Microsoft Is Writing Checks to Fill Out Its App Store
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Now I would love to know how much Google paid Rovio + the other launch partners for their Google+ platform. :)
I don't think the size of the marketplace is the problem, every user has about ten key apps they need on their phone (the trouble being it's a different ten for everyone), but every most of the cases covered will help them a lot.
I expect them to do the same thing with Windows 8 and the store.
Now, 360 is the market leader.
NYT makes it sound like Microsoft is somehow cheating, but it's wise enough to realize that it needs to invest in order to bootstrap a new platform.
What I found particularly absurd is that while there were some technical issues with the platform, they were pretty minor in the grand scheme of things - bugginess-wise, nothing worse than what you encounter on Android... but the App Marketplace submission and approval process was an unmitigated disaster, and is of course the thing that you have the least control of.
The stories of the iOS app store being a black box are well documented. I'm curious what WP7 is like, as I am playing with something I might submit...
Problem 1: the actual upload(s) of the XAP to App Hub just failed sporadically - we got an opaque error code which, when we looked it up, translated to essentially "either there's a problem with your language settings... or there was a random network error." Eventually it just worked, with no rhyme or reason - one out of every few times, it would get through.
Problem 2: the first time we were able to complete the submission, the app was rejected because we had marked it for worldwide distribution. Turns out the [free] app was barred from three countries (China and I forget the other two) because it had a few "inappropriate" images (of museum exhibits). OK, fine, some countries are censorship-happy - not MS' fault. So what does MS do? Reject the app wholesale (rather than just in the problematic countries). We resubmit (going through all the difficulties of #1 above), exclude the problematic countries from the "where do you want your app available" checkboxes... and wait as it goes through the full 5-business-day approval cycle.
Problem 3: OK, the app is certified and made it into the store! Woot! But wait - it has a pretty serious bug - can't play any audio! (It's a museum tour, so that's rather unfortunate!) The bug didn't exist in the version we tested (in the emulator and two real devices), and after several days of back-and-forth with MS, they acknowledged it was a bug in the "XAP ingestion" process (what App Hub does to your XAP once it's submitted). They suggested a workaround, which we implemented right away (it was trivial, albeit not-really-obvious). At that point - this is after talking to several-layers-up support engineers - we asked that they push our update to the store ASAP (given that it was their bug we were working around). The best they could do is "expedite" the certification/approval process, which still took 3 or 4 business days - which doesn't sound like a lot, but is pretty absurd given that the update fixed a showstopping bug which was the result of MS's own submission process.
All in all, it took several weeks from completion to actually appearing in the store - which is better than the App Store at its worst, but not exactly awesome... and, FWIW, we only started getting real answers after several layers of escalation (which I suppose isn't terribly unusual, but again, not really confidence-inspiring).
Several support tickets later (weeks later), they come back and say because I had my Live account for such a long time, there were problems with upgrading the account over the years, and I should create a new account for app development. I did that, still had the same issue. Weeks later, I'm told that it's my browser that's causing the issue. After trying every version of every browser I have, weeks later I'm told they're having problems with student developer accounts.
By that time, the $10 sanctioned jailbreak was released, so I just dropped the issue. I didn't want my apps on the marketplace anyway, so I settled.
Honestly, they can't really do that either or they would get complaints. "Our biggest market is China and they just removed it, Microsoft is stupid!" I know it can be frustrating but they have to go by developer intents first because then there is no guessing. It would be nice if they had a cleaner resubmission process though.
But - reading this, I realized I had almost no idea what Microsoft's app store is like, or even how typical apps look. I looked up the Facebook app ( http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/82a23635-5bd9-df11-a8... ) and have to say... do they all look like that? Where almost 1/3 of the view is dead space? Even on the screen where it's partly used, it looks like they just couldn't get the layout quite right. Then there is the massive title on each "tab", and I've always kind of liked the metro look but does it have to take up so much space?
While I am obviously biased, I feel like the changes were a big UI improvement in Android, as, while the layouts are definitely boxy, they fit together well, and do a great job of highlighting action items and guiding my interactions.
On my Xbox, I've found that it often leads to extra clicks being necessary where they weren't before. I quit questioning the design decisions when I (not too irrationally) concluded that they must have done it to assist with Kinect users, dragging a large virtual hand around the screen... that is, until you posted those screenshots, and the layout really, really looks about as busted as it does on the Xbox.
