Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t it Taken Off? | Hacker News Reader

Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t it Taken Off?

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23 pointscek43 comments

People don't trust Microsoft. And they're selling it under the Windows brand. How cool is Windows? Not very. Who wants viruses and blue screens on their phone? Not many people. (note: it's irrelevant whether blue screens and viruses actually exist on WP7).

The XBox succeeded in part because it was sold off-brand.

Irrelevant.

I would rewrite your comment this way:

Developers don't trust Microsoft. Who wants the OS vendor to make competition for their software? Not many developers. And Microsoft will if it can, because it has to grow.

The XBOX succeeded in part because competition in games is a non-exclusive agreement, a gamer that buys a racing title will probably buy another racing title.

A customer that buys MS Office will not buy another suite.

A customer that buys or downloads for free the MS app in his phone will not buy another app that does the same, even if it's better.

Isn't Apple an OS vendor, one with a history of not approving apps that compete with what Apple has already done, and of taking existing apps off the market when Apple rolls out their own version?

True, and the fact that they are very clear about it seems to make a difference.

Also, they have a marketplace that has helped lots of developers already.

The point is, whatever Apple is doing, is not as bad as the "is not ready until Lotus/Novell/etc doesn't run" that MS did in the past.

Today's Microsoft is yesterday's Old Spice, it's an "old man" brand that nobody wants to touch. It's the ultimate of un-cool and hasn't even risen to the level of irony like using an old Motorola or Nokia phone as a statement would.

They need to market these Windows Phone 7 things directly to people who are thinking Android, and they need to push them and push them hard. All I ever see are these weak-sauce ads that have nothing to say and leave you more confused at the end than at the beginning.

I'm not disagreeing, but I do wonder: is Blackberry cool? I don't know a single person that regards Blackberry as a desirable brand. But they are (were?) known for solid devices and good integration.

I've met VERY FEW people who bought BB's. Almost everyone I've ever seen that had one had it given to them by their corporate overlords. Me included. I liked mine, but I had no other choices then. I do now, and I'm not choosing RIM (though I'd be intrigued with something running QNX...)

A lot of high school kids in the UK have Blackberries for some reason. Maybe they're the best for hyperactive texting.

If I had to guess it's because they're $0 phones and often come bundled with inexpensive unlimited texting plans.

If you're a thirteen year old girl that sends a hundred texts a day, which is actually the average, then a you'll want the one with the physical keyboard.

Plus, the Blackberry Pearl doesn't look that bad as far as phone gadgets go. You can even pick from a variety of colors, something which the Android and iPhone offerings lack without spending extra on a case or stickers.

Because Microsoft is promoting it as a premium product. people who want a premium phone get an iPhone and everybody else gets an android. Windows phone is positioned to compete with iPhone, which it can't do.

This opinion excludes nerds who obsess and agonize over things before making a purchase, so please don't reply with "wahh android is premium too" comments. I agree, but that isn't how it is positioned in the marketplace.

> people who want a premium phone get an iPhone and everybody else gets an android.

12-15 months ago I'd agree, but the latest crop of Android phones compete quite handily in "premiumness".

Please read the second part of my above comment. The premiumness of the phone is irrelevant as long as the salespeople in the stores are still selling android as "the phone that isn't an iPhone"

This is pretty much my line of thinking. Being 3rd in anything is difficult. I think it's easy for us humans to conceptualize 2 choices and see their differences; it's much harder when you throw a 3rd into the mix. You like Coke or you like Pepsi. Coke is a tradition, a staple; Pepsi is young and hip. These are cliches, but they affect consumers on a subconscious level. Being an alternative can sometimes still be profitable though, but you have to find your niche. Maybe Microsoft hasn't conceded WP7 to its niche yet.

