Windows Phone doubles share in Europe, trails iPhone by only 1% in Germany
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
The ones that use web sites logs are for the total of the devices in use, for example.
In what sense? Some very reliable reviewers (e.g. Brian Klug) say the camera truly is incredible...
http://www.everyjoe.com/2013/07/13/technology/nokia-lumia-10...
"You might think that despite all of these negatives, at least the Lumia 1020 blows all other phones out of the water when it comes to the camera. You’d be wrong. There’s a noticeable lag when between taking a picture, saving it, and being able to take another picture. The Lumia 1020 comes with three different camera apps, each with their own function, so good luck figuring out what does what. Annoyingly, every photo you take has an on-screen caption that reminds you which app took the photo, but at least it doesn't show up in the picture itself"
Debian has fewer apps. Ubuntu has fewer apps. Does this mean anything? No.
I actually only use three "apps" that aren't built in on my WP8 device.
Everything that there isn't an app for you can do on the damn browser which is good as its the same as full desktop IE10.
This is a poor excuse and justification.
As for shoddy apps, Google Play has its fair share as well don't forget.
Embrace, extend, extingu..... Embraaaaaaaaaace!!!
It isn't Microsoft's job to write the damn apps, even though they did write a lot to start with themselves to get a good value proposition to start with.
And let's apply your flawed logic to other things:
"It's really ironic that Windows is being bailed out on its lack of apps by the web".
Doesn't work then does it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
The irony I was pointing out is that while at one time, Microsoft's Windows ecosystem had a huge advantage in number and quality of apps, now they are the ones relying on the web to fill in gaps where 3rd party software exists on other platforms but has not been written for their minority OS.
Sorry to have offended you.
What I'm saying is that the web transcends all platforms so writing an app isn't necessary. Microsoft actually do get this hence the focus on IE and Windows Azure recently. They probably have the best web offering on the cloudy space as well.
Microsoft do everything literally.
as for embrace, extend, extinguish, what you say is true but they got stuffed by the EU so had to start making open specification documents which are now available on MSDN so they have been defanged there.
I travel without a smartphone. It's not hard and at least if you lose it (which has happened to me), you're not totally fucked. I really couldn't possibly depend on something like that for anything critical. So many horror stories from colleagues on that front as well. I carry a USB stick with truecrypt encrypted documents on it only.
As for conversion, it's not hard. Any old calculator app (even the s40 calculator) is usable for this. Even a pencil and paper is good enough. The base rate+commission is easy to calculate and is always available on hand. You don't need an app for that. Plus if you want to argue with them and barter which you can do in some places, it works better without a smartphone. In fact its fucking rude to whip one out on half of the planet.
It just sounds like you're justifying the use of a smartphone for these functions rather than specifying a platform advantage when the greatest advantage is gained from not using one.
That was just going through the main homescreens on my Android.
> I actually only use three "apps" that aren't built in on my WP8 device.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here... You can't use apps that don't exist, so it's not surprising at all to me that you "only use three apps" that aren't built into the device...
None of those have any real value for me personally so I can understand where Android might be more suitable but I really don't need an app for any of those.
As for trip advisor city guides, Nokia Here Maps does the same stuff offline (and a load more!)
The only missing point from above is that YouTube works fine in the browser. The press are full of shit about interoperability there. Not only that there are a multitude of quality youtube apps but you don't need them.
Could you think of a less worthless feature to demonstrate with though? The YouTube app is getting so bad (certainly on iOS, I assume with Android too) that it's getting where the website will have a better UX than the native app shortly.
Then there are clone apps for allmost all the apps you mention (Instagram, Vine, Youtube, Dropbox, Starbucks, Hangouts). Probably not as good [1], but they work and often there's a native way to accomplish the same thing, making an app redundant (i.e. install Filters and share from the Pictures Hub instead of using Instagram).
[1] http://pocketnow.com/2013/08/14/missing-apps-on-windows-phon...
That's not how social networks work.
The 1020 uses silicon and software to compensate for the physical limitations of a short focal length and small aperture. Instead, a huge sensor captures many more pixels than you need, and then software algorithms distil this down to a five-megapixel image of great richness and detail.
