. Browser is not as bad as the OP suggested and will improve with the next update to a decent level of HTML5/CSS3 (Microsoft has turned a leaf with IE9, not perfect but infinitely better than "IE6.5")

2. The 1.5 million WP7 phones sold over the launch period (the last 6 weeks) won't even replace the current number of Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone sales as they get phased out from corporate sales. Now there is a smartphone with a dog of a browser.

To be in the game, Microsoft needs much more than 1.5 million sales. They need more than this to make it worthwhile for their manufacturing partners (divide the sales amongst HTC, Dell, LG and Samsung).

This is not a disaster like the Kin but it isn't really good news for them.

Just don't bother supporting it. This will either force them to get their act together, or frustrate consumers who'll proceed to move to a better platform.

Which, from the view of customers, is websites which support their phone, not a phone which websites support. If enough of your customers use WP7 for it to be cost-effective to support, don't piss them off by not supporting it just to be vindictive, because they'll blame you and it will, indeed, be your fault for not supporting it.

Honestly, why go to the effort? With 2 massive competing phone platforms that are implemented sanely, this time it is entirely up to Microsoft to fix any...inconsistencies. They are the underdog, and they don't deserve to have the whole industry bend over and twist their apps just so that a fledgling phone platform is more useful.

I want to agree with you so badly (and to some extent, I suppose I do), but any time I consider the margin of users you could "safely" exclude, I consider the competitor who does not.

On the other hand, any time you consider spending dev cycles to accommodate a minor player in the mobile market, you can consider the competitor who instead makes their product better on the main platforms.

Ever heard of customers? It doesn't work that way.

That's like saying that you need to make your website work with Opera, when most people don't bother. In this case, Microsoft is in Opera's place. I'd say it's pretty safe to ignore them.

Kinda a bad analogy as Opera is pretty much on par with Webkit/Gekko. Sure it basically shares the same JS-based quirks as IE, but it has a much more robust and usable error console so I welcome it.

Actually, that means the answer is even clearer for Windows Phone - since the differences are greater, it should have a proportionally larger share of the market to make supporting it worthwhile.

My point is that the cost to support Opera isnt as high, or in A LOT of case, adds nothing, to the effort needed to get to a final product.

No way.

You can't argue about market share, since it's minuscule. If you want your websites to run on _all_ mobile devices, you'll also need to support Opera Mini, Symbian's built-in browser and whatever else is out there. Those latter two have way more installs than there are win phones, by the way.

You can't argue about corporate users being forced to use IEMobile. It's a person's _choice_ to use a windows phone, and Microsoft's responsibility to make it a pleasant experience, not yours.

It's a branch of IE7. IE9 mobile is being released in the next few months from what I hear. The Win Phone 7 team had to make a temporary trade off as to what they could have ready by launch.

> I hear it's not quite IE7

In the time it took you to write your rant, you could have checked, found out you were wrong, and then saved yourself all that typing.

What's with all the hate for WP7? I've used a handful of devices now and they were a real treat to play with. I think it's amazing how they have re-imagined the way people should use their phones. They've been quite innovative with the OS, and even their packaged apps are kind of awesome too.

For instance, the mail and contacts apps are probably better than those on competing platforms.

Bing maps was arguably the nicest mapping app on the market until Google just released Maps 5.0 for Android.

On top of all of that, it's a treat to develop Windows Phone 7 apps, and I'm excited to see what people create.

All in all, it saddens me that you guys seem to hate on WP7 for basically no reason whatsoever, and I personally think that it's amazing what Microsoft has done to revive their mobile operating system.

They abused whole IT ecosystem with Windows for years. That is the main reason for the general distaste against Microsoft.

Link to the actual "interview": http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/Features/2010/dec10/12-21...

Another is phone manufacturer sales – phones being bought and stocked by mobile operators and retailers on their way to customers. We are pleased that phone manufacturers sold over 1.5 million phones in the first six weeks, which helps build customer momentum and retail presence.

So that means that 1.49 million phones are sitting on a shelf waiting to be bought by actual users?

I've heard that all Microsoft employees are being given a free WP7 phone. Given that they have ~100K employees, that's a sizable number.

All workers located at microsoft or all FTE's? There are something like 60-100k people employed by microsoft, but i think that includes vendors/csgs. Just FTEs are a much smaller amount.

Microsoft employees and interns--that is, blue badges--are being offered reimbursement on the purchase of a Windows Phone 7 device through mid-June (in the US; non-US sites are handling things differently). Not every US employee has taken advantage of the offer due to no availability from Sprint and Verizon or just because they didn't want to yet.

Specifically 2010 Summer-Fall interns. Even more specifically, it requires a data plan. The FTEs have a different deal—I don't remember how it works.

This is phone manufacturers selling 1.5 million phones - does that mean actual activations or does that mean it includes inventory sitting in stores. It sounds like the latter to me.

This is phones sold to distribution, not phones sold to consumers.

How many stores sell smart phones?

I'd ballpark it at 1 per 5000 people (that's what it seems like in my city) - so that's 60 000 in North America (or 25 phones a store). It seems like a lot of that could be stock (or all of it, 25/store doesn't seem like a lot of stock).

[refinement of numbers much appreciated]

Yes, it's an old Microsoft trick for goosing the numbers.

Hey, M$ suxx0rz and all that, but that's by no means just a "Microsoft trick".

Personally, I find the UI very, very appealing. But will not purchase a WP7 phone until a proper browser becomes available, even Opera Mini will suffice.

On a related note, how come all the mobile JS frameworks neglect Opera?

I wonder if they are actually sold and activated? Microsoft has a history of inflating sales numbers. I imagine this may mean that they shipped 1.5 million to the carriers, but most have not been activated. I have seen them on sale at a two for one, which leaves me to believe that they are not selling well and carriers are trying to dump them cheaply.

Not to forget that ~90k Microsoft employees got the WP7 for free which is a massive 6% of the active user base!

Nope, only blue badges.

To be honest those numbers don't seem all that great considering Microsoft is running a buy one get one free deal with both AT&T and T-Mobile. It'll be interesting to see how the activation rate changes once those deals expire.

AT&T: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/cmpn/buy-one-get...

T-Mobile: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/cmpn/t-mobile.as...

The real question is do any of your friends use Win7 phones? Not one of my friends do and many of them use Win7 on the desktop. The number activated is probably a lot lower. 1.5 mil is not that large of a mobile/internet number.

I know all of the MS Fulltimers had the option of getting a free one for Christmas this month.. Wonder how that bumps up the numbers :)

Well they say the next version of the windows phone will include some ability to write some html 5

This is not sales to consumers, this is sales to distribution channels.

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