Did the Windows Phone 7 Bomb In the US? 609
Thorfinn.au writes "Microsoft's new smartphone platform is off to what could be considered a slower start than expected in North America. That's according to The Street, which has released a report saying that the company sold some 40,000 units on its first day on the market.
Early sales numbers from other phone platform launches include Apple's estimated 500,000 iPhones being snatched up during its launch weekend in 2007, and a million and a half G1 Android phones being bought up by T-Mobile subscribers in the phone's first six months." Do you know anyone with one of these phones? Me either.
Me either. (Score:3, Informative)
Neither?
Not enough units (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yet another MS flop (Score:1, Informative)
There's the XBOX, they make money of their servers and related products, and they do a lot of business with various products and services related to Exchange.
The Xbox is not remotely profitable. The entertainment division has been a hole down which money was flushed until extremely recently. It may not be a bleeding hemorrhage any more, however.
I reluctantly admit it looks pretty fine.. (Score:4, Informative)
The question these days of course is not what the phone can do OOTB, but what you can install on it later. AFAIK there isn't much of an 'app ecosystem' for the platform. They're also charging device manufacturers a license fee to ship with the OS, which isn't smart in a world rapidly flowing with Android phones. I wouldn't ring the death bell just yet though - it seems the market's changing pretty fast with the iPhone losing it's fashionable appeal here in the EU now that road-workers, plumbers and unemployed single fathers have the things.
Market differentiation allows for consumer individuation - something Apple's aesthetic homogeneity, doesn't offer. Think Similar (TM).
Re:Wait, we're comparing one *day* to six months? (Score:4, Informative)
Well a few things to put into perspective. 40,000 is the reported number by a third party. That number may not be correct. The actual number may be higher or lower.
The second thing is that the G1 was one model from one manufacturer. By reports, there were 9 WP7 phones from several different manufacturers. Initially there were reports that some places were "sold out". If the number is correct then there was not a large initial supply. With 9 different models, it's hard to believe the manufacturers released less than 6,000 units per model.
The discrepancy might be that MS has reserved one for every one of its employees. So that 90,000 additional and may have created an artificial scarcity not driven by consumer demand.
My buying experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:4, Informative)
WM5/WM6 didn't really have significant lockdown, but as I understand it, the differences are:
WP7 - Adds a shiny UI
WP7 - Removes quite a few features/capabilities present in WM5/WM6 (see above regarding encrypted Exchange connections as an example)
WP7 - Adds iPhone-style lockdown
WP7 - Removes cut and paste (present in 5/6)
WP7 - Removes multitasking (present in 5/6)
The question is - how much of this crippling was an intentional design decision, and how much of it is Microsoft pulling a KDE 4?
Yes to your closing question (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not enough units (Score:3, Informative)
We bought my wife's at Costco, where they were only given 5 of the Samsung Focus' for launch and we stood in line to get it. Costco is definitely the place to buy one 'tho, best prices, they waive the activation fees, and throw in some extras (mostly junk, but it did include a car charger).
I'm just itching to see what the second round of hardware is going to offer, but after watching my wife play with hers for the last 3 days, I'm definitely trading in my iphone, the ads to not do the phone justice. I'm not a big microsoft fanboy, but I really hate getting lumped in with the turtle-neck-wearing holier-than-'tho douchebags every time I pull out my iphone.
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:5, Informative)
I will bother, because it is a fact that mobile ie in Windows mobile 7 is in the core an ie7 with some bugfixing backports from ie8, so slightly better than ie7 but worse than ie8 with probably a different error behavior in many issues between both versions. And I am not making this up, this is the official statement from Microsoft!
Believe it or not but you can read that up in the blogs of Microsofts mobile division!
Microsoft has done that in the past as well, mobile ie 6.5 was in fact an ie 5.5 engine with some ie6 backports, needless to say this browser was a desaster bugwise, different bugs than both ie 5.5 and ie6 with some carried over from ie6 and some from 5.5 and add to that a bunch of its own bugs.
I'll be brave and fess up.... (Score:5, Informative)
We all have different needs and wants from our devices so to help you understand my angle; I am an occasional business traveler who enjoys being connected to email, can access maps and driving directions, restaurant and business information nearby, read various Office documents, and generally stay in touch. I am also a hobby programmer and enjoy writing little utility apps for my personal use. I am not a heavy app downloader - my iPhone had all of 20 installed apps. I am a gamer but generally enjoy puzzle and strategy games over FPS or other games that demand heavy real-time input. I do not own an XBox (PS3 for me). I do not use Facebook or Twitter in any real capacity. I tried, and I just don't get it. And finally I am a HUGE music lover. I'm the guy that still buys CDs for the artwork and rips them at higher bitrates. I'm always on the lookout for something new. I also rip all of my DVDs (movies and TV) so I can take them on travel and watch them on the plane.
