This is scary for w10m consumers

[techiez]

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.

Everyone believes you except Jason perhaps

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.

Well over the past year MS has more or less scared the devs away, it would now be twice as much difficult to attract devs. UWP and the 1 billion device strategy has failed to attract devs, partly due to MS's greed as well to charge 30% of the apps, why would anyone develop a UWP when they could simply develop a native application.

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.

By the way good to see someone from editorial team being a bit honest, we were tired of seeing articles chasing the rainbow.

I think MS is more or less clear on what it wants to do with W10M and consumers are not part of that equation. If and when surface phone is launched, there would be 1 final phone for enthusiasts(even that might be scrapped) and thats about it for us.

 

[theefman]

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.

Actually Nadella himself was the one who gave their strategy the name "retrenchment" and Wincentral took it and used it as an excuse to justify any and everything that happened to Windows Phone marketshare, sales and OEM interest from that moment.

Whether Microsoft expected the market to fall out from under their mobile platform may be questioned but we cant question their response since then, aptly demonstrated by the response of a Microsoft presenter at Ignite to a question someone in the thread mentioned about W10M usage at Microsoft - a collective shrug. Whatever their initial intentions they definitely don't seem now to be showing any desire to make anything of their mobile platform besides a footnote in the press release for their latest ios and android software.

 

[tgp]

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).

Technically speaking, this is valid. Windows 10 desktop users are potential customers. But, so far it seems that desktop users do not actually use apps much in real life. Mobile users have no choice, but desktop users have legacy apps as well as very good browser experience for most things.

 

[Krystianpants]

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.

I don't think it's really a cover. It's MS focusing on their strengths instead of weaknesses.

Windows 10 for desktop is their strength so they focus on this for building an ecosystem and creating the best development environment.
Business partners and business customers are their strengths. They already license a lot of stuff to businesses, adding full solutions at cheaper costs will drive businesses to adopt windows and hopefully gain some recognition as more people adopt it.

Why did starbucks release a starbucks app for windows mobile even though the shares were dwindling and Starbucks knows about Microsoft's retrenchment strategy? There's no pointing to UWP because there's no Desktop version. It's simply that Starbucks knows MS's plans for the enterprise and this will need to be available to business customers. The consumers who choose to use these devices are simply benefiting from it.

Facebook is planning to go into the business world with more business oriented features in facebook. Similar to linkedIn in a way. They have removed their support for blackberry and windows mobile suffers from low market share but they continue to develop for it. And the consumers are really just feedback for them perfecting their apps for business users to use.

HP has been planning their elite phone for a while. They knew it was going to be a business solution and also provide an avenue for consumers to get. But their partnerships and feedback from businesses is what helped them produce the hp elite X3. They actually had interested parties. These bigger businesses are also made aware of some of the future plans and the evolution of these devices. The continuum videos from ignite show that this is going to be more serious than what us 950/950xl users are currently using.

So again, this is not a cover up, this is simply a business company doing business. If you think about continuum and who it opens up the most doors to, you will think businesses. While these phones don't have anything to compete against in the consumer world they do have the features to compete in the business world. And focusing on their strengths once again like with windows 10 will help to add more to their ecosystem. Apple and android are great consumer solutions and they do have lots of business apps but they are for all intent and purpose, consumer phones. Nothing really makes them stand out in the business world other than say pen support. MS wants to transform the business world at this point and this is where it stands a chance not only to get recognition but great media attention. The business apps will come.

Again MS never had consumers in mind. The 950/950 XL had no consumers in mind, the fans demanded something so MS decided to test some tech out in the wild. They didn't even attempt to get them on Verizon. It gave MS a great chance to bring continuum to the real world for testing/feedback/telemetry from insiders. My guess is that without the insider program these phones would have never been released.

 

[Laura Knotek]

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.

That's pretty much what happened to BlackBerry 10 when it was long delayed and then aimed at enterprises.

 

[techiez]

Technically speaking, this is valid. Windows 10 desktop users are potential customers. But, so far it seems that desktop users do not actually use apps much in real life. Mobile users have no choice, but desktop users have legacy apps as well as very good browser experience for most things.

I recently bought a non-touch W10 laptop, and I found using UWP apps cumbersome, may be its just me or may be problem with the particular apps design but the experience put me off so I dont use apps on my laptopn anymore, I rely on native applications and use apps on my phone.

 

[a5cent]

Actually Nadella himself was the one who gave their strategy the name "retrenchment" and Wincentral took it and used it as an excuse to justify any and everything that happened to Windows Phone marketshare, sales and OEM interest from that moment.

