The entire WP introduction has chapped my butt for the past few years now. It's really enough to make one walk away from it forever in my opinion. I like the OS and think it has great potential but, the way it's been handled by Microsoft is beyond incompetence. They release the OS and only half heartedly market it. Device developers see this and barely offer anything that runs it. They change it again after only 2-3 years on the market. Even with the newer WP8, I doubt many people other than us realize it's not just another upgrade from WinMo. Just like now, they show a few devices months in advance, generate a little bit of hype and then wait until people have all but forgotten about it before hey release it to market. Then, as with the 920, we find out at nearly the last minute that it will only be offered by 1 retailer. Not good for a platform that wants to regain it's dominance it once had.
If I were a shareholder in Microsoft or any of the particular device makers and was dependent on WP's success, I would be beyond p!$$ed.
Fair point, but it is different this time around - the launch of WP8 and hardware can't be compared to any other other previous launch, they have nothing in common.
This time
You will be getting a unified integrated experience between multiple devices - laptop/PC/Tablet/Phone - that has never happened before.
Now Microsoft will be pushing WP8 as part of the overall W8 experience, it will take a while for the message to get out there, but the more tablets/laptops/PC's that are sold with W8 on them in turn will strengthen the message for WP8.
We all know that the Lumia 900 was a good phone, the bloggers said so, the tech reviews said so. but it still didn't sell well - because there was no point buying a W7.xx phone, no unique selling point, crippled OS - forget it
Now, there is good hardware, unified OS and we are finally at the beginning of a major technological shift in the way we use computing.
2 months ago I was an Android user with no interest in WP8, now I see the possibilities and Im switching to WP8
Im even going to get a surface tablet as I can see the point of having one now as well as a WP8 device. Computing is catching up on the way I want to use it, so I will buy into that future.
In the meantime we have had the iphone launch, and guess what, people are still talking about WP8 devices - that in itself is a massive achievement - the 2 biggest launches this year will be the Nexus devices and the W8/WP8 - the buzz on the web is for those two, not apple this time around..
people have to stop looking at it as a device/phone launch - it isn't, it is the launch of a whole new ecosystem which is a much bigger event that will have MS pushing alot harder to make sure it succeeds
Rant over, and I promise you Im not a MS salesman :-0