> The premiumness of the phone is irrelevant as long as the salespeople in the stores are still selling android as "the phone that isn't an iPhone"

I actually haven't seen that. Again, perhaps in the past, but these days there's a lot of knowledge about Android. Perhaps your experiences have been different and I will readily acknowledge I may have been lucky, but your assertions don't match what I've seen. <shrug>

I think you probably got lucky, but you're right that android knowledge is growing and and there now exists a good sized group of people who will specifically seek out an android phone when the time comes to upgrade. But for the large majority of people, their first android phone was purchased because they just wanted a cheap generic smartphone and that meant android. And for the large group of people that is still switching from feature phones to smartphones, android is still the default cheap phone, and iPhone is still the default premier phone.

Windows phone's target market is fans of windows phone, but they are trying to build that group exclusively through advertising. Apple built their market of apple fans through the iPod and other products. Android built a market of android fans through the cheap phones to feed sales of premium android phones. Windows phone needs a feeder market if it wants to be a premium product.

I think that might be easier to do if there was one single Windows Phone, or even better a range of maybe three phones (one with keyboard, one 4.3", one lower-end 3.7", say). Synchronise the launch of new versions of these devices once a year, like Apple does. The software is only half the story for Apple- the big hardware launch each year is huge.

Basically, the MS-Nokia deal needed to have happened before any other third parties got involved. A totally tied-in Nokia range (complete with their mapping expertise, etc) would have been huge, I think. Right now there's just a mess of devices with almost identical specs.

Why would I want a Windows Phone?

If I want locked-down smoothness I'd have an iPhone (it has all the apps). If I want openness, I'd have Android (I can install anything I like).

What does WP7 give me?

Are those the only 2 possible things a consumer might want?

There's the "more information at a glance" marketing angle that Microsoft initially took, but that doesn't strike me as being sufficiently captivating for the average smartphone seeker.

No, but his question is still unanswered. What does WP7 bring to the table? Simply saying WP7 is superior doesn't make it so.

What it brings to the table is largely irrelevant; consumers don't make their phone purchasing decisions based on these one-liner cliches that the grandparent lays out. The important question is: what does Windows Phone bring to the carriers (the people who sell the phones).

It's a different world altogether. When people think of paying for a mobile. They are by default thinking of paying for the hardware. They don't care, about what runs inside. When people buy an iPhone they are automatically imagining an awesome form factor an awesome UI. By default shipped to them.

So now here is the problem, If HTC ships a phone, will it be an 'HTC phone' or a 'Windows phone'? Now you see there is a problem there. People have trouble imagining the term 'HTC phone running windows'. They understand only single branding. Its either Windows phone or a HTC phone. That's the same thing as during the PC era, for an ordinary user it was always 'I have a Dell computer' or 'I have a Toshiba', It was never a 'Windows computer'.

That is what dug MS's grave here.

When people go to buy televisions, mp3 players or even cars. They don't care who is writing the software/shipping the engine for the car. They talk about manufacturers like - 'Is this toyota car good?' or 'Is this Panasonic TV good', even though Sony may probably be supplying the OEM components to Panasonic.

So people have a lot of trouble imagining 'Windows Phone'.

Android is different here, because Google main business is not selling Android. They sell a totally different thing for which Android is an enabler. So the branding problem doesn't arise there.

So people don't have any reason to consider 'Windows phone' special. Heck they don't understand what a windows phone is basically, Just like how I and you don't care about what engine is built into our cars, or who supplies the filament inside the electric bulb.

To me I can only imagine the electric bulb as a whole, I don't really have the time, money or the resources to go researching for the quality of filaments used inside and who manufactures them. I imagine the bulb as a whole, so the user does the same thing when buying a mobile. Its a whole mobile not a specific component running inside it. And from the direction of view, there is nothing special about windows on manufacturer X.

* how about cheap:android €60 on prepay v €380 for wp7, €460 for iphone. this is ireland so your country may vary.

* how about writing code on the device itself:symbian and android can do this. wp7? friendliness to gpl for me counts here to.

* how about battery life:this would be symbian where you can last days of heavy use. iphone and android barely last a day for me. wp7?

