Hacker News Reader

Comment by kungito | Hacker News Reader

They are still missing a mobile platform and that's why I believe they will retry within the next few years

I don't think they will. There's no point. There is a stable duopoly, where Microsoft can reap the benefits of competition between the two, without wasting any resources.

May not be best for consumer - really great for business. (especially, if courts hold that Apple/Google cannot outright ban apps from their stores)

I’ve heard that thanks to patents and stuff they already makes loads of money out of mobile as it is!

I wonder if the Nokia phone division sale included the NGage patent portfolio

Nokia kept all their patents.

For anyone curious about that:

"Nokia will retain its patent portfolio and will grant Microsoft a 10-year license to its patents at the time of the closing. Microsoft will grant Nokia reciprocal rights to use Microsoft patents in its HERE services. In addition, Nokia will grant Microsoft an option to extend this mutual patent agreement in perpetuity."

https://news.microsoft.com/2013/09/03/microsoft-to-acquire-n...

they make money but they lack control, e.g. MS can't decide how software/apps are distributed, what is trusted and what not, how apps are glued together, that's a huge miss, plus the 30% cut Apple and Google apply to payments, MS is missing out on a lot of money, and MS stores pale in comparison. Not that I support this model of distributing software, I prefer the old desktop model of downloading from internet, but don't think MS is making much money just because of patents.

Is there some particular cultural reason why MS have been so bad at the whole walled Garden thing? I’m thinking back as far as MSN

I'm not sure about internal cultural reasons why but it seems like Microsoft just sucks at user experience for the most part, which is the key to the walled garden approach to me. I've never used a Microsoft product (other than mayyyybe the Xbox 360?) and thought, wow, this product is awesome and I'd never willingly switch to something else. You know, that feeling you get when you use something like an iPhone or Google products in the 2000s/early 2010s?

well actually MS knows how to create a walled garden, but just enterprise gardens. They fail at consumer gardens because the leadership doesn’t see money there and are quite shortsighted at seeing it too. Eg see how they lost ads, search, browser, mobile. They’re in games because of Windows and later Azure, so, again they look at it through enterprise glasses.

Less so than they used to. These were mostly 90s patents and a lot of them expired in the past five years.

> There is a stable duopoly, where Microsoft can reap the benefits of competition between the two, without wasting any resources.

The huge competition where both charge 30% of gross sales, far higher than even the federal corporate tax rate, which is only charged on the net.

And they don't have to spend billions on building and maintaining their own platform.

They get away with that because it's a two-sided market and they have all the consumers. Microsoft tried to woo devs on Windows phone and it didn't work, because consumers didn't follow.

Hard to see that lasting more than another 2-3 years.

They’re the ones providing everything from the OS through the dev environment and the hosting and payment processing, not to mention marketing and having built the billion devices that users are purchasing from.

I could see them launching an Android “SurfacePhone” just because (to have SOME stance in mobile). Or Windows-based since Windows already has an android subsystem (or emulator right?).

It's called the Surface Duo, it's already on its second generation.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-duo-2/9408kgxp4xjl...

$1500 Android phone is giving me some Ballmer-era level laughs.

The Samsung Fold 3 was around this price at launch.

Nowadays it's fine if it is made well (actually not good even in 2nd gen, for software)

I honestly don't understand which market segment that device is targeted to.

That's a foldable phone that you never use in 'full screen' mode, correct? For $1,500? Ouch.

Hmm, if it had a headphone jack and NFC-F (which it seems the Japanese edition might?) I'd be interested. Microsoft has always made good hardware.

Yeah, there's already a quality- and cost-leader for the mobile market. MS would need to push their business office lock-in, but both they and Blackberry tried that. Without the consumer market it's not viable.

Purely anecdotal but I feel like we are at a point where a lot of people would definitely stop and take a close look at a non-Android alternative to the iPhone

I would be very happy with a third option. As an iPhone user, I really am unhappy with iOS, but any time I even briefly entertain the idea of switching to Android, I laugh at the idea. Both options are bad, and I'm stuck with the lesser of two evils.

The new PinePhone actually looks kinda decent. Unfortunately it will likely go from an interesting idea to abandoned before my iPhone is ready for a replacement.

I have the PinePhone Beta Edition with Convergence Package and I tried all of the available OS alternatives, unfortunately none of those is quite ready for use as a daily driver.

Overall the best experience was with Mobian, this is actually pretty close to being a daily driver and if only performance was a bit better it could be OK (the new PinePhone Pro will be faster so I'm waiting to try Mobian with that).

Ubuntu Touch was the smoothest in terms of performance. The main disadvantage is I could not find some of the apps that are available for the other distros like Gnome Maps. Since it is based on Ubuntu I was expecting to find a larger app ecosystem compared to Mobian but that wasn't the case (I tried searching both in the store app and using apt search in terminal). Also, many apps in the store are actually repackaged progressive apps.

The default OS (Manjaro Plasma) is the least polished of all the ones I tried, it is quite a lot slower than Mobian or Ubuntu Touch and even basic things like placing an app on the home screen are broken, and I have no idea why they chose it as the default OS.

Why is android bad in your opinion? i personally went for IOS recently due to privacy,security being important to me(3 years of security update for 1.4k android device is ridiculous), but I'm pretty jealous of android's software, usability and its users not having to buy everything apple to do simple tasks.

I don't feel like MS would do better on security or privacy compared to android.

Windows Phone at least was trying different things almost a decade ago. Some were pretty decent features.

> android's software, usability and its users not having to buy everything apple to do simple tasks.

Software as in third party apps or? What does the last point mean? What is an example?

I don’t care about privacy or security for my self. I use iOS devices because of usability and UX. After webOS then Windows Phone died I moved on to iPhone 6S and stuck with iPhones.

