The Future of Windows Phone - Revisited Again
On April 26 - Terry Myserson of MS wrote an internal memo to major customers and partners confirming Microsoft's commitment to Windows on Mobile devices.
Since it's release in 2010, the "modern" version of Windows phone has struggled to gain market share and runs a very distant 3rd to Android and iOS with less than 2% market share worldwide.
Through Windows Phone OS releases 7, 7.5, 8, 8.1 and now 10 and a very botched partnership, then acquisition of Nokia's Devices division, the noise has been getting louder and louder regarding the death of Windows phone. There have even been rumors of MS moving to Cyanogen as a base OS.
The most recent MS quarterly results called out an excessive inventory of new the Lumia 950/950XL models which I called lame duck models back in November 2015 when there were announced and recommend not buying. I was even further surprised by the release of the 550 and 650 models which while nice entry/mid level phones don't support key features of the Windows 10 strategy like Continuum.
Just to put this in perspective in Q3 of MS FY 2016 they sold 2.3M phones - a 73% drop year over year. As I just noted in an earlier post - Apple just posted a 16% decline in iPhone sales - but still sold 50.5M units - nearly 22 times more.
MS themselves have noted that are not proud of the latest 5 series Lumias and considering the number of issues folks have had with them running Windows 10 - it's no surprise that the death chant was sounded.
So with that back drop - Terry's note confirmed MS's commitment to Windows running on ARM - so basically a phone. And that MS is working on their new devices that will ship along with the Redstone 2 release in April 2017.
There have also been recent partner announcements of new Windows 10 based phones, the HP Elite X3 and more recently the Acer Liquid Jade Primo. But to date all partner phones make up only 3% of Windows Phone sales. Even long time partners like HTC have really struggled.
As I've written about many times, I've owned several Windows phones - from the HTC Radar, to various Nokia models including the Lumia 735 I still use today.
MS in my opinion did bring some real innovation to the mobile experience. Live tiles with their active content, re-sizable shapes and glance access really do change the way you interact with your phone. Additionally MS's voice processing capabilities especially messaging to voice processing was and still is vastly superior what Apple or Google provide.
But the platform also suffered from many fits and starts - from the lack of upgrade path for 7 & 7.5 users to 8, slow and irregular updates, poor store experience, some very buggy apps, constant changes in name, and the biggest of the lack of apps. There is a reason it carries a 1.6% market share as of the end of 2015.
Even with the new focus of MS towards business users, a reduced model lineup and Windows 10 capabilities like UWP, Windows Hello, Cortana and Continuum - MS market share in smartphones in 2016 will probably drop under 1%.
So while MS has confirmed a long term commitment to "deliver Windows 10 on mobile devices with small screen running ARM processors" it will be nearly a year until we see that. There may be some additional partners that announce devices, but they will really be grabbing for crumbs with sales volumes that may not be able to sustain the commitment.
With individual Android vendors like Samsung selling more smartphones than the entire PC industry combined, some of these partners may hedge their bets on committing to Windows 10 for their smartphone platforms.
And while MS has made some strategic purchases like Xamarin to make it easy for iOS/Android ISVs to port their apps to Windows 10 - I'm not sure those ISVs really care. Recently we've seen more vendors drop support for Windows 10 Mobile, than add it.
I know for myself that while I will continue to test Windows 10 Mobile on my Lumia 735, I will not buy a new Windows 10 phone.
Bottom line is this, regardless of the some of the innovations that MS brought to market with Windows phone, it has been a total failure to the point where Sr Executives have to write notes to partners and customers to squash rumors of the platforms demise.
MS is rebooting their mobile strategy for the 3rd time in 6 years and it will be nearly a year until we see the first products that reflect that new strategy. Now certainly MS has hedged their bets by producing more and better iOS and Android apps than their Windows 10 Mobile counterparts, but that still won't stop the bleeding with Windows Mobile.