* how about the ability to run your own version of the os:cyanogen mod for android. this way i can remove all those preinstalled apps that i will never use.

i've used symbian since 2004 (loved), ios since iphone 3g (liked) and am now on android (meh). i've played with every version of wince/pocket pc/win mobile and all without fail have been woeful. microsoft has fouled their own nest before launching wp7. why would any one who tried any of those previous versions give the new one a chance?

i'm not the average consumer but many average consumers ask me for advice. these days i recommend fluffy v flexible. if they want a fluffy easy to use phone then get an iphone and if they want flexible then get android as there are so many choices they can find one that does precisely what they want.

You need to try a WP7 phone. I genuinely think that it represents a 'third way' between Android and iPhone. Yes, it's locked down, but the UI works around very different principles to iOS.

It really isn't very app-centric. For instance, it has a 'People' tile that is basically your phonebook... except that each person also has a 'history' section that collates all your Facebook, Twitter and e-mail exchanges with each other. It also shows you a feed that combines your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc into one place. I don't have to load up a separate app for every action I want to take.

It's very, very well put together. Their next step (IMO) needs to be to allow more third party integration- I want GChat alongside FB and Live chat, Foursquare integration with the 'Places' tile, and so on. I'm pretty sure that it is on the way.

The title is missing the word "yet". Microsoft won't give up on this, they have the pockets to keep pushing until something sticks.

Thats what people said about the Zune and the XBox. True with the latter (no one can say the 360 isn't a huge success) while very much not true for the former. Despite pushing the Zune for years it never took off and was recently abandoned. What makes you think Windows Phone will be more like XBox than Zune?

Simply that there is way more at stake, and Microsoft won't give up as easily.

Zune was a media player, the market for which is being destroyed by smartphones (why carry around two devices?). So merging Zune into Phone makes sense- I just wish they'd stuck with the Zune name, in all honesty. But there's probably a corporate angle to why they didn't.

Importance. Microsoft (rightly) considers smartphones to be a serious, if not existential, threat to them, breaking their near hegemony on personal computers. Given the importance, Microsoft should be willing to throw vast quantities of resources at WP7, to save themselves.

In fact, the same arguement as been made regarding G+: Google sees Facebook as an existential threat, so they'll throw money, time and engineers at it until it works (or falls so flat that there is no chance whatsoever).

Really? Remember that Zune product?

WP7 is a Zune too. So yeah, I have one in my pocket every single day.

The analysis of the players in the mobile market and their motivations is spot on, but the rest of the article rests on shaky grounds.

First off, Windows Phone is not superior to Android. It may be ahead in some respects, but it certainly lags Android in others. And that is the current situation. Till the last update Windows Phone clearly lagged Android in features. It may be comparable now, but it is yet too early to expect this to make a big difference. The real question is if achieving feature parity with Android is enough to let it succeed?

When Android arrived on the scene it didn't have to contend with another Android. Windows Phone does. The carriers and device manufacturers that may invest in Windows Phone are the same ones that are already invested in Android (except Nokia). I can't see that Windows Phone provides them with something that Android does not. Sure, they will hedge their bets and make Windows Phone devices, but the success or failure of Windows Phone devices does not (yet) have the same impact on their balance sheet as that of Android devices on which they currently depend. When they adopted Android the mobile ecosystem was very different and it was their lifeline against a seemingly unstoppable Apple-dominated world, and they had every motivation to make these devices a success.

A final point - fragmentation - I don't see how Windows Phone can avoid fragmentation. The more successful it gets, the more fragmented it will get. Thanks to Android, users expect to be able to get hold of the exact big/small/cheap/expensive/with-without-keyboard smartphone variant they want. Windows Phone can only avoid this fragmentation at the expense of market share.

"will end-user dissatisfaction with Android’s inconsistencies and fragmentation be strong enough to allow the better product to succeed."