Would be really hard to launch a new platform. Even if its excellent on its own unfortunately it can't survive without a big app catalog.

Yes, it would definitely be an uphill battle. But I wonder if you could build a platform where a progressive web app felt enough like a mobile app and therefore enticed more app developers than requiring them to learn native tools for another platform

Ever heard of Firefox OS?

https://medium.com/@bfrancis/the-legacy-of-firefox-os-c58ec3...

Can a new phone platform be successful if it launches without whatsapp / wechat / line / instagram / [add a dozen social networks there]?

A phone that doesn't let you speak to your friends, family, and coworkers is going to be a tough sell. Getting all those from the get go, without a large user base to motivate the developers, is going to be a tough sell.

Easy solution, make the default app platform be based off of html/css/javascript. Now the entire ecosystem of web developers can build for your platform instantly.

Wasn't that PalmOS which got acquired by LG?

That would be Palm webOS.

The nostalgia I have for 2009-2011's webOS, as a former app dev for the platform and its embrace of the Web Platform, is still very much real to the point that I keep my Palm Pre 2 dev unit behind me in my home office. Still charges and boots just like it did back in 2010. I'd love to see something with the computing power of the present try it again (and I'm aware React Native exists), but my expectations of it ever coming to fruition are rather low.

Aside: Seeing MagSafe chargers for iPhones these days makes me chuckle. Also a webOS innovation from back in...2009.

I lost my old Pre recently. Will probably buy another for the nostalgia reasons as well.

My beloved webOS failed with that 11, 12 years ago.

They can always start from their old playbook with Embrace..

> "a lot of people"

Depends what you mean by a lot of people, and what kind of alternative you have in mind. Tech folks want something open source, like the degoogle androids we already see. Non-tech folks don't care much about Android, they just want something that works and has all the apps. So it would be hard to have any real competition, considering even Microsoft had to pull the plug

They haven't completely given up on mobile. The Microsoft Launcher for Android is really close to what a modern Microsoft mobile platform would feel like.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/launcher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Launcher

I could see using this for work with office 365 integration but that’s the complete opposite direction of gaming for me.

I use this on my phone, I really like it. All they have to do is leverage it and start a store, but not sure if the timing is right just now.

I think if MS embraced ad blocking and made edge (both mobile and desktop) support extensions including ublock origin they could really eat into that platform. At the moment you can run Firefox with ublock origin on Android ( which I do ) but quite a few extensions don't work ( like violent monkey). To me, being able to run ublock origin (and other addons) on Android is a massive competitive advantage, but Firefox can't seem to convert it to users in the mobile space, basically they have no real platform/marketing leverage.

People outside tech and geeky niches won’t leave something like Chrome because of stricter ad blocking.

Just like privacy, security, and the intense amounts of FB/Meta hatred, these issues aren’t the same for the populous at large.

Convinced they're just going to do the Netflix/Stadia route with mobile etc. Sell a controller, use the device you already have and stream games running from azure.

Long term plan, obviously.

Not so long term - xCloud has been in live public beta for a few years now.

This will be interesting to see. If Steam Deck becomes a successful device, I believe the Xbox division will release a mobile device to compete with Nintendo.

I mean if your controllers already support Bluetooth and you already have an Android-based dual-screen form factor device and you already have cloud gaming infrastructure.. do you really need an entire new device? Or do you need a bundle at point of sales

They should just copy Steam Deck.

I don’t think so. They’ve moved away from owning the platform (at least in mobile) in favor of services. Office is wildly popular in mobile OS app stores.

Microsoft is making the Game Pass catalog playable on mobile devices. I think that's their strategy there.

May be a Microsoft branded version of Android. Or like how Android currently work on Windows. Windows with Android compatibility.

Or a xPhone where they could leverage Xbox gaming on Mobile with Android compatibility.

It is sort of strange to think Microsoft prospect all of a sudden looks fairly bright.

It's too late to capture mobile platforms, not only because the market is stabilized but most importantly: computing moves to the cloud, where Microsoft is already a big player. IMHO there is no point for them to do that.

That is a really interesting thought. Now they got much more of everything both in terms of technology (cloud, mobile apps, hardware experience) and developers trust.

Wonder if Windows on ARM will be any help there

That's an interesting idea. I wonder if the size & concentration of that market is an effective deterrent?

They are going at it with their own Surface Duo based on Android, it is like Android but with Microsoft twist, so.

Duo is an utter facepalm. What are they thinking. It doesn't make the device cheaper or lighter, in fact it makes it heavier and more expensive. It constrains your interaction and UI model. It introduces unnecessary mechanical complications and points of failure. It made sense for Nintendo on the DS because it did reduce costs and the device could be small and light enough for it to work. The Duo is just different for the sake of being different though. Classic solution in search of a problem.

We could have had Windows 10X as well, but apparently the new blood on WinDev has lost track of what made Windows great, and are now as headless chicken running into all directions.

I agree with you 100%, I've never even heard of or seen a use case for the dual-screen flip smartphone

That said, my friends seem to love their Samsung foldable phones. "Having a tablet available at any time in your pocket is a game changer"

(I don't understand how it's a game changer, but there you go, one counterpoint)

I watch everything on an iPad. For me personally, it’s a minor game changer to be able to do all that on one device. Same with the minor notes, management, journaling I do on it. Though as you say. Not a game changer because of the pricing. If this was available at the same price as current devices, I’d consider that a moderate game changer.

It's just not for you. Bigger dual screen makes sense for some people.

They don't need to have a mobile platform if they can get a foothold on game streaming on mobile.

just saying wouldn't be a bad idea to make a xbox mobile-android device in the near future now that they have mindshare again

Reply on news.ycombinator.com