Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumia smartphones in 'solid' Q4 2012
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I think they quickly realized that, but it took them a while to create an aluminum iPhone the right way, because as we know aluminum is not great for radio connections, so you'll have to arrange the radios in such a way that the body doesn't interfere with them, which is probably why it took them so long, and why they made the iPhone 4S identical to iPhone 4.
I won't even discuss Samsung, which seems to have a fetish for crappy plastic. If it were after me, phones would all have metallic bodies, because it feels the best in hand, but you won't get full metal bodies anyway, but a mixture of metal and plastic or glass (like iPhone 5).
The best compromise between being easy to make and also feeling solid in hand seems to be polycarbonate right now, and more manufacturers should be using it, along with more colors for their devices, as I'm getting really bored with the black and white "options". It's like most of them are afraid to even try other (bold) colors, and just want to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and in the same time complain about not being able to differentiate, other than changing the skin on Android, which I think it's just an easy way out for them, instead of actually doing interesting things with their hardware design.
The same thing applies to Nokia, which in the past have said that they wouldn't be able to differentiate with Android, but I think a Lumia-like device would've sold a lot more units with Android. Nokia's growth is being limited a lot by WP's own growth right now. They can only grow as fast as WP is growing, and if anything, it's Nokia pulling WP after them, rather than the other way around, which just goes to show how much better it would do with Android, which doesn't need to be "sold" to the public anymore.
Consumers don't know about or care about Android. "Normal" people do not go into a store looking for an Android.
If Nokia had gone with Android, they would be in the exact same position they are now, except they wouldn't have Microsoft's $5bn cheque keeping them afloat.
Personally I am glad they went with WP. I can't stand Android and so I am very happy there is another option.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Android is a well-known brand these days, and many people recognize the difference between smartphone OSes.
Every person I know - 9 out of 10 of which are average tech consumers - knows Android by name. They know it's a platform, they know it's separate from Apple and Microsoft, and occasionally they know there's some sort of connection to Google.
And if you ask said people, they will absolutely tell you they have an Android phone. In fact that's exactly how they define it as being separate from the iPhone or Blackberry et al.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/07/htc-q4-profits-slide-to-jus...
According to Nokia they can't manufacture enough to satiate demand (components supply constriction). So even if they had chosen Android, they'd have the same unit sales. "Mr. Elop said the company has experienced supply problems, as certain mobile components have been in short supply, both for Nokia and other phone makers." Unless some of the unavailable components are WP-only, this is the main issue.
(Everyone but Apple and Samsung have been getting fucked over by Qualcomm's supply issues for almost a year, but at least companies like HTC have an option of using Tegra 3s in countries where LTE isn't a hard requirement. Or even shipping modern software with a semi-obsolete S3 SOC like Sony has been doing.)
I'm an iOS guy but as far as Windows Phone goes, I have to say it doesn't suck. I'm not saying that Microsoft's phone and tablet businesses will become a resounding success in spite of all current evidence, but I will say it would be a mistake to dismiss them.
I don't recall seeing any reviews saying it needed significant polish beyond the fact of some missing features that were added in 7.1 and 7.5. Some of the inconsistent behavior has been cleaned up in 7.1, 7.5, and 8 (although 8 introduced some of its own). I don't regret running Windows Phone for the past two years. The only thing I miss is VPN support. The positives over Android and iOS vastly outweigh any of the negatives.
I think you're being extraordinarily optimistic. The latest numbers I could find quickly[1] show RIM with more than double the share of Microsoft, and with both showing a reduction in share vs. six months prior. You might be able to claim that people are abandoning RIM faster than they're abandoning Windows Phone, but even that is arguably because RIM is falling from a higher initial position.
The other problem is that .NET makes no sense for mobile apps, because neither of the two largest mobile platforms have good (if any?) support for it. Everyone who is not some kind of Microsoft evangelist is going to support Android/iOS first, which means they're not using .NET and are not going to worry about a Windows port unless Windows Phone gets enough share to be worth worrying about.
[1] http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/comscore-android-us-marke...
