Maybe we'll find out why carriers can't sell Windows Phone

[selfcreation]

Agree with this 100%, I don't think I've ever met a store rep that didn't know more than you could learn from an hour of researching online. But that's still more than the average person knows, so to them the reps are experts whose word is to be trusted.

lol , i think having worked in this environment you relies allot more then your typical clueless client that absorbs any BS you tell them. Lol

man i remember working for bell when the FIRST iphone came to CANADA at Rogers . we use to sell the * SAMSUNG INSTICK * ( not data phone btw ) and tell client it was just as good , and it was Samsung answer to the iphone... lol clients believe anything.

 

[GekkoAce]

Best Buy employee told me yesterday that when she tried her friends wp7 it was confusing and hard to use. She was toying with her android on her sales desk. I agree that it is them just staying in their comfort zones rather tan being malicious. Microsoft should offer them free or super cheap phones. Microsoft has to do something about this problem.

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

 

[Rhody#WP]

id like to think im a phone expert ( working in it for 4 years ) i use to love to custom stuff on WM , but i would NEVER EVER get Android or Iphone ,,, if you gave me one id sell it ( wich i have done lol )

I would not use you alone as a representative sample, because you frequent a WP7 forum.

I should have put "phone expert" in quotes. I said "tech savvy" for a reason. I realize that sales reps in mobile phone stores don't have engineering degrees. They do a small amount of research and form strong opinions. They are not experts or necessarily well informed. But they are part of the tech culture, which implies a natural anti-Microsoft mindeset. That was my point, which seemed to get lost.

 

[selfcreation]

I would not use you alone as a representative sample, because you frequent a WP7 forum.

I should have put "phone expert" in quotes. I said "tech savvy" for a reason. I realize that sales reps in mobile phone stores don't have engineering degrees. They do a small amount of research and form strong opinions. They are not experts or necessarily well informed. But they are part of the tech culture, which implies a natural anti-Microsoft mindeset. That was my point, which seemed to get lost.

ok lol i think i still dont udnerstand what your saying. lol

 

[IamDefiler]

People always think it's Windows Mobile, not Windows Phone, so they won't touch it. You go into stores and half the reps are calling it Windows Mobile, and Windows Mobile evidentally raped their cat with a stylus. ****, when you have tech journalists who refer to it as Windows Mobile, what are the average Joes gonna call it? When I show my phone off, I always reference it as the new Windows Phone, which seems to distance itself a bit more from Windows Mobile.

In a more ideal world, the team that branded the Zune could brand Windows Phone. They'd call it something that would sound like the way you feel when you smell freshly cut grass on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Something that would evoke the smell of barbeques in the distance, and wasting the day away with friends in what years later you'll realize was a really crappy car. And we'd all love it.

But in our sucky world, we're bombarded with new products all the time, and it's hard to make them stick in our brains. Companies have to reuse successful brands and append differentiators to them to set one product apart from another in the same base brand. Apple does this to great effect with their i-branded devices, the letter "i" seemingly meaning nothing yet if you stick it in front of a product, people will instantly expect that product to have something to do with the iPhone or iPod.

I get the complaint some state, that there's no windows in Windows Phone. But the word "windows" in the computer space moved beyond a GUI metaphor years ago, at least for me. I associate the word (lol "Word") with an operating system. Windows is something I run programs on, so it makes sense to call their phone OS "Windows Phone".

The real trick here is moving Windows Phone beyond the memory of Windows Mobile.

They should've just called it Microsoft Metro and been done with it.

 

[IamDefiler]

And now my choice to move on has just been finalized...

BREAKING: HP shutting down webOS device operations, will "continue to explore options" | The #1 HP webOS, TouchPad, Pre, and Veer Community | PreCentral.net

Not thread crapping. Just stating a fact.

 

[Polychrome]

I still consider Windows Phone to be Windows Mobile since it's running the same kernel from my understanding, but I'm very sure to note the differences to anyone who asks. There definitely is something to be said about the new interface.

