Microsoft Unveils Mango, the Latest Version of Windows Phone
mashable.com
mashable.com
It may wind up serving a different consumer space than the Android or iPhone app-heavy consumer, and that's why it's interesting.
If so, that may have forced Microsoft's hand in their completely different UI.
I guess you'd say that even if you were forced down that route, but it's still interesting to see good design and different thinking coming out of Redmond.
And icon based UI has been around a long time. http://img.zdnet.com/techDirectory/_PROGMAN.GIF
Apple and google(they bought the company Android) spent a lot of time designing their mobile OSes.
MS would have to spend the same time designing the UI, they do not have time, so they created something very simple(drawing simple vector shapes with orthogonal pictures is extremely easy and fast to do), and will use money to force their product into the market, buying whatever they need(just Nokia deal took MS BILLIONS vs Android taking tens of millions from Google, add the money they will give to carriers) because they CAN'T LOOSE THE MOBILE WARS. If they do they loose the train of the future.
Don't mistake a lack of "flashiness" for a lack of taste. Windows Phone is a pretty classy product with a decent chance of success as long as Microsoft doesn't shoot themselves in the foot.
This is why I was really hoping that the rumors about MS buying out Nokia were true, that would get them great hardware to go with great software, then they could really push again this holiday. For all Zune's hardware problems in the beginning, the Zune HD was really a nice piece of kit, as is the Xbox 360. Microsoft does know how to make great consumer hardware when it wants to, people just forget that they do.
I know, it sounds dumb, but right now they have a terrible history of competing with Apple and Android. If you're going to shell out hundreds of bucks, are you going to risk it on another Microsoft device?
On the other hand, if you were going to get a free phone anyway, and somebody tells you that the new MS "smart" phone is free, why not try it? If they can get wide adoption there, get a lot of user feedback and keep improving, they can start releasing nicer handsets and work their way up into the premium market.
Of course, all this assumes that they can make a phone with cheap hardware which performs decently and is truly a step up for flip-phone users, and that they can get adoption there. But at least those folks have lower standards and less to lose by getting a Microsoft phone. (Which, by the way, should NOT be called a Windows phone.)
It's the "a smart phone in every pocket" strategy. :)
- Low end phones tend to be crappy. If everyone who gets a "free" low end Windows phone hates it because the phone isn't very good, they're going to trash talk Windows phones, even if the OS doesn't suck. Windows phones already get trash-talked quite a lot (I don't know anyone with a Windows phone that actually likes it). I don't know anyone with a WP7 device, so I don't know if it Windows still sucks on mobile devices, but there's already a bad reputation to overcome. I know you've addressed this with this sentence: "all this assumes that they can make a phone with cheap hardware which performs decently", but you can't really wave away the limitations of the technology. In a year, feature phone priced hardware will be smartphone capable...but Windows Phone will be even further behind Android by then.
- Windows Phone is not, as far as I know, a resource light OS. Putting it on an underpowered phone in order to keep the price really low is likely to lead to an even worse user experience than normal. Again, trash-talking end users would be the result.
- To make phones cheaper than Android phones, Microsoft would have to give away the OS for free, and try to make the revenue back through app store purchases or something. Microsoft doesn't have a history of giving away the razor and selling the blades at a steep markup (XBOX might be a counterpoint, since it reportedly was a loss-leader in the beginning).
- There is already a solid low-end smartphone market built on Android. The Optimus line, for instance, is available for free with contract from several providers, and for under $200 without a contract, and is a very serviceable smart phone; roughly comparable to a Nexus One, though not quite as nicely constructed. With a contract, even the iPhone is now close to free ($49 for a 3GS).
Feature phone users have already mostly begun migrating to smartphones. The only people I know who still use dumb phones are people on pay-as-you-go plans, that didn't offer smart phones when they bought their phone a year or two or three ago. Smart phones are now common on pay-as-you-go carriers, and most of the people I know on those plans are upgrading or planning to upgrade in the next few months.
So, to summarize: Beating Android to the bottom seems untenable. Beating Apple for the aspirational market seems untenable (since nobody aspires to use Microsoft, as it was historically the value choice). Microsoft needs to find a niche in the smartphone market, but I think all the good ones are taken. Blackberry had a good one in the enterprise market...but they've lost it by falling so far behind technically. Maybe Microsoft can win in the enterprise niche and fill the hole probably left by Blackberry (though both iPhone and Android are reasonably capable of serving in that role, neither has focused on it).
