Microsoft still has a lot to do to impress Android and iPhone users.

[Simon Tupper]

Android and iPhone users don't see much need to jump in the WP8 and W8 boat. Why? Because their preferred OS meet their needs. WP8 should keep all of its must have features while having more features to meet the needs of an iPhone and Android user. While WP8 is simply gorgeous, fast and fluid.. it falls short for a lot of iOS and Android users in terms of features and apps.

The xbox music app (Win8 and WP8) should be better. It needs some major updates, because at the moment it feels like they didn't put much effort in it. Except for the design...

You should be able to carry your videos in you smartphone and WP8 seems to be lacking there.

The lack of key apps should be taken into consideration by Microsoft and they should do something about it. Pay to motivate them to make an app for Windows Phone.

The official Facebook app seriously needs to be improved... it is really far from a quality app... Same for the official Twitter app... it's not common to see unofficial apps being 10X better than the official app...

Windows Phone will be a strong player in the near future, but I think that this is what Microsoft is missing to compete with Android and iOS.

Microsoft is being laughed at and the only way to get over this is to do better than iOS and Android. (I already like it better than Android and iOS, but the tech industry does not have the same opinion as I). Microsoft should come up with a tablet with a SIM card slot... it's 2012... they should make it cheaper to get more sales... Profit is good, but visibility is better and you can't make enough profit if most people see your tablet and say "Well I saw a review that rated it quite low and anyway it's too expensive". At the moment Microsoft with the Surface RT is the tablet that make the most profit per unit on the market... there is room to lower the price.

Microsoft is about to come back in the game, but it needs to boost things up a little bit. Microsoft is not in the same position they were years ago and that means that it needs to push its products more than its competitors... Make less profit and get more sales.

 

[scottcraft]

The reality is for the most part all of these smart phones do similar things in different ways. Each platform has things it does better than the rest also. I think what will attract people to WP is ease of use along with the tile interface. WP will be fine, but it's going to take a while with the huge head start the other platforms have.

 

[1jaxstate1]

The tile interface is the key seller. Other OSs look alike. Android, IOs and so far from what I've seen, even BB10. WP is a totally different look and feel.

 

[AMERICANRAJ]

Send this or post it on Nokia website. They are very responsive to constructive criticism.

 

[AMERICANRAJ]

As for my point of view. I'm holding my cyan L900 and very happy. Will get my Surface when my old Dell dies. Did download W8 for $39.95 and love it. Now just praying for my computer to die so I can get the Surface. I can't wait to see the numbers from Microsoft and Nokia in January.

 

[brmiller1976]

The differentiator with Android is pretty easy -- Windows Phone isn't broken.

Talk to a typical consumer a year or so into ownership of ANY Android flagship phone -- the S2, the S3, the Evo series, etc. -- and you'll hear horror stories about crashes, freezes, lag, e-mails that vanish, malware on Google Play that turned their phone into a botnet hub for spamming, etc. The key is just exploiting that DroidRage.

The reason the Android True Believers went so ballistic about the DroidRage campaign is simple: it was true. If it was false, it would be laughed off. Note that all of the retorts to DroidRage were "how dare you? Windows 95 had lots of security flaws too!"

Windows Phone is the simple, capable, powerful, secure and reliable multi-OEM handset OS. Android is the complicated, stuttering, swiss-cheese, crash-prone multi-OEM handset OS.

 

[Jastow]

hmmm, I left IOS (as if I worked for them or something) because I was bored with the phone/IOS, wanted a better camera phone, and was hoping for drag and drop music transfer (wrong). I really do like WP8 and seems very stable, but the app store needs to catch up in a hurry to get anyone to jump ship. I see what they are trying to do by getting people on board with all W8 products, but feel they need to concentrate on the the phone market first, then people will purchase their tablets like they have with aapl.

 

[brmiller1976]

Microsoft needs to attack where they're dominant and then extend that into the area where they're weak. They're strong on the desktop -- extend that lead into phones. A full frontal assault on Google and Apple in mobile, without an ecosystem strategy around PCs and tablets, would be a waste of money.

Note that Apple and Google built up a strong presence in areas where they were weak by leveraging their digital music/iPod and search monopolies, respectively. Microsoft needs to get equally aggressive with Windows -- including making it so that Google services and Apple products don't work as well with Windows desktops and laptops as Microsoft products.

