WP is dead! What people are saying that?

[EC Translating Services]

This topic is pretty worn out by now. WP may not be dead but the market share it has clearly shows that most users don't like it for a variety of reasons. Some of these are:
- Lack of functionalities in the OS (many not a few)
- Lack of apps in the market and very low quality (just to cut short, you can look at an objective way to meter those apps here: Microsoft promises a Windows Store full of quality, review scores say otherwise)
- Microsoft taking four (read 4) years to add very basic functions and boasting "important updates" that are never such. If threshold doesn't change things you'll see the market share going further down. This regardless of what your two friends like more (they are not representative of global share which says otherwise).

Read the article i linked and you'll understand why people are not using WP. It may not be dead but surely looks in deep comatose status. It's not a matter of marketing, making new devices in fancy colors or boasting "new brands" (most of which unknown) supporting the platform. It's about fixing OS and APPS, then talk about marketing.

Self glorifying the platform will only help build a wrong image of what is happening. It's relieving for a short time but doesn't hide reality. The OS is promising but in an "as is" status that makes it look pure subpar crap.

Edit: I also have a good bunch of people from at least 3 countries (Italy, China and Taiwan) complaining about a boring non customizable interface. For me it's not very important as long as i have what i need and a decent margin of customization (i am ok now except i want 3 row wide tiles)...but these people are leaving the platform because their phone looks boring after a few months (same happens with iPhone). Like in the case of your friends i have no clue of how many of those are leaving WP for lack of customizability.....however i think a certain amount don't like it as it is.
Edit 2: Just to say (i add as i catch up with news, apologies to everyone), read this http://www.androidcentral.com/insane-pace-android (focus on 3 keywords "INSANE + PACE of what? + ANDROID".

Is WP really fast? (I am still waiting for a decent email client and of course a keyboard input i can actually use to communicate with customers).

 

[Karthik Naik]

^frankly i prefer windows phone not becoming another android in terms of changing launchers etc and messing up the phone
people get confused with androids customisation options
i agree windows phone needs more polishing but i feel its got a nice balance between every mobile OS so far
ios,bb10,meego,android etc
i have used every platform and while my windows phone is a pain for web browsing etc at times(tab browsing is a joke because it keeps reloading otherwise its fine),i find my 720 and z10 + ipad combo working out for me perfectly
the 720s camera and battery life have yet to meet a perfect match in any phone yet which i have tried out(excluding extended aftermarket batteries in other phones) , the z10 is a lovely device for browsing and apps which are missing on wp(i use snap to install android apps) and my ipad for ios only apps etc

 

[salmanahmad]

thing is there are more stereotypes about windows phone than android and ios

Honestly the stereotypes of Android and iOS can get pretty crazy compared to Windows Phone primarily due to the huge number of consumers that own it.

I've not seen many stereotypes about Windows Phone as much as I see people complaining about the app gap on Windows Phone.

And the app gap isn't a stereotype, it's a genuine problem.

There are obviously stereotypes about Windows Phone out there, but I've seen that consumers stay away from Windows Phone due to logical reasons mostly(not because of stereotypes).

This topic is pretty worn out by now. WP may not be dead but the market share it has clearly shows that most users don't like it for a variety of reasons. Some of these are:
- Lack of functionalities in the OS (many not a few)
- Lack of apps in the market and very low quality (just to cut short, you can look at an objective way to meter those apps here: Microsoft promises a Windows Store full of quality, review scores say otherwise)
- Microsoft taking four (read 4) years to add very basic functions and boasting "important updates" that are never such. If threshold doesn't change things you'll see the market share going further down. This regardless of what your two friends like more (they are not representative of global share which says otherwise).

Read the article i linked and you'll understand why people are not using WP. It may not be dead but surely looks in deep comatose status. It's not a matter of marketing, making new devices in fancy colors or boasting "new brands" (most of which unknown) supporting the platform. It's about fixing OS and APPS, then talk about marketing.

Self glorifying the platform will only help build a wrong image of what is happening. It's relieving for a short time but doesn't hide reality. The OS is promising but in an "as is" status that makes it look pure subpar crap.

