Windows Phone

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by Mitlov, Mar 14, 2012.

  1. Bambi

    Bambi Valued Member

    Prior to using windows phone 7, I had a nokia phone that was running the much touted Maemo linux os. It was about as stable as governments in sub Saharan Africa. Constant rebooting, hard resets and flashing. With windows phone 7 I've had to hardware reset once in a year. Anyone who still slates a microsoft OS for stability is a decade behind the times
     
  2. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    I've seen many people say exactly the same thing about their desktop OS as well over the years. And my experience has been exactly the opposite. Different people have different experiences depending on what they're doing and what software they're running. Keep an eye on the data usage. ;)

    I've had my Google Nexus One for about a year which runs Android. Another Linux based OS. While I've had the odd reboot now and then. I've never had to "hard reset" my phone. The only time the OS has ever been flashed is when an update comes in from Google/Vodafone.

    One hard reset in a year is once too many in my opinion.
     
  3. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    It's likely very simply the market is owned by Android and Apple right now. With Android being the dominant handset OS. Windows Phone 7 has something on the order of 1% market share. It's just not selling. Not even the deal with Nokia has helped.
     
  4. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    There's no question that Windows Phone is relatively tiny in the market compared to the two giants iOS and Android. But I think it's tiny and gaining momentum, like OSX back in the Leopard and Tiger days was, as opposed to tiny and dying, like Symbian or RIM. Particularly when Windows 8 drops and people are suddenly used to the whole Metro user interface and look, I think Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8 Apollo are going to gain a lot more users.
     
  5. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    All the signs right now are people want either Android, iOS or RIM. Even Symbian has a market share of around 11%. Not bad for a dying platform that Windows Phone 7 was supposed to replace.

    Windows 8 is a big gamble for Microsoft. Initial grumblings don't bode well. The only people who have had positive things to say are the interested parties. Bloggers and the like who've received free "gifts" in the form of the latest Ultrabooks. And even they have struggled to find anything compelling to say.

    It wasn't that long ago Windows 7 finally managed to gain a larger market share than Windows XP. Now Windows 8 is going to have to compete with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Linux of varying flavours and Mac OS X. A new version of which is due out soon. Mountain Lion. There will also be at least two new versions of Ubuntu before Windows 8 arrives. And that's just on the desktop/laptop market.

    In the tablet and mobile space there are about a dozen other OS's to compete against. And iOS and Android have the sort of massive inertia that made it so hard for alternative desktop OS's to make any headway against Windows.

    I really wouldn't want to be the marketing lead for Windows 8. This whole Metro thing isn't winning many fans in a hurry.
     
  6. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    Do you have citations for Windows Phone 7 being at 1% and Symbian being at 11%? I know it's a lot smaller than iOS and Android, but one-eleventh the users of Symbian doesn't sound right.

    Couldn't disagree more, and I'm not an "interested party." I've been using the Win 8 Consumer Preview and been involved in a lot of discussions about it over at notebookreview.com. In my assessment, it's a love-it-or-hate-it thing with nothing in between, with about half loving and half hating (though the haters tend to post and post and post more often than the lovers do...but that's the internet for you).

    I also disagree that professional reviews have been overwhelmingly negative. Here's what Anandtech had to say:

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/5630/indepth-with-the-windows-8-consumer-preview/4

    And the New York Times was just glowing. It called Metro "beautiful, logical, and simple," though it complained that the switch between the start menu and the traditional desktop was "jarring" (I'd agree, though that's easy to fix with a more Metro-ish aesthetic look for the desktop). http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/a-review-of-the-windows-8-beta/

    The three most common complaints I've seen about Win 8 are (1) it needs visual prompts that a hot corner exists to make it more intuitive, (2) it feels like it's pandering to mobile device users, and (3) it's totally different than the previous decade of Windows. The first is true, but easily remedied. The second is meritless in my opinion, because it's not actually harder to do just about anything in Win 8 than Win 7 (and it's far easier to do some stuff), even though the interface looks a bit phone-ish at first. The third is true, but only goes so far...it'll make the transition hard, particuarly for non-tech-saavy people who don't adapt to new OSes easily...but that doesn't mean we should stick with the past forever.
     
