Life with an iPhone - Why Windows Mobile will never recover
As typical with most corporate organizations - I was provided a phone and most recently I chose an iPhone 6s. Previously I had also had a Galaxy S5 and in my case this time was not even given the choice of a Windows Phone.
As a user of all 3 phone platforms, it's pretty easy to see why iPhone maintains a nearly 44% Market share here in the US while Windows Phone is under 2%.
Let's start with the obvious - "it's the apps stupid"
The app portfolio available on iPhone is second to none. From Financial, to Travel, to Social, to Corporate, to Home - for every touch point that I want to have a mobile capability for is available on iPhone. It's night and day from the Windows experience.
Even the MS apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, through MSN apps, Groove, etc are better than their native OS counterparts.
Regardless of all the promises MS made around apps - they never got the traction with the developer communities and never will. The modern mobile app development community doesn't care about Windows. To them - it's a legacy platform.
Next - "It works with everything"
I often ran into struggles with my Windows phone connecting to cars or devices. While I could connect in some cases the experience was not great. But more often than not I couldn't use the device at all because it didn't support Windows Phone.
No such problems with iPhone - in fact you have to argue that whole market segments are designed around the ability to connect to an iPhone.
Finally - "Updates are easy"
If I was not a member of Windows Insider - I would still be running Windows Mobile 8.1 and waiting for Windows 10 on my phone. Like Google, MS did a horrible job with both their OEM partners and carriers to support updates to their devices.
With iPhone - you get the update the day they announce it. period. In addition they support their legacy devices very well. You can be running a 4 year old phone with the latest OS and Apps.
Enterprise Focus - Why this will fail as well....
This spring MS made two major changes to their Mobile device strategy. First they got out of the business of building phones all together by selling off the manufacturing capabilities and by laying off the remaining Nokia folks. MS will now rely heavily on partners like HP and Acer who have announced high end devices like the Elite X3 an Liquid Jade Primo.
Second they are focusing on the Enterprise use cases and not consumer. But that strategy is horribly flawed.
Here's why...
The reality is that corporate America has already accepted the iPhone and the mixed Consumer/Enterprise use case. Every corporation I've worked for in the last 6 - 8 years has provided an iPhone option. That is the new reality. End users will not accept a device that can't run the apps they need. Or like so many will carry two devices if they're forced to and use the iPhone more.
While technologies like Continuum do potentially have a compelling use case - so providing a user 1 device that can perform both laptop and phone capabilities - without the apps that users crave, it will fail.
And while HP is focusing on using their VDI technology to deliver corp apps to the Elite X3 for example - who cares. With more and more app capabilities available in the cloud - that model is fading. And who really wants to try and run a corp app in a VDI session on a phone anyway. It's not a great experience
Bottom line - Windows Phone is dead...
Regardless of the commitment to the platform that MS has announced, MS will not able to to bridge the 3 gaps I mentioned above. Even with tools like Xamarin and Centennial to try and help with the app gap, I don't see a case where 3rd party ISVs will really care.
In addition without a new Microsoft branded phone being available for at least 9 months or at all - I'm not confident that MS can catch up to Samsung or Apple in terms of hardware or provide anything compelling that will move the needle in market share.
The best that MS can do at this point is to continue down the path they've been on for a few years now and provide MS apps/services on Android and iOS and hope to generate revenue that way.
As a user of all 3 phone platforms, it's pretty easy to see why iPhone maintains a nearly 44% Market share here in the US while Windows Phone is under 2%.
Let's start with the obvious - "it's the apps stupid"
The app portfolio available on iPhone is second to none. From Financial, to Travel, to Social, to Corporate, to Home - for every touch point that I want to have a mobile capability for is available on iPhone. It's night and day from the Windows experience.
Even the MS apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, through MSN apps, Groove, etc are better than their native OS counterparts.
Next - "It works with everything"
I often ran into struggles with my Windows phone connecting to cars or devices. While I could connect in some cases the experience was not great. But more often than not I couldn't use the device at all because it didn't support Windows Phone.
No such problems with iPhone - in fact you have to argue that whole market segments are designed around the ability to connect to an iPhone.
Finally - "Updates are easy"
If I was not a member of Windows Insider - I would still be running Windows Mobile 8.1 and waiting for Windows 10 on my phone. Like Google, MS did a horrible job with both their OEM partners and carriers to support updates to their devices.
With iPhone - you get the update the day they announce it. period. In addition they support their legacy devices very well. You can be running a 4 year old phone with the latest OS and Apps.
Enterprise Focus - Why this will fail as well....
This spring MS made two major changes to their Mobile device strategy. First they got out of the business of building phones all together by selling off the manufacturing capabilities and by laying off the remaining Nokia folks. MS will now rely heavily on partners like HP and Acer who have announced high end devices like the Elite X3 an Liquid Jade Primo.
Second they are focusing on the Enterprise use cases and not consumer. But that strategy is horribly flawed.
Here's why...
The reality is that corporate America has already accepted the iPhone and the mixed Consumer/Enterprise use case. Every corporation I've worked for in the last 6 - 8 years has provided an iPhone option. That is the new reality. End users will not accept a device that can't run the apps they need. Or like so many will carry two devices if they're forced to and use the iPhone more.
While technologies like Continuum do potentially have a compelling use case - so providing a user 1 device that can perform both laptop and phone capabilities - without the apps that users crave, it will fail.
And while HP is focusing on using their VDI technology to deliver corp apps to the Elite X3 for example - who cares. With more and more app capabilities available in the cloud - that model is fading. And who really wants to try and run a corp app in a VDI session on a phone anyway. It's not a great experience
Bottom line - Windows Phone is dead...
Regardless of the commitment to the platform that MS has announced, MS will not able to to bridge the 3 gaps I mentioned above. Even with tools like Xamarin and Centennial to try and help with the app gap, I don't see a case where 3rd party ISVs will really care.
In addition without a new Microsoft branded phone being available for at least 9 months or at all - I'm not confident that MS can catch up to Samsung or Apple in terms of hardware or provide anything compelling that will move the needle in market share.
The best that MS can do at this point is to continue down the path they've been on for a few years now and provide MS apps/services on Android and iOS and hope to generate revenue that way.
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