Edit: I also have a good bunch of people from at least 3 countries (Italy, China and Taiwan) complaining about a boring non customizable interface. For me it's not very important as long as i have what i need and a decent margin of customization (i am ok now except i want 3 row wide tiles)...but these people are leaving the platform because their phone looks boring after a few months (same happens with iPhone). Like in the case of your friends i have no clue of how many of those are leaving WP for lack of customizability.....however i think a certain amount don't like it as it is.
Edit 2: Just to say (i add as i catch up with news, apologies to everyone), read this http://www.androidcentral.com/insane-pace-android (focus on 3 keywords "INSANE + PACE of what? + ANDROID".

Is WP really fast? (I am still waiting for a decent email client and of course a keyboard input i can actually use to communicate with customers).

I believe that if a person owns a Windows Phone, he's not going to get tired of it because of the aesthetics.

Primarily because live tiles are colorful and breathe life into the OS, they can be resized and put anywhere similar to how Android handles widgets.

You could easily become tired of the icons of iOS, but not Android or Windows Phone, at least in my opinion.

But yes Windows Phone needs more apps, and better quality apps.

^frankly i prefer windows phone not becoming another android in terms of changing launchers etc and messing up the phone
people get confused with androids customisation options
i agree windows phone needs more polishing but i feel its got a nice balance between every mobile OS so far
ios,bb10,meego,android etc
i have used every platform and while my windows phone is a pain for web browsing etc at times(tab browsing is a joke because it keeps reloading otherwise its fine),i find my 720 and z10 + ipad combo working out for me perfectly
the 720s camera and battery life have yet to meet a perfect match in any phone yet which i have tried out(excluding extended aftermarket batteries in other phones) , the z10 is a lovely device for browsing and apps which are missing on wp(i use snap to install android apps) and my ipad for ios only apps etc

I believe that customization and simplicity and go together pretty easily, Android 4.4 allowed people to change the default SMS app and default launcher directly from settings.

It's not like Google forces you to customize your device, you could keep it simple or make it more detailed.

Windows Phone could also do the same without sacrificing any of the user experience.

 

[jlzimmerman]

I kind of expect the possibility Windows phone may eventually not exist if they can promote their services across all mobile devices enough to render the existence of cheap WP not necessary.

This is what I'm afraid of. That leaves us with really only two choices. There are a dozens of reasons why I wouldn't want to go to Apple or back to the evil empire (Android). The consumer market needs more than two players, and BB and Amazon don't count because of their tie-in with Android.

 

[EC Translating Services]

I believe that if a person owns a Windows Phone, he's not going to get tired of it because of the aesthetics.

Primarily because live tiles are colorful and breathe life into the OS, they can be resized and put anywhere similar to how Android handles widgets.

You could easily become tired of the icons of iOS, but not Android or Windows Phone, at least in my opinion




It's not like Google forces you to customize your device, you could keep it simple or make it more detailed.

Windows Phone could also do the same without sacrificing any of the user experience.

WP has become fairly customizable for my needs. However, what you and i believe clashes with what others believe or are used to (things like Themer and totally different interfaces etc.). Italians in particular complained about the lack of colors, the fact they can't give tiles the colors they want, change tonality based on their need but only have a limited choice of colors and some icons can't even been changed. Now i believe the reason for lies in the fact some people don't like to see certain colors mixed with other colors and they would like to have a better granular control on it. I have solved my issue with a grey background that makes the phone more or less as i want. They still want to have the capacity to make a tile yellow, one light purple rather than one purple for everyone, one orange in a given shade of orange etc. I understand them to an extent and i believe WP will get there eventually. However they got bored and left the platform. I don't know how many are doing the same however.

 

[dby2011]

I'm going to throw something out there:

Google is basically not playing nice with Apple or Windows Phone. Apple is already using Bing for their default searches. Apple could also benefit from Microsoft's cloud services, Office and Bing maps. Apple does not have market share in other parts of the world other then the USA- they need something to compete with Android outside the US. I know this is very far fetched but you have to wonder.

 

[salmanahmad]

WP has become fairly customizable for my needs. However, what you and i believe clashes with what others believe or are used to (things like Themer and totally different interfaces etc.). Italians in particular complained about the lack of colors, the fact they can't give tiles the colors they want, change tonality based on their need but only have a limited choice of colors and some icons can't even been changed. Now i believe the reason for lies in the fact some people don't like to see certain colors mixed with other colors and they would like to have a better granular control on it. I have solved my issue with a grey background that makes the phone more or less as i want. They still want to have the capacity to make a tile yellow, one light purple rather than one purple for everyone, one orange in a given shade of orange etc. I understand them to an extent and i believe WP will get there eventually. However they got bored and left the platform. I don't know how many are doing the same however.