It's somewhat visually appealing, and while I think that, generally, it still looks like a better alternative to the usual Microsoftian clutter, it's definitely a long way from being good (IMHO).
This has actually been a well known criticism of WP7 that goes under the name "low information density". People counter that by saying it's a feature, not a bug.
For me, it creates a problem because every time I pick up a WP7 handset it feels like a feature phone. The nicest feature-phone I ever held, but it still has this limited, focused, prebaked feel that I find hard to explain but which exactly reminds me of the same feeling I get with feature phones. I think the smart phone market is very much an aspirational one where people expect to feel like they're stepping into the future, and WP7 just doesn't feel like that. As much as everyone praises iOS for it's polished and slick nature, that's not actually why people are buying phones (and also why Android succeeds in spite of having missed the polish). They are trying to empower themselves with something more advanced than their previous phone which probably already had things like a facebook widget and weather app, etc.
Oh, and the app-centric model of iOS and Android is in my opinion a design flaw. A humane design shouldn't organize based on apps but based on tasks, and those tasks shouldn't get equal visibility an an icon grid.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I figured it wasn't fair to judge a UI by a couple static screenshots. But at first glance it does look strange.
But in order for Microsft to really be successful they need to get support from the carriers, and historically that's something they've failed to understand. Most of the market is made up of people who walk into a carrier store, ask for a phone that does the email and stuff, and walk out with a Samsung model they've never heard of.
Microsoft needs these people to walk out of the store with a Windows Phone (they've never heard of before). But the carriers control the whole process. The carriers therefore demand control over the hardware and software, and the successful manufacturers give it to them.
Nokia understands this very well, but it doesn't seem like Microsoft is giving them the freedom they need to make the carriers happy.
If Microsoft goes into this trying to compete with Apple they're going to fail because every single carrier will be against them. To succeed, they need to forget about Apple and start competing with Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, and RIM. Ultimately, that means creating software that is less appealing to the tech community, and more appealing to the carriers.
Give the carriers something that Samsung can't, on a device that looks good next to a poster of an iPhone, and they'll have something big. Then the apps and developers will follow.
It makes sense that it will be the next step for their mobile platform. I don't see how this makes WP7 a dead end. Even the naming indicates that the core Windows product and mobile version are related and intended to evolve together.
The problem Microsoft faces is that the unique design of Metro excludes the possibility of a port of existing mobile apps. Apps need to be designed from scratch using native code - embedded web views won't cut it - which is expensive to do.
It might explain why the Windows 8 Beta store is basically empty.
What? There are better quality apps for Windows 8 beta than Android tablet apps for my ICS tablet.
Put out a lower-cost non-phone device already! Call it whatever you want. The W7/8 "Gamester" or whatever. Offer that choice and your market just multiplied tremendously. Follow the iPhone<->iPod model.
Case in point. Each of my kids has their own iPod. They'll don't have their own iPhones. What mother wants to hand a 3 year old their phone at a restaurant? We've done it for those unavoidable emergencies (you have to know three-year-olds). There's a huge market for non-phone devices like this and it just blows me away that these guys are battling hard over phones while ignoring the huge market that non-phone but 100% software-compatible devices represents.
As a developer I see that the iPhone + iPod ecosystem multiplies the number of devices that my apps go into by a significant and non-trivial number. Furthermore, it expands the demographics as well. These are all important factors when considering which platform to focus on. Add to that the code-compatible iPad and you have an absolute 1-2-3 punch winner.
Google and Microsoft (and everyone else trying to beat Apple at this game) seem to be blind to this for some strange reason.
Am I missing something fundamental?
Price.
Apple's supply chain, the one that's turning out tablets that no-one can match on price, has been doing the same thing to the PMP market with the iPod Touch. Android PMPs either have a price premium over a stock iPod Touch or they simply don't run well enough to meet consumer expectations.
Microsoft is in largely the same place price-wise. Though their more-controlled product should be easier to optimize for cheaper/slower hardware and their services/brands have found a better reception in the market. (XBox, Live, Marketplace, Zune)
I think Microsoft is just too focused on the phone market to give it a serious try.