  7. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    Follow-up on Windows Phone versus Symbian:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ls-symbian-in-u-k-handsets-study-says-1-.html
     
  8. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    I do have a link somewhere. I'll dig it out. Something you need to remember though. Symbian is still sold on Nokia's cheaper feature phones in emerging markets. Which along with it's inertia gives it a greater market share. Windows Phone 7 is competing against all the current incumbents. Including Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5. And if that wasn't bad enough, Microsoft's market share basically crashed when iOS and Android came along. And it took Microsoft a very long time to come up with an answer of it's own.
     
  9. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    I had forgotten about the emerging markets issue. I was thinking of first-world markets, where I think of iOS and Android as the two giants, Blackberry and Window Phone as minor players/niche products (at least for now--I think WP has a lot of potential for growth), and everyone else as dead or dying. I hadn't realized that substantial portions of the third world used Symbian.
     
  10. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

  11. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    Gotcha. Yeah, that 11% Symbian, 1% Windows Phone is a worldwide number, skewed dramatically by the fact that Symbian is now primarily targeted at emerging markets and Windows Phone isn't even sold in most emerging markets. If we just look at first-world markets and not worldwide, Symbian is far less popular and WP is far more popular.
     
  12. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

  13. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    But the Lumia's not even on sale in the United States yet...at least not the Lumia 800 or 900. And the cheaper Lumia 710 only just was released here a month or so ago, and then, only on one carrier (T-Mobile, not a leading carrier). Besides the Lumia 710, the only hardware running WP7.5 in the United States are middle-tier HTC and Samsung models. Nothing glitzy, nothing glamorous.

    What you've got is a US-centric operating system (I don't know why I associate Windows Phone with US users specifically, but I do), but the best hardware running it isn't sold in the US. No wonder Lumia sales have been underwhelming. It's a ridiculous problem, but thankfully, an easily-fixable one. The Lumia 900 is about to drop in the United States, and it will be on AT&T, the carrier that the iPhone debuted on. And maybe HTC could be talked into making a flagship phone based on WP, even though Samsung will probably keep all its flagships on Android (Galaxy Nexus, etc).

    My understanding is that Microsoft may be holding back from a big Windows Phone push until Windows 8 for PCs and tablets drops in Q3 2012 and everyone gets used to metro and "tiles" in that context. I think that's the point when Windows Phone has the potential to really explode in interest, so that's when I expect a big media blitz about Windows Phone. Until then, WP will probably soldier on as a niche product, albeit one with an increasingly-loyal fan base (myself included).
     
  14. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    Wasn't the iPhone originally released to only a single carrier and at a stupidly high price as well?

    Nokia isn't a US company. Metro looks dated now. Imagine just how much further forward Android and iOS are going to be by the time Windows 8 appears on retail PCs. In a PC World survey, half the people who tried the consumer preview wouldn't recommend Windows 8. It's shaping up to be the next ME/Vista.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/2514...o_have_tried_the_os_wouldnt_recommend_it.html
    http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/jamies...0/windows-update-endless-buffoonery-10025654/
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/19/microsoft_demo_trouble/

    I know Windows users really want to be optimistic. But it's not looking good. And that's not even my Linux bias talking.
     
  15. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    There's a difference between releasing a flagship phone with a top-tier carrier and releasing a lower-tier phone with a generally-disliked carrier. By releasing the iPhone on AT&T, Apple did the former. By releasing the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile, Nokia did the latter. Nokia will do the former when it releases the Lumia 900 on AT&T.

    You may not like it--aesthetics are subjective--but I can't see how something that is totally unlike Windows before it (or anything before it) can be "dated."

    From your own link, responders rated overall experience with Win 8 Consumer Preview as "extremely satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" is 52%. Overall experience at "extremely dissatisfied" or "somewhat dissatisfied" is 34%. For satisfaction a month into using a beta version of an OS that's remarkably different than what came before, I think that's pretty good. Sure, the title was meant to stir up links, but when you actually look at the numbers and remember that this is people's initial response to a beta and not people's long-term response to a retail release, I think it's pretty darned good.

    Also, linking me to a self-declared Linux blog where the blogger uses phrases like "Windows 7 Stupor Edition" isn't really persuasive evidence of anything besides what Linux loyalists think. It's not journalism, and it's not objective.

    As for article #3, it's a beta. What's the point of a beta if not to find problems before a retail release?
     