There's also, ironically, giant gaping holes in the app/feature selection for business users. No Citrix, no VPN, no app that lets you get to OWA mail if ActiveSync is disabled on your Exchange account, etc.
Time and time again, making a good product, sticking to the mission and making it the best it can be, has resulted in success for that product. So if Windows Phone is a solid product, and Microsoft sticks to it, they will have a very good chance of becoming a force to be reckoned with.
In each of those cases the new product that gained ground offered something significant that the existing product didn't. Android offered comparable quality for less money. MacOS offered a significantly better user experience than desktop Windows and also leveraged a higher level of consistency in user interface between mobile and desktop for the new generation of iOS users. And iOS did the same to RIM from the other side.
None of those are simple cases of comparable products gaining ground against intrenched competitors, they're cases of superior products gaining ground. And that's Microsoft's problem. They've produced something comparable, not something superior. Where's the killer app? The UI is neither abominable nor spectacular. It doesn't run desktop Windows programs. It isn't any cheaper than Android. What should make me want to buy one of these over Android or iOS that makes up for the lack of apps and the training cost of learning a new UI?
I have both system and I just got a Mac to be able to code for iOS. I don't find your statement true at all. Actually I have a better experience with Ubuntu (as buggie as it feels) than MacOSX. For instance, in my case, I never got used to the Dock / Exposé way to switch between windows. Maybe I am just too used to the task bar but whatever the reason is, I suffer a lot anytime that I need to work on a Mac.
On the /third/ hand, I find myself more and more tempted to download VS2012 every day and do some development of my own.
The market leader (that is, Apple/iOS; the numbers are irrelevant, they feel they're the leader today) is usually hostile to number 2 but friendly to number 3. While number 2 is usually hostile to number 3 - look how Google tries to bully WP.
(For example, MS used to bash Linux but kind of threw a bone to FreeBSD)
And this translates from companies to companies' customers.
Take an exceedingly simple example: load up Hacker News, then look at the screen as you rotate the phone from portrait to landscape and back. On an iPhone 5, the rotation is smooth. On the Lumia 920, you see flashes of white as the screen is repainted in the new orientation.
Yeah, this is window dressing, but it part of the user experience. This kind of attention to the user experience is missing throughout WP8. For example, the user interface relies heavily on glyphs (minimalistic icons), but doesn't use them consistently. In the Camera app, to get to the Photo Roll, you click an arrow icon. Does an arrow make me immediately think of my other photos? iOS uses a thumbnail of your most recent photo.
And I think Nokia made a huge mistake with the form factor. Over the weekend I was trying to surf HN while feeding my baby, and I thought I was going to drop the phone on her. The extra weight (60% heavier than an iPhone) makes it that much harder to rely on friction to keep it in your hand. There is no way it would be a comfortable fit for my wife or my mom. The Lumia 820 is probably a better "appropriate for everyone" phone, but with a low-res screen, etc, it's not positioned that way.
Hopefully that's not a habit. Enjoy your baby!
I came from iPhone 3G, and an Android 2.1 before having a Lumia 900 (which I lost) and now a Lumia 920. I have to say that the windows phone experience was the most pleasant to me. Probably since I had worked with all them in a daily basis before that I am not specifically attached to anyone.
I am agreed that 920 doesn't feel like a mainstream phone because the form factor, but it is good enough for the "experiment"/bet that they are doing. If this generation would sell decent I think we would see a lot of 92x where people would choose the model that fixes better to them.
Consider the following issues:
1) In the text message app, the keyboard leaves way less room for seeing the previous texts in your conversation than on iOS. Is this not worse?
2) IE10 shows more artifacts in the process of rendering than Safari. E.g. the aforementioned visible re-rendering during orientation changes instead of the smooth transition. Is this not worse?
3) I'm not sure whether this is the fault of WP8 or the specific apps I used, but chat apps seem to restart each time you switch to them (showing a splash screen), instead of being re-hydrated from memory.
4) When you select a drop-down dialog in IE10, it takes up the whole screen. In iOS it takes up only part of the screen so you can maintain some context by still being able to see part of the page. Is this not worse?
