The greater the truth, the greater the libel - Lord Ellenborough
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Microsoft's marketshare falls thanks to WP7
PROVIDING A TASTE of what Nokia might have to look forward to, Comscore has revealed that Microsoft's launch of Windows Phone 7 (WP7) led to a 1.7 per cent drop in its US smartphone market share.
Comscore released its US smartphone market figures for the three months up to January 2011, showing that Google's Android is the most popular smartphone operating system with 31.2 per cent of the US market. During the high volume Black Friday and Christmas sales, Android's market share grew by an astonishing 7.7 percentage points.
While Google's Android was heading to the top of the charts, Research in Motion (RIM) suffered a 5.4 per cent drop in market share, slipping to second place overall with 30.4 per cent of the US market. Apple was in third place, though its market share all but stagnated at 24.7 per cent for 0.1 per cent growth during the quarter.
Perhaps the most shocking performance was that of Microsoft. Comscore's October 2010 to January 2011 figures take into account Microsoft's WP7 launch, so naturally you would expect an increase in market share as punters got caught up in the $400 million marketing blitz. Instead of an increase, however, Microsoft's US smartphone market share slumped 1.7 percentage points to just 8 per cent, a daunting loss of over 17.5 per cent of its previous quarterly market share.
Comscore's figures might explain why Microsoft has been so cagey about not revealing actual WP7 sales figures. Microsoft has yet to disclose actual sales to users, saying only that its OEMs had shipped 2 million WP7 devices into their sales channels by January.
These Comscore market share figures also call into question whether Nokia's recent deal with Microsoft will really mean that it will regain market share in the US.
If both Samsung and LG, cited by Comscore as the first and second most popular handset makers during the same period, couldn't help Microsoft increase its smartphone market share, then Nokia's chances are not looking especially good.
The calls for Nokia to adopt Android seem to have been all the more logical, given that Google saw its operating system grow by almost the same market share occupied by Microsoft in the space of three months. It's a damning fact that should make Nokia's CEO and ex-Microsoft executive Stephen Elop wonder if he has sold Nokia woefully short by jumping into bed with his former employer.
Neither Microsoft nor Nokia can realistically hope that when Comscore publishes its next set of quarterly figures WP7 will have helped either of them reverse their haemorrhaging of market share. µ
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I'll tell you exactly why WP7 is failing: It's been GSM only. GSM<cdma ve encountered can be summed up to: Android is okay, but functionality king still belongs to WM6.5.3, which has been cooked/kitchened to the point of no longer resembling the complaint-ridden stock OS. Hopes are high in WP7 following the cooked ROM path that WM went, letting users massively customize their OS.
..Also WP7 failed
to gain in sales
through
Christmas - holidays 2010
R.I.P. WP7
this merger of software maker/ cellphone maker, two epic has-been mobile titans trying to make a comeback in the new millennium is like watching the titanic ease into the ocean after colliding with an ice burgh.
WHEN YOU SAY HAND OVER FIST, THE HAND MEANS PAY ME MY MONEY AND THE FIST SAYS OR ELSE I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE NOSE.
TRY PUTTING YOUR HANDS LIKE THAT YOULL FIND IT VERY AWKWARD, AND ACTUALLY NOT ALL THAT THREATENING.
ANDROID DOESNT SCARE ME. OOH, YOUR ROBOT IS GOING TO PUNCH ME BECAUSE I WONT BUY A CELL PHONE? OOH! YES I AM REALLY SCARED OF THAT SCENARIO.
AGAIN: JUST TRY IT PRIOR TO JUDGING.
Who could have possibly imagined that Microsoft would be stuffing the channel during their PR blitz in order to exaggerate sales?
The problem with WP7 is that it's on the one hand too innovative, and on the other hand not innovative enough. They ditched a whole bunch of established smartphone principles on how the phones are organised, and on the other hand didn't get the most out of some of their cool features such as Live tiles.
It ends up being a smartphone aimed at not-so-smart people, not configurable like Android, not simple-to-operate-yet-super-deep... yeah. Not surprised if it's not that popular, the not-very-smart crowd tend to buy simple phones... from Nokia, interestingly enough.
All this waste on Microsoft's side on garbage prodicts is in the hope that it can achieve a monopoly on the mobile OS market they way they did with the PC OS market. I'm glad that people are not that stupid to buy into this and allow this to happen again.
Microsoft affords all this waste with the tax money we pay every time we get a new computer and the tax corporations pay for their office suite. I see a lot of people complaining rightfully about governments wasting money, but there is not much complain about Microsoft illegally stealing money from us and then ditching them on the drain. It's almost impossible to get a PC without the Microsoft tax on it.
Also, I think that even Elop knows that WP7 is garbage. He didn't even care much about that, he cared more about ditching MeeGo, which seemed to be a really great and open mobile OS.
I think the problem is the marketing of 'save us from our phones' while clever, probably still isn't as good as the iphone adverts. Plus, at least where I live, I get iphone adverts every day, I haven't seen a wp7 one in a while.
I also think they could have used more big name launch titles, including some high profile exclusives that people want (like they did with halo and the xbox).
The phones are fine, but nothing that makes me want to ditch my android.
Don't you feel sorry for Microsoft?
First it spent over a billion dollars developing the Kin phone, which flopped.
Now it has happened again with Windows Phone 7, which statistics now show has flopped just like Kin did.
I hope that was a joke...
Once consumers realize the full capability of the LoseDoze phone, it will take off and overrun both Android and Ios. Users want to be able to install the internet on their phones so they can browse the web and point and click and cut and paste and multitask and do all of the things that are so DIFFICULT if not IMPOSSIBLE with any other phone.
Give me LoseDoze phone!
Let's face it, Windows Phone 7 did not add enough innovation to the previous Windows Phone platforms. The only significant upgrade was the Xbox integration - which is cool, but if Microsoft was smart, they would have just offered an official Xbox Live app on all other major platforms (IOS4, Android) and make revenue that way.
In addition, Microsoft's "Bing" search engine is absolute garbage. It NEVER turns up credible search results.
So combine terrible search engine with minimal innovation to previous Windows Mobile platforms and you get a pretty lame platform.
Nokia made a stupid choice bedding with Microsoft (much like HTC did by bedding with Onlive).
I feel for sorry for Nokia. Microsoft will pay Nokia $1 billion, according to Bloomberg, for the rights to use WP7.
On the face of it, it sounds like a good deal. Nokia can reduce its research centre and get Microsoft to focus on software development.
The only problem is that this is not a desktop and consumers are not keen on using Microsoft on their mobile phones.
So, I think Nokia was very short sighted and will miss out on the explosion growth of smart phones and Android, especially in the developing world.
Eventually, however, Nokia will have to accept this as a fact and embrace Android. Only problem is that they would have lost billions in market value and market share. Shame, because they do produce good phones...
This time next year Nokia's new CEO's gonna get canned and replaced with a guy that's more Android friendly.
Or Nokia will have gotten so irrelevant that HP will buy them.
As they were so late to market what to you really expect? It will take a year or two for the platform to mature. I have yet to test each platform (just moved from iPhone to Android) so who knows next time I might get a Windows Phone (8?!).