  16. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

    Nokia made a lot of noise about the Lumia 710. It's not exactly a bargain bin product. If Microsoft and Nokai can't get a package together that people want then there really is no hope. Having a good product is only half the equation. Execution is the other half. And right now Microsoft are screwing up the execution part. They used patent troll tacticrs to strong arm companies like HTC, LG and Samsung into building Windows Phone 7 handsets. And then screwed them over by striking up a super scooby club exclusive deal with Nokia.

    The PC World survey was quite conclusive. Their readers wouldn't recommend Windows 8. And that's a problem. Many of those readers are early adopters. If early adopters aren't prepared to recommend your product you can bet your last dollar they're recommending the competitions product. From a marketing point of view it could only get worse if people Windows 8 devices start exploding.

    The other link was to highlight the issues with the Windows 8 dual interface. It just doesn't work properly. It's awkward and cumbersome. Microsoft should have paid attention to the push back around Gnome Shell and Unity. And in contrast to Metro, both of those interfaces are really well designed and quite elegant and usable. And yet significant numbers of people still don't want them. Now for a Linux user it's not that big a deal. It's just annoying to have to and install another desktop environment. For Windows users however, your stuck with what Microsoft gives you. And the bloggers Microsoft uses to generate a public image for it's products are not impressed so far.

    Now Microsoft will no doubt polish up Metro quite a bit between now and October. But here's the rub. Microsoft are currently annoying too many people who matter. On the one hand they're suing companies like Barns & Noble, who are well liked by the general public, over trivial patents. On the other hand they're failing to impress with their latest product. And are once again late to get on board with market trends.
     
  17. LilBunnyRabbit

    LilBunnyRabbit Old One

    That's quite open to debate. I've seen all sorts of lovely articles in PC World expressing quite moronic points of view, and frankly you can twist survey data however you want.

    I mean, if half of them wouldn't recommend Windows 8, that implies that half of them would in your world-view (after all, no one is uncommitted enough to not recommend anything, are they?). So then you've got half of that sample willing to recommend Windows 8 to their friends and family. Doesn't seem too bad for me, given that usually only one in ten people will recommend a product they've had a good experience with.

    You mean like iPhones?

    I find Metro very elegant and usable on a touchscreen. I'll happily admit I don't want it on a desktop - and I'm not going to put it on a desktop, but on a touchscreen it's fine.

    The Gnome Shell and Unity I found rather childish in design - and don't get me started on the Android UI. It's just plain ugly and takes far too long to get looking even remotely attractive - fortunately I find it functional, and less bland than the iOS interface, so it'll do for now until Metro becomes available as a finished product.

    A quick survey around my office suggests that 100% of people want a Windows 8 phone and tablet rather than Android or iOS. Extrapolating from this in the same way as you did from the PC World survey, obviously everyone wants Windows 8.

    Fortunately I'm capable of using more than one system, and will use whichever happens to suit my needs. Users will get what they're given regardless - whether Windows, Linux or Apple - and frankly with Active Directory to help on the admin side it's pretty much a foregone conclusion.

    Hmm. Well, the patents are hardly trivial - it's not like they're suing over rounded corners.

    We've established before that you're very anti-Microsoft, so whether they're failing to impress you or not is pretty much irrelevant to the whole thing.
     
  18. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    The Lumia 710 is the bottom-end of the Lumia lineup (not counting the "for developing markets only" Lumia 610 that's on the way). It's got 8 gb of onboard storage and T-Mobile gives them away free with a two-year contract, for criminy sakes. The Lumia 900 that Nokia will be offering in the near future through AT&T is a flagship product, but right now, the only Lumia on sale in the US is the low-tier Lumia 710.

    I would agree with Lil Bunny Rabbit that you seem to really not like Microsoft as a whole, as a company, period.
     
  19. aikiwolfie

    aikiwolfie ... Supporter

  20. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    I didn't use the term "bargain bin." That's a straw man you're beating up.

    Would you agree that it's the lowest of the Lumia range except for the emerging-markets-only Lumia 610 that's on the way? The Lumia 900 that AT&T is about to get is top-end, the Lumia 800 is below that, and the Lumia 710 is below that. I called it "cheaper," and that term was absolutely accurate. It's at the bottom of the Lumia line, and it has an MSRP of $349 when not purchased with a two-year contract, less expensive than either an HTC Trophy or an iPhone 4 (not 4S, just 4).

    I din't think you can say the Lumia line has failed in the US when neither the Lumia 800 nor the Lumia 900 has hit stores here yet. Is that really such a crazy proposition?
     

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