This is scary for w10m consumers

[mikepalma]

https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/win...ft-discusses-limited-future-windows-10-mobile

 

[daimv]

The news look good, the title is the same old "windows is dead" from years ago. UWP are cool, ancient apps that have been abandoned still don't run on continuum, maybe in the future. I still like Windows 10 mobile and my phone. No more Lumias, still there are other companies with good phones so it's good.

 

[fatclue_98]

What's so scary? The writing's been on the wall for some time now. Microsoft has raised the white flag in the consumer space and will be trying to dethrone BlackBerry for Enterprise/Government. Did anybody catch BB's quarterly report yesterday? Their doing pretty good with software sales. Last time I checked, Microsoft is software first, hardware second. MS has the muscle to lure 3rd party OEMs to build phones (HP, Lenovo and others) to keep the OS out there. Sucks for the average Joe but it's a brilliant plan...if it works.

 

[a5cent]

Nothing we didn't already know really.

The guy asking why "Win32/x86 apps do not work on continuum" was a bit ignorant.

The reason MS didn't address that at all is because the idea makes absolutely no sense. Rather than asking "when will Win32 software run on W10M" he should have asked when will W10 run one smartphones. If we ever get a smartphone with Win32 compatibility, that's how MS will provide it.

 

[mikepalma]

And hence the reason for no Band 3 or.consumer wearables. What a shame bc I love my 640x, but I want a good smartwatch

 

[xandros9]

Yea its worrying. I heard anecdotally that some famous smartwatch/fitness band (forget which) company is in the middle of axing their Windows Phone projects in light of the news.

Unfortunately to me this looks like another (albeit slow-motion) soft reboot/direction change or "retrenching" that'll put off developers more.

I don't expect this "for-businesses" route to go over too well unless they create one hell of a business experience on 10 Mobile but seeing the effort the brass is putting in, I'm not going to expect anything BYOD or laptop/phone trumping anytime soon.

 

[EspHack]

one commenter on thurrot makes a good point

they asked if microsoft employees use wp internally, short answer is no, and yet THEY ARE an enterprise that uses windows, they fit their own target audience perfectly, and yet they dont use w10m phones, how does that look?

 

[anon(6078578)]

Yea its worrying. I heard anecdotally that some famous smartwatch/fitness band (forget which) company is in the middle of axing their Windows Phone projects in light of the news.

Unfortunately to me this looks like another (albeit slow-motion) soft reboot/direction change or "retrenching" that'll put off developers more.

I don't expect this "for-businesses" route to go over too well unless they create one hell of a business experience on 10 Mobile but seeing the effort the brass is putting in, I'm not going to expect anything BYOD or laptop/phone trumping anytime soon.

I think this is just Microsoft's way of admitting defeat without actually announcing it. They are merely using retrenching to enterprise as a cover. This way they can keep the OS quietly simmering in the background as a sort of research and development cost just in case they get a chance to bring it back whereupon they can deny they that they ever exited in the first place.

 

[matt john2]

The W10m is a big flop. All they have left now are the jumbled words and wishful thinking of a very small group who call themselves Windows Phone User. I've seen enough Microsoft "strategy" changes and so many product renaming to know where this is going.

 

[a5cent]

They are merely using retrenching to enterprise as a cover.

IMHO the whole 'retrenching' angle has always been BS. It's probably the most vague way anyone could describe a business strategy and I don't recall MS themselves ever using that terminology. It seems that narrative was only ever 'pushed' by WCentral... nobody else. It was used to 'explain' MS' exiting of the hardware market and to imply that MS expected to lose millions of WP/W10M customers and that this expectation somehow makes the fact less problematic. That never made sense to me. With so little market share, losing more of it results in a dire situation, whether you expect it or not.

Ironically, MS never actually expected W10M's market share losses. The mass W10M exodus is why MS lowered their estimate of having W10 on a billion devices within three years. That revision wouldn't have been necessary if it really was expected.

Only later did the three pronged strategy of phones for enthusiasts, the budget conscious and business morph into a "business only" affair... however, the term 'retrenching' is vague enough to be applicable in any situation, no matter how much MS scales back their ambitions for W10M or changes strategy. A term that can describe any strategy being applied to a failing platform isn't descriptive enough to be worth using. That's all the term 'retrenching' is at this point.

I don't think the 'retrenchment' angle deserves to be taken seriously either.

 

[a5cent]

Unfortunately to me this looks like another (albeit slow-motion) soft reboot/direction change or "retrenching" that'll put off developers more.

I don't expect this "for-businesses" route to go over too well unless they create one hell of a business experience on 10 Mobile but seeing the effort the brass is putting in, I'm not going to expect anything BYOD or laptop/phone trumping anytime soon.

Yup. Agree. Still, despite all this negativity, all those prophecizing W10M's demise are still wrong. W10M will never make sense to those who can't put aside the notion that W10M is about selling hardware. It's not. It's about having an ecosystem with a homogeneous run-time environment that spans across many form factors (that's something developers care more about than consumers). W10 IoT is also part of that, and it's something consumers know even less about than W10M. So little in fact, that consumers generally don't even ponder whether it's too unpopular too survive. Yet it's not going away either... just like W10M.

I'm not worried about W10M. I'm more worried about UWP. That's the real deal. There will always be some developers doing stuff with UWP, but I currently don't see UWP going anywhere in a big way soon. All the dinky apps that consumers care about are on iOS and Android. Replicating them on UWP doesn't really serve a purpose and just costs money. All the big software packages that keep Windows relevant (CAD, business and accounting software, engineering applications, etc) aren't coming to UWP either. That costs millions to port with almost no upside.