Just here confirming... there's no "conspiracy" or anything like that. Most carrier employees do have older versions of WinMo stuck in the back of their head. And while it was exceedingly flexible for a mobile platform (sheesh, with a patch I could run Monkey Island 3 on my old Omnia 2 and it ran really well), many were confused by having what was essentially a desktop OS crammed into a phone, and all the RAM-eating crapware manufacturers stuffed in didn't help things.

Problem: Customers expect a phone to be user friendly to the point that a newborn baby could hack into Sandia Labs with it. (Must be all that iPhone training.)

For the record, Android is starting to show its true colors and fail horribly in the user friendliness aspect, but not every store or call center rep understands their customers aren't always willing to pull their battery when their phone locks up, or hard reset when the programs have pummeled the phone into the ground.

Most of the Android Phones even fall to the same major issue Windows Mobile 6.5 and below did: The manufacturers place so much crapware on the devices that all but the extremely nerdy end up with a volatile, crash-prone gadget that is way over their heads. Reps know when to reboot or hard reset and consider it a fact of life. Customers do not.

Let's not even get into Android's horribly glitchy email support... If anybody's main desire is email, I'm selling them a blackberry without question. I've been on the tail end of far too many too-good-to-be-true business deals where some IT consultant called in wondering why their Androids didn't handle their systems nearly as well as an old Blackberry, and ranted for hours on end as I tried to placate them with probable solutions.

So now we've got a new OS that is not only stable, it offers a bit of customization that the 'ol iPhone is still behind on. You'd expect that to be a winner right?

The internet and reviews can only say so much. The sales cards are right... opinions change *drastically* when you shove the phone into someone's hands. My husband played with mine for mere minutes, and bought one for himself later that week. The problem is getting that out to the employees rather than the customers.

 

[Rhody#WP]

I still consider Windows Phone to be Windows Mobile since it's running the same kernel from my understanding, but I'm very sure to note the differences to anyone who asks. There definitely is something to be said about the new interface.

Just here confirming... there's no "conspiracy" or anything like that. Most carrier employees do have older versions of WinMo stuck in the back of their head. And while it was exceedingly flexible for a mobile platform (sheesh, with a patch I could run Monkey Island 3 on my old Omnia 2 and it ran really well), many were confused by having what was essentially a desktop OS crammed into a phone, and all the RAM-eating crapware manufacturers stuffed in didn't help things.

Problem: Customers expect a phone to be user friendly to the point that a newborn baby could hack into Sandia Labs with it. (Must be all that iPhone training.)

For the record, Android is starting to show its true colors and fail horribly in the user friendliness aspect, but not every store or call center rep understands their customers aren't always willing to pull their battery when their phone locks up, or hard reset when the programs have pummeled the phone into the ground.

Most of the Android Phones even fall to the same major issue Windows Mobile 6.5 and below did: The manufacturers place so much crapware on the devices that all but the extremely nerdy end up with a volatile, crash-prone gadget that is way over their heads. Reps know when to reboot or hard reset and consider it a fact of life. Customers do not.

Let's not even get into Android's horribly glitchy email support... If anybody's main desire is email, I'm selling them a blackberry without question. I've been on the tail end of far too many too-good-to-be-true business deals where some IT consultant called in wondering why their Androids didn't handle their systems nearly as well as an old Blackberry, and ranted for hours on end as I tried to placate them with probable solutions.

So now we've got a new OS that is not only stable, it offers a bit of customization that the 'ol iPhone is still behind on. You'd expect that to be a winner right?

The internet and reviews can only say so much. The sales cards are right... opinions change *drastically* when you shove the phone into someone's hands. My husband played with mine for mere minutes, and bought one for himself later that week. The problem is getting that out to the employees rather than the customers.

You know, everything you wrote is true, but I have a different perspective. WM was basically a windows operating system crammed into a phone, just like Android (and iOS?) is Linux crammed into a phone. Back in the day WM had some amazing hardware (for the time) and you could load any software you wanted, tweak the registry, customize the crap out of it, etc. MS realized (way too late) Apple was killing them BECAUSE their OS was closed, making it problem-free and easy to pick up and use. WP7 basically took the WM kernel and made it more like iOS and less like Android, while Android appears to be traveling the same road WM did.