Though a Phone 7 PMP could also be a victim of Microsoft's strategy crisis: the bit where they seem to be so hell-bent on pushing Windows onto everything, that despite the critical reception, putting Phone 7 on anything that isn't a phone is still anathema.
My read of WP7 has been that the OS is super-chatty by design, live tiles and such. It seems a huge part of it will be knee-capped by not having an always-on connection.
For those not willing to wait, its rather easy to buy a used Android phone on craigslist and simply not sign up with a carrier. I'm a developer who needs various Android phones for testing. I use them WiFi and everything works - including Google Play and Amazon Marketplace - but no data plan and no phone calls.
For example, I bought a used HTC Evo 4G for Sprint for only $150. It had the micro SD card removed so I bought one of those and put it in. Still way less than what the phone cost would have cost at non-subsidized retail.
1. Apple can make a lot of money of an iPod Touch since they have many content partnerships in place and the cost of production of these devices is nominal (Apple has dedicated factories, has been producing the same models for years and, thru the Apple Store, enjoys low marketing and distribution costs).
2. Google's and Microsoft's breath of content partnerships is not as broad as Apple, therefore they wouldn't make as much money per device sold.
3. Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch share many components, production and distribution facilities; lowering the total cost of unit production and distribution for Apple.
4. Apple's customers are very accustomed to a single particular line of design. This makes it easy for Apple to push a model and it also makes it easy for developers to produce apps for the platform. In this case Android's fragmentation would get rapidly compounded and make developers lives harder.
5. Microsoft and Google have partnerships with phone manufacturers whose designs differ significantly. Therefore the traction of a particular design can't be directly translated into a media player (because only a thin slice of the market is familiar with the product).
6. Microsoft already failed with the Zune, so there are some cultural issues there as well.
7. Google makes money on search which is not a fundamental (albeit important) use case of a media player. So the monetization numbers for Google are going to look really bad if they were to sell media players.
6. This is a very tough market to penetrate since the iPod has so many partnerships in place already (covers, speakers, adapters, even iPod ready cars).
All and all, Google and Microsoft have a chance to boost their app stores by competing on different platforms: the TV and game consoles. Then, as they accrue content partnerships and seduce more and more developers the numbers could change in the media player scenario.
Price and scale covered already.
Also important:
Demand:
Yes parents give their kids ipod touches not iphones. But that's still a fraction of the phone market. Moreover younger and younger kids get actual phones every year so that is going away to some extent.
Ecosystem:
As a game based machine, your AAA gaming app library is even more of an issue. Basically every gaming website is going to tell every kid that an iPod Touch has 10 times as many games. The kids that wake up xmas morning with an W8 Gamester are going to feel like the kids who got Go-Bots instead of Transformers. Younger people feel free to substitute Digimon and Pokemon.
Distribution:
The carriers solve this problem for phones (even 70% of iphones are sold by carriers) but they aren't interested in selling devices that don't come with a cell radio.
This is the same problem Android tablets have unless they have their own major distribution channel (which is why only Amazon and to a lesser extent B&N have been the most successful in this space).
1. Buy a used Samsung Focus for $99.
2. Don't put a SIM in it.
3. Turn the cell radio off.
4. Voila! It's fast and cheaper than anything they'd sell you in a store.
In all seriousness, they sorta tried this with the Zune and they're probably gun shy, especially considering WP7 isn't doing all that well, despite it being great.
I think MS should dump loads of cash ensuring the most popular iOS/Android apps have feature-parity versions on WP7. They are not doing this right now.
Price: Once you start manufacturing products by the hundreds of thousands, costs go down very quickly. Any of of these large companies can easily commit to making a million of just about anything. If the BOM cost is in the order of $100 to $200 that means only $200 million to make a million units. This is chump change for both Google and Microsoft. I don't think that Apple would a significant cost advantage if competitors play at the right level. Cost is asymptotic.
Buy a Samsung <model number> and don't activate: Consumers don't operate that way. They need to be marketed a solution and they need to go to Walmart or Amazon and buy that solution.
Ecosystem: Valid points.
Content partnerships: If you build it, they will come. Content providers want more ways to monetize their content.
