I read in interesting
article pointing to why WP8 is not succeeding. The basic premise is this: WP8 does not offer people a compelling reason to switch from OS's that do the things most smartphone users do on their phones every day by doing them better than the already established Android and iOS platforms. Some of the main strengths pointed to like Office are actually things most people don't care about according to this snippet:
"Microsoft has designed a smartphone operating system that might be better, maybe even much better, for those things that Microsoft is good at - such as Word, Outlook, Xbox Play. The problem is, those do not seem to be the things that smartphone users want or need. In 2012, UK telecom carrier O2 commissioned a study of smartphone users. It showed that a typical user spends more than two hours a day (128 minutes) with their smartphone. The majority of this time, however, is spent on activities where Microsoft's Windows Phone offers no significant advantages over iPhone or the best Android devices. For example, smartphone users spend most of their time browsing the Internet, checking their Facebook status, tweeting, listening to music and sundry other acts. For which of these - or any of these - does Windows Phone offer a superior experience?"
If you look at that chart, there's an unspoken clue - those top 5 activities point towards a large selection of apps and games - something Android and iOS have a huge advantage with. This also explains why BB is in a similar dilemma. For all that Nokia touts their cameras, and BB touts their "hub" and UI setup, and both advertise their keyboards, security, enterprise capabilities those are actually the
lowest on people's top list of activities. Conversely, we all say how boring and stale iOS is and we cannot for the life of us understand why it continues to stay so strong. This is the reason why - it meets the highest number of most often used smartphone activities quite well.
According to this article it's not that WP8 doesn't do a good job of these activities, it's that they don't do it in a way that compels people to switch from more established platforms that are already doing it. Another snippet:
"Each new sale of an Android or iOS device leads to customers purchasing apps, games, music, movies and more, all optimized for that particular ecosystem. The great bulk of such purchases cannot easily be transferred to a new platform - which serves to lock-in customers to their existing platform choice"
This last one I found interesting because of the effect of market saturation on creating duopolies. Like the PC market for example. It's been decades now of PC and MacOS totally dominating desktop environment and in all that time nobody has really been able to make any inroads. It's because there doesn't appear to be enough room in a saturated market for a strong 3rd player. It appears that the mobile OS environment is shaping up to be the same. We used to be in a situation where the smartphone market was BB and iOS, and now rather than Android entering as a strong 3rd player, BB has fallen, changing the situation to another duopoly of Android and iOS. This seriously leads me to question whether the market will
ever allow for 3 relatively equal players in the field. We all cry for more selection, but yet when it's offered to us, the consumer base in a schizophrenic-like manner turns around and demands tighter unification instead. We say we want more choice, but yet when that choice is presented to us we say we want things more tied in.
What we as consumers fail to realize is that in order for us to have our cake and eat it too, the competing companies would all have to stop competing enough to offer
all of their services cross-platform. It's a catch-22, and they'll never agree to that. Hence we end up with duopolies.
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