The sensor is 41 megapixels, creating as a first step a 34 megapixel image; the other pixels being put to good use interpolating the image. For a technical explanation, see [1]. The phone actually keeps a master copy of the image at full resolution, and presents the five-megapixel image to you right away for editing and sharing.
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/15/nokia_lumia_1020_tec...
That first picture is showing it with the weird camera case accessory, you wouldn't normally carry the phone around with that attached. It looks just like it does in the ads in person. It fits my pocket fine (less awkward than the 'chin' on some Androids) and the weight and balance are comfortable for reading and making phone calls. I never got on the "shitty screens with crazy high DPI" bandwagon so I'm satisfied with 330ppi OLED. I'm not gonna give up OLED to get another 200ppi.
The slow cycle time is annoying but I've gotten used to it as a standard issue with cameraphones, it's not much worse than others I've used. There's a burst mode app so the lag doesn't affect your ability to do action photos. The 5MP downsample is a feature, you wouldn't normally use a photo bigger than that for small-screen display, and the non-downsampled image is still saved for printing or crops (there is a nice in-camera crop tool that adjusts the area the image is cropped from).
Honestly the biggest issue I had was that there isn't a light meter or exposure preview so it's hard to do manual exposure control when taking flash-less photos in very dark settings that have lights in the background. The multiple camera apps are an odd choice but not actually an issue in practice.
Of the two pics it takes, the 5MP oversampled pics look great, but still look like cameraphone pics. The 34MP pictures though are a different beast. I took a picture of some work colleagues in the office the other day and was able to zoom in and read the place names on a map pinned to the wall a few feet behind them. I took a picture of a crowd that was gathered across the street and was able to zoom in later and crop out some decent (slightly grainy - but not awful) looking photos of people chatting as if I were stood a few feet away. The detail really is amazing compared to anything (phone based) that I've seen before.
I have no idea what half the options on my 1020's camera do, but having the option of a manual focus slider is great too. The 1020 isn't a DSLR or even probably a decent point and shoot, but it's definitely not a sham. I wouldn't carry a dedicated camera around with me, and in my experience having the 1020's camera has been great so far (I've only had it a week).
That said I could believe the sales growth as Nokia are know for making great quality low end devices so there could be traction gained here as the allure of flagship phones is not as appealing/affordable for all as base technology improves.
IMO the best thing WM could do is create a phone that works more as a mobile base station for all your computing in the way Ubuntu Touch are attempting. The latter launching in a couple of weeks. Can't wait to try it out!
Also, its Windows Phone, or WP, not Windows Mobile.
For example, if you browse 10 sites in a day on an Android phone, but your neighbor browses 990 sites a day on her iPhone, the Statcounter numbers with just you both being counted will be 1% Android and 99% iPhone even though the install base is 50% each.
This is the reason that Statcounter and Netmarketshare browser share numbers are so different from each other, with Statcounter showing Chrome in the lead and Netmarketshare showing IE in the lead.
And I think I can understand why. The Nokia 520 is a great device for under € 170. And the HTC has a great screen, stereo sound and a very smooth designed Android version.
Apple generally just does it's thing where it doesn't go for the largest market share, but because they were unusually innovative/lucky with the iPhone, they had a period of popularity. The fact that the iPhone 5C isn't the cheap phone we expected seems to confirm this.
It seems quite possible that things are 'normalizing' again, and Apple will end up comfortably occupying a big chunk of the high-end space. Maybe they're trying to come up with another killer product category to dominate in, but I wouldn't be surprised if internally this isn't and hasn't ever been their goal.
Now, investors might feel different, of course, and I find that interesting to observe.
It might be that microsoft's success with windows was the aberration. After all DOS and then windows were inferior products that achieved critical mass and widespread success because IBM got them into the enterprise and apple was asleep at the wheel.
I remember growing up a really shoddy looking computer in the house, but nobody cared or wanted better because it was in my dad's office and mostly used for work (and only occasionally for a game or two).