5) Abandoning skeuomorphism makes it harder to figure out what the active parts of the screen are. I think my mom would find the "People" app downright confusing with how it blends bits of the next screen into the current one. It's like a point-and-click adventure game--not always obvious what things are touchable.
6) The ordering of items in the settings menu is, as far as I can tell, totally random.
7) Live tiles can chew through battery life if you're not careful, diminishing their utility.
8) On initial release, the Lumia 920 and WP8 were objectively buggy. Most reviews, and my initial impression, mentioned bad battery life, but those largely went away with the Portico update and a few cycles of discharging the battery all the way, along with turning off NFC. Not exactly the way to launch a highly polished, come-back product.
I can't really see how this is good news for WP when Android and iOS activated 17.1 million devices on Christmas Day alone. I can't imagine Q1 2013 being any better for Nokia when they have no major devices going out, and no major WP upgrades upcoming either.
I still think Nokia made a huge mistake not making Android phones, too. 4 million Lumias (low-end and high-end ones) is not enough to make them recover on time. They'll still probably get acquired, possibly this year.
Whether it's as good for Microsoft it's another story
Here in Europe, it was launched in France, Germany and the UK, but only now is it launched in the Netherlands (where I live) and Belgium, and probably other smaller European countries.
The Lumia 820, which is a lower-end and lower-priced WP8 phone, should be coming out this quarter, and is being mainly targeted at countries like India.
Where did you get the breakdown by device? This is the best I've seen and doesn't seem to reflect your sentiment at all: http://www.neowin.net/images/uploaded/winphone-usage-dec.jpg
> Whereas those Android activations include everything and the kitchen sink.
OK, and? Nokia sells devices in exactly the same price ranges as Android. iPhone and GS3 sales absolutely crush Nokia on their own as well, so not sure what your point was exactly.
> OK, and? Nokia sells devices in exactly the same price ranges as Android. iPhone and GS3 sales absolutely crush Nokia on their own as well, so not sure what your point was exactly.
My point was putting your "17.1 million devices on Christmas Day alone" FUD statistic into perspective.
Yes, Apple and Samsung are still doing better, but that doesn't invalidate what Nokia has accomplished here.
Secondly, you need to look up the meaning of the acronym "FUD", because you really blew it there.
The only gotcha is music - the iPhone still crushes everyone on music apps / syncing / acquisition. Otherwise, the 920 was equal or better - even apps are coming along. Only missing Strava now for me.
It's becoming apparent that the app data can provide more lock-in than the OS itself. (I don't want to find an alternative and lose 2 years of data -- just for the first app I thought I'd need!)
http://runkeeper.com/apps/activity-tracking/caledos-runner-o...
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/caledos-runner/0...
What music apps is WP missing in your experience?
Just FYI, it's $10/mo now, and the "10 free songs per month" deal is gone. If you had a Zune pass, you were grandfathered in, but new signups get the new deal. Still a good deal given the catalog size, but perhaps not as good as it once was.
Oh heck I don't know what it's called.
The music rental thing, is actually pretty damned good. However like spotify it is missing some artists.
Their catalog size is 30 million songs IIRC, which is a lot more than Spotify.
I'll give you "acquisition", but if you are for a moment suggesting that iTunes is anything other than a steaming turd, then I must respectfully disagree.
I personally prefer the plethora of music apps available for Android and that Google Music cloud thing ain't too shabby either.
My favorite part of the Lumia is the social media integration. It reminds me of what it felt like to switch from Windows to OSX in 2005. But yeah the music experience is lacking, They finally fixed some bugs in their Windows version of iTunes so at least you can still sync songs, but I'm really just waiting for Spotify and Instagram and then I'll be set.
I really want Microsoft to succeed in Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8, for the simple reason that competition is good. We'll be much better off with 3 giant companies competing rather than two.
Also, the prospect of having a tablet computer with a full OS on it (Windows 8 Pro tablets) is pretty interesting to me. Loading up Steam, Visual Studio, a VM, while on the go (without the weight of a laptop) could be pretty neat.
Doing a factory reset (regular, honest-to-god, get in the menu and select a reset) bricked the phone. And it seems to be common bug. Microsoft is blaming Nokia and Nokia is Blaming Microsoft....