10 Missteps of Windows on Phones
I have moved to Android, reflected on the Windows phones I had, and now, the only thing left to do is an intellectual exercise of looking back at milestones in Windows mobile history with a goal of extracting some wisdom for the future. Then I will be done with this chapter. Please, indulge me for one last time.
Windows Phone/Mobile is not a success by any stretch of the imagination so I thought it would be interesting to practice some “hindsight is 20/20” and try to do a post-mortem and analyze what went wrong at various stages of Windows on phones lifespan.
Let’s begin…
1. Late out of the gate
Windows Mobile 6.x was the king of a market that didn’t exist. Then came the iPhone. Then Android. Windows Mobile was still at 6.x. Rumor has it there were attempts to make WM7 (based on the same old WM) more touch friendly, but they were scrapped for the modern, beautiful and unique Windows Phone 7 [Series]. Was this the right move? I don’t know. Naturally, Windows Mobile 7 would’ve been released much earlier, and it would’ve definitely been more open — think Android, not iOS. But it would’ve been lipstick on a pig and not a brand new shiny thing. Which brings us to…
2. Apple envy
At first, we dismissed the iPhone, then we realized where it’s all going, and our focus got locked. At the same time, Android successfully appropriated Windows playbook. Would ignoring Android and doing basically the same thing — an open “everything goes” OS result in a better outcome? Who knows? But I’m willing to bet this wasn’t top of mind at the time as fashion du jour was controlling everything for the sake of “user experience.” We had to be “the best of both worlds” — locked down OS on different devices (which weren’t all that different).
3. Cockiness
iPhone funeral, anyone? Microsoft had a history of being late but sweeping everyone once it set its gaze at something. As they say in financial investment ads “past performance is not indicative of future results.”
4. No copy-and-paste at launch
iPhone didn’t have copy-paste at launch, and it was an object of numerous jokes. Three years later we get a new OS with no copy-paste. The excuse at the time was “iOS didn’t have it at launch and look at it now!” and that was precisely the reason why having it was a must — you were compared with iOS of 2010, not 2007.
5. Google
The biggest external blow, in my opinion, was when Google decided not to release their apps on Windows Phone. Microsoft tried to mitigate with several attempts at YouTube app (all demolished by Google), third-party developers made Google Maps clients, etc. but the damage was done — WP became a non-starter for those relying on (or simply preferring) Google’s services. And other big and small 3rd party developers followed. The strategy was so successful that Google seems to be reapplying it on Amazon Echo.
6. Nokia
Windows Phone 7 didn’t explode (in a good sense) right out of the gate, and Microsoft was desperate to improve its footprint. Looking from 2017 it feels like they were a little too desperate when they made a deal with Nokia that segregated WP OEMs into two camps: Nokia and everyone else. Obviously, neither Samsung nor HTC or LG were impressed with their Windows Phone results, to begin with, and now they got another “sibling” in the WP family who was a little bit more equal than the rest.
7. THREE consumer reboots in 6 years
Right at the time when WP7 was announced HTC released HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5 which went on to become a cult classic but likely didn’t sell in any meaningful numbers as it was “Osborned” by the Windows Phone 7 announcement. To add insult to injury it was perfectly capable of running WP7, just wasn’t up to the strict specs exactly to the letter. Then after Nokia joined the family and released Lumia 900, it was immediately “Osborned” by the announcement of Windows Phone 8 that would not come to existing Windows Phone devices. And finally, despite being promised the opposite, most of these Windows Phone 8.x devices were left behind when the time came to release Windows 10 Mobile.
8. THREE developer reboots in 6 years
In 2010 we had abandoned all our Windows Mobile apps and crossed into the wonderful world of Silverlight and XNA on phones. Only to be told a few years later that we should probably rework our Silverlight apps into WinRT/XAML apps (I still don’t know what’s the official name for that flavor) and our XNA games into… well, whatever you feel like doing a complete rewrite with. Only to be told in a year or so to do another rewrite to UWP.
10. Early retirement
Windows phone never had a huge market share, but it had a meaningful double-digit one in some markets. More importantly, it was the center-point of the UWP strategy circa 2015. With the demise of the phones, the strategy had to refocus from huge “U” to a tiny “u” and a huge “W.” Moreover, it seems to be dragging the whole Microsoft’s consumer ecosystem after it. I am definitely underqualified to realize how much of a drag on the company was the underperforming phone business, but it’s obvious that ripples from that decision will affect various aspects of the company for years to come. Hopefully, all of this was planned and thought through.
Do you have any major misstep to add?
P.S.: no, there’s no mistake. I skipped #9 on purpose. See what I did there? ;)