The colorful Windows Phone UI really appealed to me a lot but it slowly started to fade away and I'll explain why.

I want applications to have their unique colors and identity, I mean if my theme color is red and black I don't all my apps to look like that.

For example Whatsapp looks beautiful in green and white, the messaging app looked better to me when it is white and blue, but I can't set app specific themes.

The theme I set on Windows Phone applies to all apps, and I guess some people like that feature however I didn't.

Moving on the live tiles being colorful was a standout feature for me, but with the introduction of transparent live tiles my colorful home screen was slowly being ripped apart, app by app.

Slowly I lost incentive to stay with Windows Phone and I highly dislike the approach they are heading towards with their new designs.

Again, some of you might like it, some of you might not, design has always been a subjective matter but part of what made Android sell so well was the fact that if you didn't like something, you could replace it.

I hope we can someday do the same on Windows Phone.

 

[EC Translating Services]

^frankly i prefer windows phone not becoming another android in terms of changing launchers etc and messing up the phone
people get confused with androids customisation options
i agree windows phone needs more polishing but i feel its got a nice balance between every mobile OS so far
ios,bb10,meego,android etc
i have used every platform and while my windows phone is a pain for web browsing etc at times(tab browsing is a joke because it keeps reloading otherwise its fine),i find my 720 and z10 + ipad combo working out for me perfectly
the 720s camera and battery life have yet to meet a perfect match in any phone yet which i have tried out(excluding extended aftermarket batteries in other phones) , the z10 is a lovely device for browsing and apps which are missing on wp(i use snap to install android apps) and my ipad for ios only apps etc

I use launchers because i really find Android UI in both Vanilla and other OEM customizations childish or basic like iPhone...for some reason i hate those icons...they look so old compared to the tiles.. So i share your view. What i was genuinely hoping for (but i am aware it is utopic) is that Microsoft would create an entirely proprietary ecosystem where we had a single, unified platform highly customizable (colors, fonts, backgrounds, single tiles, group of tiles, folder colors, names etc) through a specific customizing interface (also on desktop through USB connection like they had on Windows mobile) and a basic set of apps entirely designed by microsoft or highly skilled Microsoft certified Tier 1 devs (i'd split devs in tiers based on quality and skills) at a price if necessary AND then all other apps and tiers too (not to isolate or cut off amateur devs who need to build their skills anyways or you get drained in a few years or demotivate them while i think they need being encouraged).
Security functions should be handled by Microsoft and phones should be inaccessible to any third party (akin to what iPhone 6 is and what Android is going to implement next....on paper...we'll see in real).
I DO NOT hope to have all those intrusive third party apps on my phone. If i rant about WP for having to give my username and password to third party apps you can imagine my feeling on Android. The only reason why i am on Android is that it's functional and can be customized exactly based on your needs. Something WP doesn't have in part due to the limitations i mentioned, in part also to the fact that Tiles are not real widgets.....this opens another issue. I need widgets and tiles don't cater for that. They miss something.

The colorful Windows Phone UI really appealed to me a lot but it slowly started to fade away and I'll explain why.

I want applications to have their unique colors and identity, I mean if my theme color is red and black I don't all my apps to look like that.

For example Whatsapp looks beautiful in green and white, the messaging app looked better to me when it is white and blue, but I can't set app specific themes.

The theme I set on Windows Phone applies to all apps, and I guess some people like that feature however I didn't.

Moving on the live tiles being colorful was a standout feature for me, but with the introduction of transparent live tiles my colorful home screen was slowly being ripped apart, app by app.

Slowly I lost incentive to stay with Windows Phone and I highly dislike the approach they are heading towards with their new designs.

Again, some of you might like it, some of you might not, design has always been a subjective matter but part of what made Android sell so well was the fact that if you didn't like something, you could replace it.

I hope we can someday do the same on Windows Phone.

That's exactly the issue. You don't want a unified theme. You want to be able to set your own colors. In addition to that, the color of some icons clash with the color of others and they look ugly. You can move the tile of course but that will limit your capacity to put tiles in the order you need to make them functional for you. If you allow users to choose colors one by one or by groups you can have situations like MAIL = all blue tiles (then notifications could come in different colors based on what account the mail is coming from), NEWS = all red tiles, FITNESS = all yellow tiles, so forth. And, devs should give users a chance to change color to tiles IMHO.
Now that is customizable.