I will admit--I have owned Windows Phones (now a 1020) only because of Nokia, and I am content with them. Sure the 1020 doesn't have all the bells and whistles from a software perspective, but the hardware is amazing and WP8 has been out for only a year. Really interesting to see how things will go with the Microsoft buy-out in the next 1-2 years. Some key people leaving, etc.
PS. I have grown up with the legend of the "indestructible Nokia" that cannot be killed. Let's see if Microsoft can do it.
Switched back to my 2 year old android ZTE blade with a cracked screen two days ago. I feel like I just got an upgrade.
Nokia used to make great phones... and I still love the hardware. but the windows phone package leaves much to be desired.
http://dx.com/p/genuine-zte-v880-touch-screen-black-random-s...
iOS and Android are largely either growing or holding steady (varies by country - Android could be seen as flat lining but then you look at China where it had 9% growth which suggests that might be a bit of a premature accusation).
So, we seem to have a market place with three players - Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
The question is can the market support that or will there be a drive to a single platform?
Personally it feels I can do most of what I do without worrying what device I have in front of me or what it's running and I don't think twice what device someone else has before e-mailing them, sending them a document or whatever. The days of having to use something similar to someone else to be able to interact seem long gone.
So it seems to come down to whether any particular platform can remain profitable for it's owner, for device makers and for software developers. Right now the answer to that seems to be yes for Android and iOS and maybe for WP, but it doesn't feel like there's any reason to believe that there's any inevitability about any of them dying out.
Marketing Exec: "Sure, let's look at the numbers. US...no. EU...no. Asia...no. Africa...no. Middle East...no. Austral--"
Customer: "Stop. Just stop."
Marketing Exec: "It's okay, getting your message and name out there is far more important than the actual numbers. Plus, we'll find positive numbers and trends that we'll plaster in the occasional release. We also still have the stats on individual countries to go through."
Customer: "Okay, let's go down the list and pick some. We've got our astroturfing contractor waiting."
Always makes me twitch when I see statistical simplification in the headlines.
Cite: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/30/windows-phone-doubles-shar...
"... reflects the latest three months of actual smartphone sales, which the research company gets by interviewing actual consumers."
As a side point, I get a lot of people ask me what to buy after they threw £450 on a 4S and broke it (I'm the local informal tech advice guy for the school my kids go to's population of parents). The iphone doesn't have a great reputation in the UK after the first purchase from experience: it's expensive, unreliable (icloud is a piece of crap) and breaks easily and every repair place is dodgy including the apple stores here. This makes it a really bad investment. I don't suggest a solution in particular but people come back with Lumia handsets over new iPhones as they are much cheaper and are functionally equivalent. Either that or they buy a shit android and hate it.
In countries where people buy their phone without a contract attached, there is a real market for a <100€ device. The cheaper the better.
The phone has a few nits (the single volume control being #1 on my list) but on the whole I like it. Partly because I got a little burned out on iDevices (3 iPhones over the years) and wanted something different, but also because of the camera (I have a 928, which I got like 2 weeks before the 1020 was announced - bad timing). I took some photos at a backyard party the other night, and the low light performance is excellent.
I like the look of the phone, and I'm hoping that Microsoft turns some of the Nokia designers & engineers loose on the Surface, and give it some style.
A 5 point increase from last year is certainly positive, but I think Microsoft is going to spend a lot of money to sustain that, and it's only going to get harder when they stop using the Nokia brand for smartphones.
Whatever Nokia was asking for those rights, Microsoft should probably have paid.
Still, getting close to 10% of market share is really a "massive achievement". I did not expect that. I wonder what was the main reason for people to buy it. I mean, if you're not a programmer/developer and you enter the store and see Lumia, SGS4 and iPhone4/5, how does the average customer select?
There may be some truth to Horace Dediu's hypothesis that Android has peaked in the US.
There's no news here, no surprise.
C'mon Topsteed, if you're going to live like a Neanderthal (no offence to Neanderthals), may as well get rid of all your technology and leave HN (and the internet) alone.
Who calls themselves Topsteed?... oh, that's too easy, just go get therapy.