Whether Microsoft expected the market to fall out from under their mobile platform may be questioned but we cant question their response since then, aptly demonstrated by the response of a Microsoft presenter at Ignite to a question someone in the thread mentioned about W10M usage at Microsoft - a collective shrug. Whatever their initial intentions they definitely don't seem now to be showing any desire to make anything of their mobile platform besides a footnote in the press release for their latest ios and android software.

Thanks for that. I must have missed or forgotten Nedalla using the word 'retrenchment' to describe the situation. I guess it's great that the term wasn't pulled out of thin air, but I would have been happier if you would have refuted my point. ;-) Unfortunately we agree. The term is used more as an excuse rather than being a precise or even useful description of anything.

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?

Your point seems to make perfect sense (and makes MS look really hypocritical), but I'm not sure it holds up. A business customer who wants a W10M devices is not the person who will eventually end up using it. I recall a member posting that the whole idea of a "business user" is bogus, because every employee is ultimately also a consumer, and just because someone gets employed won't make them suddenly want to use W10M. That's true, but it misses the important fact that the business user we're talking about in this context typically has no say in what device they will use. The phone is purchased on the user's behalf and expected to use it for business purposes. The actual customer in this scenario is the corporation's IT department or the bean counters, who calculated that porting their existing Windows software to iOS and Android would be far more expensive than just purchasing their 600 employees a W10M device which has more commonalities with their server and desktop environments.

That's the type of corporation that we're talking about. A corporation who's staff isn't any more technically literate than the average Joe, and where IT decisions are made by a single entity on everyone's behalf, which is then deployed as a company standard. Obviously that doesn't apply to a tech company like MS where the marketing, payroll and bookkeeping departments are the only ones with a standardized IT setup, and where every second person needs a different setup for the task they are currently working on.

I'm certainly not saying you're completely wrong though. It does say a lot that MS employees aren't using W10M. Just like 99% of the population isn't using W10M. I just don't think MS actually fits their own target audience for W10M.

 

[a5cent]

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 know that's the official line. I just don't see it. A potential customer implies that there exists a demand that people are willing to spend money on to meet. Just having a computer sitting infront of 400 million faces that MS can push software too doesn't constitute demand.

Like tgp mentioned on the previous page, there needs to be a reason why a desktop user would spend money on an app. For the simple use-cases internet applications just work too well. Apps aren't required. For the really heavy duty software the UWP might work, but there isn't much of a reason to spend the millions required to port such software from Win32 to UWP. It already works just fine too. Where everything works the way people need it to, there is no demand.

UWP was designed to allow the same piece of software to run across W10 desktops and W10M mobile devices. If nobody is using W10M devices that demand doesn't exist... hence no potential customers.

That's my take on it. I'll be happy if I'm completely wrong and you're 100% correct though. ;-)

 

[techiez]

If I see this, I think MS is now opening up to be honest and tell a goodbye to consumers and their WP fans.
Les smartphones Microsoft en retrait "pour quelques ann?es" - Le Point

But windowscentral tries to twist it to present hope to fans.
Microsoft is betting on 'paradigm shift' for Windows 10 Mobile to be competitive | Windows Central

But its pretty much clear that if MS is retrenching from consumer mobiles space then surface phone will not help bring any new consumers, also it would means more n more devs leaving this ecosystem.

 

[EspHack]

If I see this, I think MS is now opening up to be honest and tell a goodbye to consumers and their WP fans.
Les smartphones Microsoft en retrait "pour quelques ann?es" - Le Point

But windowscentral tries to twist it to present hope to fans.
Microsoft is betting on 'paradigm shift' for Windows 10 Mobile to be competitive | Windows Central

But its pretty much clear that if MS is retrenching from consumer mobiles space then surface phone will not help bring any new consumers, also it would means more n more devs leaving this ecosystem.

wcentral writers remind me of nasa...

hey I'm not against it, I applaud them for, in some ways, doing more than microsoft for the community, problem is if your backend isn't cooperating there's little point in making offers that wont be fulfilled

 

[Krystianpants]

I know that's the official line. I just don't see it. A potential customer implies that there exists a demand that people are willing to spend money on to meet. Just having a computer sitting infront of 400 million faces that MS can push software too doesn't constitute demand.

Like tgp mentioned on the previous page, there needs to be a reason why a desktop user would spend money on an app. For the simple use-cases internet applications just work too well. Apps aren't required. For the really heavy duty software the UWP might work, but there isn't much of a reason to spend the millions required to port such software from Win32 to UWP. It already works just fine too. Where everything works the way people need it to, there is no demand.