MS/Google designs that differ: Yes! Huge problem. Apple got it right. They design and build. Period. The Android landscape is horrific. I have zero interest in developing for Android. Fifty different devices running half a dozen (or whatever) versions of the OS? Nah, life is too short. If MS is smart they will control this very tightly and provide uniformity and consistency.
Zune: Crap. Not the same concept. What I am talking about is Phone/Pod/Pad/Tablet/Desktop sharing UI elements and apps.
Also I think you can get Android phones that are cheaper or not much more expensive than iPods already.
Two big issues that are commonly heard when Windows Phone is brought up (among several) are the lack of apps and the lack of public awareness. I've recounted my tale here on HN several times of when I bought my Windows Phone. The salesman was so adamant that I was making a mistake that I actually had to go as far as calling the manager over before I could buy one. There was nothing I could do to convince him that I knew what I wanted.
With Microsoft paying to fill out the app store (developers, developers, developers!) and Nokia paying for prime placement in AT&T stores, they'll be given a fair shake to let consumers know the options. Microsoft is the 1990's Apple when it comes to the mobile world. A strong and memorable start a decade ago that came to a halt very quickly as competitors took marketshare.
I really, really hope Microsoft and Nokia know the limits, though. Combined, they have a lot of money they can throw around. Microsoft did that to beat Apple in the PC world 20 years ago, and it ended very badly for them. You can put money into gaining marketshare, but when it's time to stop, you better stop fast.
This time I think Linux is gonna win, with Google behind it. :-).
"Ben Huh, chief executive of the Cheezburger Network, a collection of humor and entertainment sites, said Microsoft’s market share was too small to warrant in-house development of a Windows Phone app. But when Microsoft approached his company about making an application featuring funny photos of cats, he agreed. “They made it very easy for us,” he said. “They took care of everything.”"
Because have you looked at the top 20 iPhone apps? Half of it is crap joke stuff that is downloaded like crazy.
One night the topic of religion came up. He suggested that there was a market for starting a religion that enabled everything that all other religions said was not permitted. Funny, but probably true at some level.
Take a look at everything Apple black-boxes and make it open while keeping enough controls to keep the platform consistent and uniform across devices. This could be huge.
And please, give me the ability to talk to a serial port (or USB or I2C or SPI) without restrictions so I can put the devices to use in a lot of very interesting areas that are just about impossible to approach with Apple's offerings.
That's why you have people resorting to the ridiculous (but it works) extreme of using the headphone jack to build such things as credit card scanners and the like. They don't regulate the use of the headphone jack and seem to be approving apps that use it. Headphone jacks were being used way back when (Commodore 64 and TRS80 days) to talk to cassette-tape based storage. It's literally going back 30+ years in technology.
While, on the surface, open peripheral port access might seem like a geek feature I think that this is far from reality. If peripheral port access on the iPhone was open for all to use you'd see all kinds of very interesting things happening with hardware for the iDevices that you simply aren't going to see given the current framework.
Also, this is the reason why there are no inexpensive iDevice compatible hardware products. Developing them is very expensive due to the nature of the process.
If MS was open about their I/O and they achieved reasonable penetration there's a whole layer of the product world that would open up to their tech.
I think that when you come from behind and have the financial resources you just can't afford to ignore any market, no matter how insignificant it might look from your current vantage point. You never know where the next killer app might come from.
I've been saying this for a while. You have to cover the major bases but beyond that it's just gravy. I've been tempted to dip my toes into the WP market anyway because frankly the iOS market is saturated already and Android is a pain in the ass for well documented reasons and I no longer have any particular goodwill towards Google.
I think with C# Microsoft has the best development language, at least on paper.
95% of the time, when a AAA App comes out, you can be certain that you'll have a full featured version of that application on an IOS device. That's true about 85% of the time on the Android - and it drops off a cliff immediately thereafter for the Blackberry and WP7 platform - with some Tier-1 developer who have already ported to the Blackberry starting to abandon that platform (Kayak)
Owning an Android or IOS device means, today, being reasonably certain that the App you want will be on your device.
Microsoft is showering people with money, training and hardware to make sure that will be the case for WP7. Now they just have to ship a killer phone and we'll have a horse race on our hands!
Android smartphones will continue to dominate the lowest spec hardware, especially in developing markets like China. Because the Microsoft OS cost adds to the device bill-of-materials, and Android -being open source- does not have this cost.