 

[Oliver Newell]

I think it's largely to do with the fact people have never heard of windows phone. When Joe public goes into a phone shop and wants to get a smartphone on contract the retailers are usually biased and don't know what they are talking about. They will recommend a particular phone even if they don't recommend it personally, because themselves and the shops get bonuses ect. All of my friends who I have shown my Titan fall in love with it, they have either iphone or androids. To be honest, most of us just want an easy to use, functional and above all reliable and solid operating system that is ergonomic and easy to use. Most of us don't want to overclock our RAM on our androids or jailbreak our iphones. We just want what I mentioned above. However I don't think Microsoft is doing windows phone advertising a lot of justice, or windows 8 come to that.
For those of us who know what we are talking about, know that WP7and 8 is fast, reliable, rock solid, intuitive, easy to use, elegant, pleasing and functional OS and the best one out there at the moment. I will say one thing though, Apple it appears are losing market ground thanks to android though, and their tablets come to that, which is good. Apple are rather corrupt as it goes for in the IT industry

 

[Visual360]

I'm a die hard Android user (still is), but I'm a happy Lumia 920 user.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Microsoft needs to attack where they're dominant and then extend that into the area where they're weak. They're strong on the desktop -- extend that lead into phones. A full frontal assault on Google and Apple in mobile, without an ecosystem strategy around PCs and tablets, would be a waste of money.

Note that Apple and Google built up a strong presence in areas where they were weak by leveraging their digital music/iPod and search monopolies, respectively. Microsoft needs to get equally aggressive with Windows -- including making it so that Google services and Apple products don't work as well with Windows desktops and laptops as Microsoft products.

I disagree here. I only know three people who have Macs (and none of those Mac users have iPhones--they have Androids). However, everyone I know who is a PC user uses iTunes (I'm the rarity, since I don't use iTunes--I get my music from Amazon.com).

If Microsoft did something to break iTunes on PCs, that would cause a revolt like nothing ever seen. The majority of iTunes users own PCs, not Macs.

 

[brmiller1976]

The iPhone got started as "the iPod phone." It was a logical extension for anyone who wanted a phone and was heavily invested in Apple's music monopoly.

The Android phone got started as the "Google phone." It was a logical extension for anyone who heavily used Google services.

And iTunes is a steaming pile of poo -- all Microsoft has to do is ensure that Windows-oriented media services work better and receive more timely updates than iTunes and Google services. Apple and Google, ironically, are doing their best to help out by releasing LOUSY software for Windows (in Apple's case) and breaking proper ActiveSync compatibility for mobile and desktop/tablet devices (in Google's case).

 

[cgk]

I'm a happy windows phone user but I'm also cheap and I'll likely switch back to Android because it is (with 4.0 and above) 'good enough'' and with google now turning out nexus phones at such low prices, I'll get one of them.

 

[brmiller1976]

"Cheap" has costs down the road, such as crashes, freezes, malware, phone failure, the need for a hard reset every six months, provision of detailed private data to Google for your personal profile, etc.

 

[Laura Knotek]

The iPhone got started as "the iPod phone." It was a logical extension for anyone who wanted a phone and was heavily invested in Apple's music monopoly.

The Android phone got started as the "Google phone." It was a logical extension for anyone who heavily used Google services.

And iTunes is a steaming pile of poo -- all Microsoft has to do is ensure that Windows-oriented media services work better and receive more timely updates than iTunes and Google services. Apple and Google, ironically, are doing their best to help out by releasing LOUSY software for Windows (in Apple's case) and breaking proper ActiveSync compatibility for mobile and desktop/tablet devices (in Google's case).

The issue is iTunes has been around so long that most PC users are heavily invested in it. The person who has thousands of songs from iTunes isn't going to readily abandon iTunes.

 

[henry.gray]

Its just a way to push users to purchasing handsets that work with their services, I have been a avid Windows Phone user since the Windows Mobile 6.1 with the HTC Atimis, onto the HD7 and now the 8X.

I have always had a problem with Android with their security flaws and the OS just seems buggy even with high end handsets.
As with iOS I have never liked the layout of the GUI and the general layout.

 

[brmiller1976]

The issue is iTunes has been around so long that most PC users are heavily invested in it. The person who has thousands of songs from iTunes isn't going to readily abandon iTunes.

Actually, that guy is probably migrating to the cloud -- either Apple's Cloud Music service, or Spotify cloud match, or even Xbox Music. Music downloads on local devices are increasingly obsolete.

 

[odin09]

I hate apple but iTunes is simple and efficient. The latest update has made it much worse but I still don't see what's so bad about it.

 

[brmiller1976]

Check out how many resources iTunes uses next time it's running. When I used it a year ago, it wasn't uncommon to see it using 65% of processor resources on an i5, and 600+ megabytes of RAM, all while idling in the background.

 

[cgk]

"Cheap" has costs down the road, such as crashes, freezes, malware, phone failure, the need for a hard reset every six months, provision of detailed private data to Google for your personal profile, etc.

I've have never had to hard reset an android device even when it was a cheapo zte blade - as for the rest - you are confusing cheap selling price with cheap BOM - and the nexus devices are not cheap in that sense.