This is what I'm afraid of. That leaves us with really only two choices. There are a dozens of reasons why I wouldn't want to go to Apple or back to the evil empire (Android). The consumer market needs more than two players, and BB and Amazon don't count because of their tie-in with Android.

BB for me counts a lot because contrarily to Android where the whole ecosystem is dedicated to sucking data and profiling you, BB only allows Android apps. This would allow me to have a secure OS (theoretically) and cherry-pick those 5 or 6 apps that i desperately need leaving all the rest to Google. BB is not Amazon. Amazon is more like Google.

 

[ShinraCorp]

Let the doomsayers come, I shall smith tee with my multi-colored hammer against the hordes of green shoulderless robots and poisonous apples. They shall feel my fury for I am Windows... and Windows Phone was my idea (if you get the last sentence I give you a cookie)

 

[Soble]

Does Microsoft gave you money to do that? What will you gain when WP will succeed? Money? If this will happen, you wont earn money. Microsoft will.

And MS WORKS HARDER AND MAKE WP GREATER AND MS WILL GAIN MKNEY AND MS WORKS HARDER..... There is nothing that you lose.

 

[pjs37]

Let the doomsayers come, I shall smith tee with my multi-colored hammer against the hordes of green shoulderless robots and poisonous apples. They shall feel my fury for I am Windows... and Windows Phone was my idea (if you get the last sentence I give you a cookie)

Microsoft's Vista Ad Campaign. I actually liked Vista.

 

[Bodeanicus]

Read between the lines everyone it's blatantly obvious:

They buy Minecraft which is essentially on every mobile and gaming platform you can imagine (or will be soon).

All major services like Skype, Onedrive, Office etc are available for all mobile operating systems

Microsoft gets a huge amount of money from Android patents so they still benefit from those sales.

Nadella just stated in a recent interview mobility is not about devices- in other words its about services you use. He is not concerned about hardware marketshare he want Microsoft icons on every device.

They are focusing on phones in markets where there is little saturation- in other words a market that needs cheap devices that can offer Microsoft services cheap to get people hooked.

I kind of expect the possibility Windows phone may eventually not exist if they can promote their services across all mobile devices enough to render the existence of cheap WP not necessary.

Agreed. Windows Phone IS dead. Microsoft is doing what they should have done to start with: write software. It's what they're best at, and they should stick to it. Think about the gabillions they lost by waiting so long to port Office to iOS, just so they could shoe horn the desktop version onto a 10" tablet. Idiocy. If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I would burn Steve Ballmer's house down. And there's STILL no native Metro app. I just don't understand what the hell is going on in Redmond.

Windows Phone is dead because they're going to drop the branding.

And, I personally don't see them shuttering the phone part, because people are on their smartphones more than ever nowadays, so they'll lose quite a bit if they discountinue it.

I'd argue that The "Windows" branding is what helped kill Windows Phone. "Windows" does not have good mindshare with the general public. They remember the days of BSoD's, viruses, worms, and the other assorted unpleasantness of running Windows in the past. It also doesn't help that it looks a lot like the hated Metro Windows 8 desktop interface. Yes, I'm aware that alpha nerds and certain Microsoft fans love it, but the general populace hates it. HATES IT. Microsoft should have just branded the phones "Lumia." Frankly, it's what they should do now, but no, it's going to be "Windows..."

WP has become fairly customizable for my needs. However, what you and i believe clashes with what others believe or are used to (things like Themer and totally different interfaces etc.). Italians in particular complained about the lack of colors, the fact they can't give tiles the colors they want, change tonality based on their need but only have a limited choice of colors and some icons can't even been changed. Now i believe the reason for lies in the fact some people don't like to see certain colors mixed with other colors and they would like to have a better granular control on it. I have solved my issue with a grey background that makes the phone more or less as i want. They still want to have the capacity to make a tile yellow, one light purple rather than one purple for everyone, one orange in a given shade of orange etc. I understand them to an extent and i believe WP will get there eventually. However they got bored and left the platform. I don't know how many are doing the same however.

You know, that bothers me, too. I'd love to able to assign the color of my choosing to any tile.