By analogy, its very hard to see how Microsoft will produce low-spec tablets that are cheaper than what Amazon does with the Kindle Fire - and its successor products.
I spend about 2-3 hours a day on my iPad+LTE with Skype (Fewer dropped calls than trying to use my iPhone + AT&T, better quality sound) - so I appreciate the importance of Skype.
Could somebody who valued Skype on their tablet consider the Blackberry Playbook? Doing a quick google search suggests that isn't the case (as of Feb 2012).
I predict that apps are going to be increasingly part of some larger overall business plan and less something sold for direct profit. Big players like Facebook and Nike need native apps in the store but they also have deep enough pockets to fund ports to Android and WP. We're already seeing that Apple's dominance in the app market doesn't translate to dominance in phone sales and I think platform-specific apps are going to be even less decisive in the coming years.
The second, much larger category of people, consists of those who, as you said, probably won't be inconvenienced by that missing app - but they don't want to be seen making a bad decision. These are the people who either are afraid of having purchased the "wrong" (whatever that means) device, or are worried about missing out on future benefits from their platform when developers don't roll out the AAA titles for it.
There is a reason why App developers pick and chose their platform. There is a reason why, my poor friends with Blackberry Bold's are getting almost NO application support from developers. My mother complains a little about how her HTC Desire HD lags behind my iPhone on some features or capabilities of some apps, but, nine times out of ten these days, the cool new app that I'm using on my iPhone is not (and probably never will be) available for the Blackberry.
So, the average user is actually smart to avoid these "dead end" platforms. They realize that, while there may not be a killer app that they need right now, if they truly want to enjoy the "App Ecosystem" - they need to chose a device that will get great developer support.
And right now, that is IOS first, Android Second, and, if Microsoft has anything to say about it, WP7 third.
Blackberry and Symbian are basically dead as far as App Development goes, and, as their Applications die up on the vine, their users are flocking away.
Some users see this as an opportunity, because with no competition, they have a much easier time making themselves seen, and (for the limited audience that they have), have a better chance of making revenue.
But that's from the _DEVELOPERS_ perspective. From the _USERS_ perspective, they could care less whether the individual developer is able to make a lot of money - all they care about is whether the World Class Apps are available for their platform.
I guess this is a long way of me saying I disagree with your thesis that Applications aren't critical to the success of a platform. Without the App developers, the platform will die. Microsoft realizes this.
Microsoft's chicken & egg problem is that Apple owns the app-rich high end and Android owns the low-end so they have to find some way to squeeze in. I think they'll have at least some limited success just using their financial muscle to push their phones into shops.
Perhaps I just missed them, but there seems to be a greater maturity in the quality of the apps that I'm seeing there vs. even 12 months ago (even for AAA titles).
Zynga, Flipboard, Path and others have been funded through this.
$200M in investments, not payouts. Startups.
Microsoft is doing exactly what it needs to do to compete in this market. They were late and this is the price of entry.
They could even make Windows phone compatible with Android marketplace(s)... why not?
tl;dr: Microsoft is spending lots of money on WP7 apps, and it seems to be working.
Call me already, Microsoft. Sheesh.
"Ms. Murphy declined to say whether Microsoft had paid for the app’s development. "
I guess we know what that means.
Suppose that Metro does not play well on ordinary PCs, and sales of conventional laptop and desktop PCs, not only stop growing, but actually start declining as users instead upgrade to very capable smartphone and tablets.
Once PC sales decline, then Microsoft profits will suffer in a disproportionate manner because of all the money losing business units that are supported by Windows, Office, and enterprise cash cows.
The tech industry is interesting, success can be very short-lived, and can come at a high cost - inflexibility. Microsoft is in a flexible position, and can move much faster than Apple. Apple's success in the late 00's may hamstring it for the next stage of the digital arms race. It's just a question really of how sharp Microsoft's strategists are.
There's definitely room for somebody to step in and try something new. I wouldn't have predicted that it would be Microsoft that did this but they seem to be serious.
The Zune software is beautiful. It's a little heavy on occasion but much better than iTunes (again heavy imho). Zune pass is a great music service as well. It's not as unique as it once was since Spotify and others let you play what you want on demand but it's price similarly and you get to own a few of the songs each month.