Most end users don't care about fragmentation. Developers do, and people who invest in their mobiles do, but a significant fraction of users - the ones who "don't know what they hate" - do not typically know or care about ICS, or know what additional features it provides, or if their phones will get upgraded to ICS.

  The more successful it gets, the more fragmented it will get.

Android fragmentation is about the software version installed, not the hardware. WP7 has a set hardware requirement that every device must meet, and there is a set timeline for requiring updates to the phone. With this model, the only fragmentation that will occur is generational, which Apple (and all of computing history) proves doesn't matter much.

I think people underestimate how their relatively late release hurt them for the low-tech consumer. A number of people probably went with Iphone or Android before the first WP devices came to market and now are too entrenched to change.

For developers, I think the same story holds true. I know a number of people who were fairly excited for the platform but ended up going with something else because they got tired of waiting for the original release and wanted to start writing apps to make money. The reputation MS has developed (old, evil, bloated, etc) also doesn't help. Not saying it is true, just that it exists.

While I applaud Microsoft for trying trim down the chrome, gradients, etc. to leave only the content, in the end it feels too industrial with the sharp hard corner edges and monochromatic dumb-terminal look where all the apps look basically the same. People want something warm and fuzzy which skeumorphic, rounded corners, gradients, and shinyness offers despite detracting a bit from the content which makes it more accessible to ordinary people.

From an efficiency standpoint of getting the data and interacting with it the Metro design is definitely superior in that sense, but fails to capture the connection of the phone being something that just isn't a tool.

I think Microsoft should offer more choices than just Metro despite having things look different app to app, and let the user better customize the home screen with whatever personalization embellishments they want (backgrounds, gradients on tiles, folders, etc.) instead of forcing a design on everyone as everyone is different.

If they did that maybe, people initially would start out with the "skeumorphic" look similar to the iPhone/Android/etc. as that's what they're used to with other phones and in the real world, and slowly allow them to change settings to transfer if they want back to a content focused Metro mode.

I think having this option would allow them to sell the devices better despite it breaking some minimilistic cohesive designer sensibility in favor of what the consumer wants and what will sell which is the ultimate goal anyhow.

"Superior" is subjective.

The reason Windows Phone hasn't taken off is that it why it's a "nicer" system than say Android, it lacks soul.

It's just too clinical.

    53 49 4c 4c 59 20 48 55 4d 41 4e 20 41 4e 44 52  SILLY HUMAN ANDR
    4f 49 44 20 49 53 20 46 4f 52 20 52 4f 42 4f 54  OID IS FOR ROBOT
    53 20 41 4e 44 20 4e 4f 54 20 59 4f 55 52 20 50  S AND NOT YOUR P
    55 4e 59 20 43 41 52 42 4f 4e 2d 42 41 53 45 44  UNY CARBON-BASED
    20 42 52 41 49 4e 20 4d 41 44 45 20 4f 55 54 20   BRAIN MADE OUT 
    4f 46 20 4d 45 41 54 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  OF MEAT

I'd say that statement is deeply subjective, in all honesty. I don't see any more soul in iPhone than WP7.

The question being asked is not the right question. The answer to this one is simply, "Because people don't want it." The right question is why don't they want it - which I think has largely been answered here already; it's an old brand that people have largely realized has been commoditized and don't consider relevant anymore, combined with abysmally poor and misdirected marketing.

IMO.

I think that people overestimate the correlation between popularity of a product and its quality. This, combined with the fact that different people measure quality differently, leads to "surprising" results like this.

FWIW I really want a WP7 but I'm on Sprint and I'm not going to buy a year old phone. I really like the phone and would love to create apps for it. But the carriers need to get on board and give me some options.

The place where people buy phones doesn't try very hard to sell them.

Worse is better. Everyone seems to rediscover this again and again the hard way, most especially certain companies in Cupertino and Redmond.

some of us still have a lot of bad taste in our mouths after the windows mobile 6.x incident?

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