 

[Jose_Rey]

"WP is dead! What people are saying that?"
I don't think it's dead. If anything, I think we're more Alive than ever. Both iOS and Android are simplifying things. Just look at the flatter design of iOS 7. And now with Android L, you'll have "Material" design, which is basically almost an exact replica of WP OS, except for the icons. We just need to hit every market segment and to give Developers all the tools they need to prevail at Windows Phone.

 

[ishredthecello]

What needs to happen is a system app similar to functionality to "OblyTile" needs to exist for Windows Phone. This would provide endless customization.

What could happen with Apps so they don't lose "Live Tileness" is Apps could work with this feature and have the Live Tile part of it on the back of the tiles.

 

[realwarder]

Microsoft stores have been a disaster in the US. The store in Atlanta is basically deserted.

I wouldn't say deserted. Just not as full as the Apple one If NorthPoint was more than a kiosk they might get me to buy more. They do need to expand retail space as it does provide more opportunity than none.

 

[Jorge Holguin]

Here are some feedback that i got when i introduce them to use WP device:
"does it have [insert any google app name]?"
"does it have [insert a games name that don't have on WP]?"

The people who accepted my advice to use a WP device is the ones who lack of technological knowledge.
It really hard for people who already using Google service. That's why Google never bring their apps to WP.

That's partially true; Android phone account for more than 50% of phones at my work the rest is between iPhone and WP there are many of them that don't even use Gmail, others use Dropbox, let's remember that Google is not in every Android phone that is release, especially those coming out of China.

 

[prasath1234]

Hope Lumia 730 brings people into windows phone os.greatest and smoothest os which lack quailty apps .but live tiles more than make up for it.i pin all my favourite sites .
From Windows phone

 

[TechFreak1]

Unfortunately most reviewers only use the phone for a few hours and sales reps regurgitate what they read from these so called unbiased tech journalists.

Plus Microsoft is in a catch 22 situation (in the eyes of windows phone users they aren't helping the situation either) as windows phone has been reduced to one major selling point (Cortana), I understand the course of action they are taking as they want to be platform agnostic (not tied to one specific platform) as it would mean residing control to Google or Apple. This is why Office was released on ios and the android (tablet version on its way), otherwise it would mean losing users to the likes of Google Docs / iwork. Once you lose users in that productivity area than you would lose them completely since with-in that environment you have tie-ins with icloud and google drive, therefore they would be completely wrapped up into that ecosystem.

However once they put Cortana on the platforms, what incentive is there for the average joe to pick up WP over ios & android?
There is none, as they can stay with-in their ecosystem and benefit from Microsoft's suite of apps, which are also superior when compared to WP versions.

To add to this conundrum they are not using the xbox brand to it's full potential either as they could dramatically could increase sales if all games released on WP was xbox live enabled via the open source framework (which no one even MS has mentioned or talked about since Build 2014). Also when they launched WP7, they leveraged the xbox games hub as a selling point.. why on earth did they not revise the xbox live framework and tie it into that announcement??

Another ace feature is Rooms, again no recent advert highlights this feature a unfortunately marketing & communication is MS biggest problem and it was insanely evident from their x1 launch.

Microsoft is what I would call as a innovative yet a reactive company and they will always remain that if they keep making bone headed & idiotic decisions (i.e to strip out the enterprise features that were available in WM and to focus on the consumer market when they released Wp7). I know no company is perfect but the smallest of decisions often have the biggest ripple effects, in the case of Microsoft they are magnified a hundred fold given their global presence.

Oops looks like I typed up another essay :grincry: .

 

[MDMcAtee]

I'd argue that The "Windows" branding is what helped kill Windows Phone. "Windows" does not have good mindshare with the general public. They remember the days of BSoD's, viruses, worms, and the other assorted unpleasantness of running Windows in the past. It also doesn't help that it looks a lot like the hated Metro Windows 8 desktop interface. Yes, I'm aware that alpha nerds and certain Microsoft fans love it, but the general populace hates it. HATES IT. Microsoft should have just branded the phones "Lumia." Frankly, it's what they should do now, but no, it's going to be "Windows..."

You know... I kinda have to agree with you on this.

Microsoft Windows has left a very bad taste in millions of people's mouths and as a result WP has suffered.

Posted via Windows Phone Central App

 

[doob9911]

I agee too. I heard people saying "I don't wanna use another windows devices." People use windows pc not because they love it but because they have just only one choice. Mac and linux are useless for real serious work. We call it "monopoly". Frankly speaking, MS kills MS itself now.