Why develop for Android & iOS if enterprise is your focus?

[anon(7929613)]

Microsoft is slowly withdrawing itself from the consumer space and targeting enterprises. Then why spend so much time and money on Android & iOS?

There are many non-Microsoft UWP apps that do not exist on Android or iOS. So 10 to 15 Microsoft apps on these platform is not going to make any difference. Plus there are more than 600 million W10 users in the world. So Microsoft can't say that they are doing this to get more users.

 

[spicypadthai]

Enterprise users are consumers and vice versa so treating them as mutually exclusive audiences isn't the way to think about it. Microsoft's strategy only works if their apps and services are available on every platform/device. Microsoft wants everyone using some combo of their OS's/apps/services which means they can't ignore mobile. Simply put, MS wants to be device and OS agnostic b/c that extends their reach the furthest.

 

[vEEP pEEP]

But why would people on an Android platform use MS services if they offer nothing unique? Or a killer app? Is there any app where Android is unique. I mean Instagram, FB, WhatsApp ok not unique, but own that area. Where does MS sit? Think can make dent on this ecosystem? If they had a mobile platform, would that help people decide to use their apps?

Enterprise users are consumers and vice versa so treating them as mutually exclusive audiences isn't the way to think about it. Microsoft's strategy only works if their apps and services are available on every platform/device. Microsoft wants everyone using some combo of their OS's/apps/services which means they can't ignore mobile. Simply put, MS wants to be device and OS agnostic b/c that extends their reach the furthest.

 

[techiez]

But why would people on an Android platform use MS services if they offer nothing unique? Or a killer app? Is there any app where Android is unique. I mean Instagram, FB, WhatsApp ok not unique, but own that area. Where does MS sit? Think can make dent on this ecosystem? If they had a mobile platform, would that help people decide to use their apps?

Coz in the end they just want to sell u an office license.

 

[anon(7929613)]

Coz in the end they just want to sell u an office license.

No body use Office on a mobile device.

 

[kaktus1389]

No body use Office on a mobile device.

I will have to disagree. I know a lot of people that use office on their phones if not for other reason because they want to be able to read office docs on their phone (presentations, word docs etc., especially my fellow students.

Sent from mTalk on Lumia 950

 

[techiez]

No body use Office on a mobile device.

This is exactly the reason for the gap between MS and consumers, both parties dont understand each other. The marriage was obviously not meant to last in this case.

 

[Old_Mil]

Microsoft has no clue what they are doing at the moment.

 

[dkediger]

Meant this as a reply to @kaktus1839 above ^^


Precisely....at work we use a lot of OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint, and increasingly Teams. Not to mention most prefer their mail in Outlook. We utilize O365, in fact Microsoft is really the only suite that supports so much natively across the consumer platforms.

Word and Excel, not so much, but it is nice to have them there if needed.

 

[orlbuckeye]

They might if they have Office 365 which they will use outlook especially. Lots of companies use Windows desktops and iOS or Android phones. Right now Google and MS are competing for email services and they offer their offices packages as part of it. Plus single sign on apps are big now like Okta are big in the corporate environment. My company switched from Google to MS about 3 years ago because Google and MS were in a battle for our contract. MS was cheaper so we switched. Also remember that iOS and Android run on tablets also and lots of corporations are using these devices as clients to the apps on their Windows machines.