The new reality is that Android maintains an 83% market share, followed by iOS at around 14% with everyone else at 3%. In effect Android is the new Windows and nothing I'm seeing come from MS is going to change that...
Since it's release in 2010, the "modern" version of Windows phone has struggled to gain market share and runs a very distant 3rd to Android and iOS with less than 2% market share worldwide.
Through Windows Phone OS releases 7, 7.5, 8, 8.1 and now 10 and a very botched partnership, then acquisition of Nokia's Devices division, the noise has been getting louder and louder regarding the death of Windows phone. There have even been rumors of MS moving to Cyanogen as a base OS.
The most recent MS quarterly results called out an excessive inventory of new the Lumia 950/950XL models which I called lame duck models back in November 2015 when there were announced and recommend not buying. I was even further surprised by the release of the 550 and 650 models which while nice entry/mid level phones don't support key features of the Windows 10 strategy like Continuum.
Just to put this in perspective in Q3 of MS FY 2016 they sold 2.3M phones - a 73% drop year over year. As I just noted in an earlier post - Apple just posted a 16% decline in iPhone sales - but still sold 50.5M units - nearly 22 times more.
MS themselves have noted that are not proud of the latest 5 series Lumias and considering the number of issues folks have had with them running Windows 10 - it's no surprise that the death chant was sounded.
So with that back drop - Terry's note confirmed MS's commitment to Windows running on ARM - so basically a phone. And that MS is working on their new devices that will ship along with the Redstone 2 release in April 2017.
There have also been recent partner announcements of new Windows 10 based phones, the HP Elite X3 and more recently the Acer Liquid Jade Primo. But to date all partner phones make up only 3% of Windows Phone sales. Even long time partners like HTC have really struggled.
As I've written about many times, I've owned several Windows phones - from the HTC Radar, to various Nokia models including the Lumia 735 I still use today.
MS in my opinion did bring some real innovation to the mobile experience. Live tiles with their active content, re-sizable shapes and glance access really do change the way you interact with your phone. Additionally MS's voice processing capabilities especially messaging to voice processing was and still is vastly superior what Apple or Google provide.
But the platform also suffered from many fits and starts - from the lack of upgrade path for 7 & 7.5 users to 8, slow and irregular updates, poor store experience, some very buggy apps, constant changes in name, and the biggest of the lack of apps. There is a reason it carries a 1.6% market share as of the end of 2015.
Even with the new focus of MS towards business users, a reduced model lineup and Windows 10 capabilities like UWP, Windows Hello, Cortana and Continuum - MS market share in smartphones in 2016 will probably drop under 1%.
So while MS has confirmed a long term commitment to "deliver Windows 10 on mobile devices with small screen running ARM processors" it will be nearly a year until we see that. There may be some additional partners that announce devices, but they will really be grabbing for crumbs with sales volumes that may not be able to sustain the commitment.
With individual Android vendors like Samsung selling more smartphones than the entire PC industry combined, some of these partners may hedge their bets on committing to Windows 10 for their smartphone platforms.
And while MS has made some strategic purchases like Xamarin to make it easy for iOS/Android ISVs to port their apps to Windows 10 - I'm not sure those ISVs really care. Recently we've seen more vendors drop support for Windows 10 Mobile, than add it.
I know for myself that while I will continue to test Windows 10 Mobile on my Lumia 735, I will not buy a new Windows 10 phone.
Bottom line is this, regardless of the some of the innovations that MS brought to market with Windows phone, it has been a total failure to the point where Sr Executives have to write notes to partners and customers to squash rumors of the platforms demise.
MS is rebooting their mobile strategy for the 3rd time in 6 years and it will be nearly a year until we see the first products that reflect that new strategy. Now certainly MS has hedged their bets by producing more and better iOS and Android apps than their Windows 10 Mobile counterparts, but that still won't stop the bleeding with Windows Mobile.
The new reality is that Android maintains an 83% market share, followed by iOS at around 14% with everyone else at 3%. In effect Android is the new Windows and nothing I'm seeing come from MS is going to change that...
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