If you picked up on the iPhone comment above your first question might be why I considered defecting? The simple answer is iTunes. I've had many minor glitches and nags with iTunes over the years, however the recent move of my music and movie library to a NAS was so painful it was the last straw for iTunes.
So what's to like about Win7?
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:4, Informative)
WP7 doesn't even have a sockets API. You're expected to use HTTP for everything.
Re:Science, I say Science again! (Score:4, Informative)
oh my, what do the other numbers break down to?
180 days, 1.5M units = 8,333.3 units per day
Who cares? I think it'd be funny if WP7 went the way of the kin, but the article and summary were poorly written.
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:3, Informative)
can someone tell me what WP7 does that makes it unique? What are its selling points? Because from what I've read, there are no unique aspects to it.
Let me start by saying I have used iPhones pretty extensively, iPhone 4 included and had owned a Nexus One since it launched up until I got my WP7 phone yesterday. I am extremely impressed. What is unique about it? I think it is an evolutionary step in the right direction in regards to user interaction and the general workflow of dealing with this relatively new form factor (that being touch-screen only). The tiles motif is extremely informative and looks surprisingly good considering how simple and basic it is. The tiles can animate and they seem to use this in a practical manner, not making things appear too busy on the home screen.
As far as UI responsiveness, it equals the iPhone and absolutely destroys Android, especially when it comes to the keyboard. Even with all the fancy auto text-correcting options turned on, there is no perceivable jitter. It is smooth as butter.
It takes from WebOS the concept of reconciling like-data into a universal hub. Personally, I really like this. The one thing I don't like about it, is the fact that every one of my facebook friends show up in my address book. I would like to see a feature to disable that aspect of it. Otherwise, it does a great job of integrating the social networking capabilities of various services into a single, cohesive interface that does the job extremely well.
The last thing I'll say, since I've only been using it a day and can't yet offer a comprehensive review, is that it inherits the Zune player, which is absolutely awesome. If you have a zune pass it is by far the best music service available on any portable device.
It's XBox all over again. They'll lose several billion on WP7 and write it off. WP8 will come out and after three years of shoving the platform down people's throats, they'll be a hard won 25% of the market. Don't get me wrong, I own an XBox 360 but how many years of mistakes did it take for them and how much did they lose on the original to come to that piece of market share?
You are clearly not very business savvy. Are you saying the Xbox was a bad idea because it wasn't instantly profitable? The only system *ever* to pull that off was the Wii, which was a rebranded GameCube. They went from total underdog with the original Xbox to market leader of next-gen consoles (I am NOT including Wii, because I don't consider it next gen and don't know anyone who actually plays theirs). So, to use an example of a highly successful Microsoft product to illustrate why they shouldn't do it all over again with a different product is a bit puzzling.
Why flush money down a losing venture until it starts to see a return? Because they can. And one of the many faults of capitalism is that those with a ton of money can do the stupidest shit and still come out okay.
Again, you don't understand big business. Sometimes you gotta lose money to make money. There are only two major players in the smartphone market and there is certainly room for a third. To say that this is a dumb move on Microsoft is absurd, especially considering how strong of a product they have launched.
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My buying experience (Score:3, Informative)
Um, no, it is a v1 product. It comes from a company that has previously shipped products meant for the same class of task (OS for a phone), but that doesn't mean it has ancestors. The UI is totally new, built from scratch. That's what people are seeing and responding to.
You have to go clear down to the kernel to find anything much in common with WinMo, and even there it's received a huge degree of improvement. Would you call the first Android phones not a "v1" product just because Google obviously took lessons from the iPhone? That's about the degree of relation between WinMo and WP7; another existing but very different product in the marketplace.
Also, MS has not been making smartphones. Technically they didn't even make WP7 phones, but they did lay out the hardware specs. They didn't do that for WinMo, and just as with Android, that came back to bite them. This is a new approach, between the complete stack of Apple devices and the free-wheeling world of commodity PCs.
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:3, Informative)
what's wrong with the way iOS 4 (and now WP7) does multitasking?
Nothing, really. It's just something for neckbeards to scream about.
Re:Semi-popular dogfood (Score:1, Informative)
I'm working for Microsoft. Nobody's got a Windows 7 phone. A few senior staff have seen them demonstrated. It's as if they forgot to actually make the phones.
Re:If You're Late to the Party (Score:3, Informative)
That turns out not to be the case - you can get Opera for the iPhone [opera.com].