I think WP8 is on its way to success.

[Ruined]

I already know people who bought an 822 who laughed off or never even heard of WP7. It is amazing how much marketing can do, both by the device makers and carriers, in changing perception - considering that right now for most people WP8 won't be all that much different than WP8. All of a sudden my "wtf is that" or "uncool" device is now "cool," despite it being the same device it was last year. People are not only considering it over iOS or Android, they are now actively buying it over them!

This is good to see. The way Microsoft turned it around almost makes me think they were planning WP7 to sell poorly shortly after its launch, likely due to the kernel change. I mean, annoying the 2% of marketshare they got - mostly early adopters used to being annoyed - is not a huge deal. If they had went big on WP7 using a new kernel for WP8 could have been a REAL pr disaster. So they probably kept WP7 visible enough so that it offered an alternative to those who really wanted it while waiting for the "real deal" WP8 to hit when the big bucks marketing could kick in to woo the android/iOS users.

Anyway, good start so far! Let's hope they keep it up and not let the marketing fall off as they have in the past with some other products.

 

[danbbrantley]

I agree with your post. The buzz around this phone online is huge and I hope Nokia can deliver on supply to meet the demand. I'm not saying the demand is enormous, but the more phones Nokia delivers now, the more impressions that can be made on people before its holiday buying time. Read an article on Forbes.com last night highlighting the view of an expert head financial analyst who believes Nokia is on its way up and Apple is on its way down - stating that market share will shift greatly moving forward.

She pointed to Nokia's proprietary mapping tech as one major reason for the shift.

 

[lordofthereef]

I largely agree with what you have to say, but there are some key differences.

1. For the first time we have high res screens. That is a game changer. WP7 didn't support high res and it came along when hig resolution became mainstream.

2. I'd say the UI is much improved. I can fit much more on my home screen than I could in WP7. Before I had six tiles MAX taking up my entire screen plus that lovely bar wasting space on the right.

3. We are finally getting some mainstream apps. WP markeyshare is terribly low. But the virtually identical devkit with windows 8 helps tremendously

Advertising is great. But people also are starting to see this OS as usable, even with the handful of things it still is missing.