Without W10M it's hard to see how MS establishes the UWP in the consumer market. If they can't turn it into a successful gaming platform (like Steam) it will likely stay irrelevant to consumers. At least for the moment I can't see any other route to consumer's "hearts".

If I were MS I'd immediately:

• allow all games to be distributed via the Windows Store free of charge (no 30% cut)
• setup a gaming ecosystem similar to Steam that is tightly integrated and well supported in the UWP. Also provide a Steam compatible API, so developers can target a single API but deploy to both Steam and the Windows Stores.
• I'd also provide a UWP runtime environment for Linux and Mac so the same games can also reach those platforms, possibly requiring UWP exclusivity in exchange for reaching that extra market share
• allow UWP and Steam account linking, so anyone who owns a Steam game gets the same game in the Windows Store free of charge (provided the developer has published it to the Windows store).
• Open source all of UWP.

If MS refuses to innovate "big time" with W10M, as they have in the past, then I don't see any other way forward anymore. If they want to stay relevant in the consumer space they need to start fighting for it. No more giving up. I agree that the business-only angle won't work... without at least some effort on the consumer end it won't suffice as a way to become relevant again outside the business arena, which is what most people here are clamoring for.

 

[mikepalma]

one commenter on thurrot makes a good point

they asked if microsoft employees use wp internally, short answer is no, and yet THEY ARE an enterprise that uses windows, they fit their own target audience perfectly, and yet they dont use w10m phones, how does that look?

This is an excellent point! Was funny when @donasarkar was caught using iPhone 6S...for research of course. oh wait she was using it take selfies with friends

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Focus on enterprise - maybe I should open up my own company to get the good stuff :winktongue:

 

[George Ponder]

We've heard this before and Mobile has found a way to survive. I think Microsoft has accepted the fact that they won't be taking the consumer market by storm with W10 Mobile and are looking at the business market for a little success. This probably means fewer updates for the consumer end and an increase in activity on the business end.

What Microsoft needs to do is reassure the development community not to give up. My fear is that Microsoft may not kill off W10 Mobile, but the third party developers may.

 

[etphoto]

We've heard this before and Mobile has found a way to survive. I think Microsoft has accepted the fact that they won't be taking the consumer market by storm with W10 Mobile and are looking at the business market for a little success. This probably means fewer updates for the consumer end and an increase in activity on the business end.

What Microsoft needs to do is reassure the development community not to give up. My fear is that Microsoft may not kill off W10 Mobile, but the third party developers may.

Agree. MS already has a strong foot hold and enterprise with desktop and software and in order to survive in the future they NEED a mobile platform. Pushing that mobile toward the enterprise makes perfect sense.

Twitter: @PhotographyET

 

[KimRM]

I'm a true MS fan, but at this point, if I find another phone with just as good camera hardware as the 950 has, I will buy it. Android or IOS, I don't care. I feel windows 10 mobile developement is dragging along too slow.

 

[a5cent]

What Microsoft needs to do is reassure the development community not to give up. My fear is that Microsoft may not kill off W10 Mobile, but the third party developers may.

Wouldn't it be fair to say that has already been killed?

The typical app that sells for $1.49 is unsustainable without a huge (i.e. mass market and consumer focused) user base. A focus on business that does little to nothing to excite consumers necessarily means abandoning that "huge" user base. That mass market user base is going away. It's already in its last throws. The app market will go along with it. Developers won't immediately remove their apps from the store, but the apps will grow stale and eventually be removed when they no longer work. IMHO we can already see the first signs of that.

IMHO much of the app development for W10M will likely be relegated to corporate stores rather than the public Windows Store where we get our apps from now.

That's one of the reasons I see PC and console gaming as a (last) potential option to save the UWP in the consumer space. At $60 it's possible to get the ball rolling without requiring a user base of quite the same size.

 

[mtf1380]

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[Krystianpants]

one commenter on thurrot makes a good point

they asked if microsoft employees use wp internally, short answer is no, and yet THEY ARE an enterprise that uses windows, they fit their own target audience perfectly, and yet they dont use w10m phones, how does that look?

Well, as an enterprise you need to have your server side equipment interact with all sorts of phones. So chances are that they are going to be interacting with either android/ios outside of microsoft. In fact, my bet is MS would be the only company using Windows phone if they were. So that's not a good way to produce quality interactions with the platforms all your users are using. It's sad but true. They need to make sure ios/android runs perfectly with all their tech.

Once they have that they can maintain it easier and add more focus to Windows mobile. The harsh reality is that windows mobile has been ignored and this was never denied by MS. So why would they be running it if it's not ready for the enterprise? My guess is that if they are truly working on a surface phone and they are going to be getting it ready for the enterprise, the teams responsible will be using it and likely in secret. I mean who used the surface book in MS to make sure it's ready for launch? Likely no one because it was a huge secret.

And MS may have small teams that will be using windows mobile once it is enterprise ready, they can't convert their whole company as they are a software provider for every platform. They need the other platforms to be a part of their company just as much if not more.

 

[Joe920]

The typical app that sells for $1.49 is unsustainable without a huge (i.e. mass market and consumer focused) user base.

So my optimistic long view is still that UWP apps are still an attractive proposition for developers in a world with 400 million potential customers (Win10 users). There is some hope that those apps will make Win10 phones more and more attractive.

I do think it's going to be more an more natural that the device on your desk and the device in your pocket are going to behave similarly / run similar software. Both these things will take years though. Time for UWP apps to appear, and time for phone CPUs to become a bit more powerful.

And (dreaming), time for a foldable Surface phone with a wraparound screen to appear. Unfold it: boom, twice the screen size!

In the meantime, it's going to remain Android or iOS for most.