>> - Windows Phone is not, as far as I know, a resource light OS. Putting it on an underpowered phone in order to keep the price really low is likely to lead to an even worse user experience than normal. Again, trash-talking end users would be the result.
WP7 is actually a ridiculously light OS. All of the current WP7 phones uses the older generation Snapdragon processors, but they are still faster then most of the newer Android handsets with dual-core processors. MS went to great pains to make sure that everything was optimized (and the UI is hardware accelerated), which is why their hardware specifications only had support for one SoC.
FWIW, all consoles are loss-leaders in the beginning, and you make the money back in game license fees and relying on components becoming cheaper over time.
The only console maker that has bucked this trend is Nintendo with the DS and Wii; they always sold for a profit. That's why Nintendo doesn't care that the attach rate (number of games bought for the platform) is through the floor, because Nintendo already made their money.
I also agree that you can't beat Android in the race to the bottom.
1) Cheap feature phones (under $200 real cost) with a voice plan but no data plans.
2) Smart phones ($500+ real cost) with $30 data plans.
Both of those are subsidized by the attached plans so the consumer pays $0 to $200. Where does a low-end smart phone fit into this ecosystem? A $400 real cost phone is already going to be subsidized down to $0 out of pocket.
It seems like the only vendor who has any interest in really cheap smart phones is Virgin Mobile, who will sell you an ok Android phone for $200 but with a $25 unlimited data plan (and 300 minutes). I'm not sure if there is really much money to be made chasing this market.
I'd prefer more phones to ship with Gecko (Firefox), like my Nokia N900 but anything non-WebKit adds to the diversity.
Edit: I don't really have anything against WebKit and understand that it makes sense for mobiles as it's easily embedable but the fact that it has a monopoly in the mobile space really gets to me!
I am hoping* that Microsoft drops IE (the rendering engine not the browser), and throws it's support behind the Gecko engine. With Microsoft supporting Gecko, and Google and Apple supporting WebKit, we should see nice growth browser's capabilities.
*I know this won't happen, but who says a man can't dream.
A bit clearer information. I've had one now for a while and I do enjoy the phone. It seems slightly limited but hopefully Mango will push it further, and we'll see tighter integration with Windows 8 next year. Zune software looks better than iTunes, but some of its configs are lacking. The current phone is probably between the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, but you don't have that feeling of App Silos, however I use the Facebook integration less and less. I think I will be leaning towards iPhone 5 instead though, as the apps are significantly lacking in this phone (and app development API/SDK access is terrible). Marketplace needs a big overhaul and move to something different than an App Store mimic.
The worst feature is Bing Maps. Last night I typed in location X and it said not available. So I typed in located X suburb Y and it still said it could not find it. So I typed in location X suburb Y and state Z. It then relocates to the centre of the state Z and points out that state Z is here.
Is your Win7 experience a personal one though? I haven't yet required to connect to a hidden wifi network. And now that cut-and-paste has arrived, I have used it all of twice.
I'm always of the state of mind that the differences between Android, Iphone, and Win7 aren't that big; I wouldn't say that win7 is unbaked any of those phones, except when it comes to apps, and iPhone always wins.
I just hate being an Apple user. I want to have an iPhone with out the Apple fanboy stigma
1) Enterprise Integration
2) Skype integration
3) Senseless (A communications network that runs on whitespace)
If MS integrates well into the enterprise it becomes the natural phone for enterprise developers (eg. the people who already know C#)
With Skype integration MS has an excellent platform to bring Skype to the enterprise and start cutting desktop phone costs. I know we'd all bemoan a 'managed' skype solution but corporate america would love it, and they trust the MS brand.
The third prong is the final nail in the coffin, if MS can deliver senseless and make the carrier's irrelevant then some massive innovation can take place in the space and MS will be the natural leader having both the spectrum and the handset, the only real question is whether they make a boatload of money by offering competitive pricing, or they use cut throat pricing to take the whole market. Knowing MS's embrace, extend, extinguish strategy my money would be on the latter, especially now that they are free from DOJ oversight.
The app integration from search is good too. It feels more like a Windows Phone 8 or atleast 7.5 but they're still calling it 7.1
Guess they've got the idea that users associate Windows for PCs 7 with Windows Phone 7 which seems to me ought to only be a minor consideration.
That tying-stuff-together mentality is something that has served Microsoft well while they've dominated, but is increasingly a weight around their necks as areas become important that they can't extend domination into.
Why could this not have been winCE 6.5 several years back?
Seems MS wasted a lot of resources in buying Danger INC and than not listening to them..