UWP was designed to allow the same piece of software to run across W10 desktops and W10M mobile devices. If nobody is using W10M devices that demand doesn't exist... hence no potential customers.

That's my take on it. I'll be happy if I'm completely wrong and you're 100% correct though. ;-)

I agree it's just a figure to entice developers. My guess is the only people looking at the store are fans, new 2-in-1 purchasers and maybe the odd ones here and there to see if there's anything there.

I have been saying this for a long time and you mentioned something similar. The only way MS will get the consumer market is by focusing on games. People buy games. In fact, a lot of PC users are only using windows for gaming. I can't tell you how many people mention they would use linux but they play games. And I mentioned they should come out with a mobile phone that is also a gaming device for Play Everywhere. It would gain a decent market share. Enough to draw attention. Gaming is huge. Apple knows this and having mario runner come out as timed exclusive on ios shows they know exactly what they are doing. Games are so powerful that even though this Mario game will come to android Apple believes having it as a timed exclusive will draw in more people.

It's funny but a lot of people would always get mad about snapchat not being on windows mobile and whatever few apps, but for the most part these people stayed on the platform. It wasn't till pokemon Go came out that I saw quite a lot of people leaving windows mobile. Reddit had quite a lot jumping ship. Because at the end of the day apps will never make as much money as games do. Gameloft makes enough money off windows to actually keep releasing new titles. The highest reviews for anything in a store is usually a game. MS must know this. And maybe they are waiting to be able to put that sort of power into a phone. For the time being all they really have is business. And I believe they will be successful to some degree because of their licensing. Businesses don't care if their employees have snapchat. They only care about security and having complete control of the business. Employees will have their own phones for snapchat or anything else. And keeping these separate is a good thing even for the users.

 

[techiez]

wcentral writers remind me of nasa...

hey I'm not against it, I applaud them for, in some ways, doing more than microsoft for the community, problem is if your backend isn't cooperating there's little point in making offers that wont be fulfilled

Well yes they are the only ones keeping the community together. But same lame excuses everytime are boring now, its clear MS has given up and now finally been admitted by a senior executive from MS, still we see articles trying to keep the hopes alive, that some how magically devs and apps will come. MS might release 1 last phone for enthusiasts but the problem is that those of us who are happy with current set of apps might keep seeing lossing apps one by one.

as for WC, I would have wanted them to criticize MS once in a while and calling spade a spade.

 

[Laura Knotek]

I have been saying this for a long time and you mentioned something similar. The only way MS will get the consumer market is by focusing on games. People buy games. In fact, a lot of PC users are only using windows for gaming. I can't tell you how many people mention they would use linux but they play games. And I mentioned they should come out with a mobile phone that is also a gaming device for Play Everywhere. It would gain a decent market share. Enough to draw attention. Gaming is huge. Apple knows this and having mario runner come out as timed exclusive on ios shows they know exactly what they are doing. Games are so powerful that even though this Mario game will come to android Apple believes having it as a timed exclusive will draw in more people.

The main issue there is how established Steam already is. The type of PC games I like and purchase from Steam don't have any mobile equivalents on a any platform anyway.

 

[EspHack]

Your point seems to make perfect sense (and makes MS look really hypocritical), but I'm not sure it holds up. A business customer who wants a W10M devices is not the person who will eventually end up using it. I recall a member posting that the whole idea of a "business user" is bogus, because every employee is ultimately also a consumer, and just because someone gets employed won't make them suddenly want to use W10M. That's true, but it misses the important fact that the business user we're talking about in this context typically has no say in what device they will use. The phone is purchased on the user's behalf and expected to use it for business purposes. The actual customer in this scenario is the corporation's IT department or the bean counters, who calculated that porting their existing Windows software to iOS and Android would be far more expensive than just purchasing their 600 employees a W10M device which has more commonalities with their server and desktop environments.

That's the type of corporation that we're talking about. A corporation who's staff isn't any more technically literate than the average Joe, and where IT decisions are made by a single entity on everyone's behalf, which is then deployed as a company standard. Obviously that doesn't apply to a tech company like MS where the marketing, payroll and bookkeeping departments are the only ones with a standardized IT setup, and where every second person needs a different setup for the task they are currently working on.

I'm certainly not saying you're completely wrong though. It does say a lot that MS employees aren't using W10M. Just like 99% of the population isn't using W10M. I just don't think MS actually fits their own target audience for W10M.

Indeed that's even more likely to be the case here, but we can also agree on my point being the conclusion reached by most common folks who see this situation, yours' requires quite a bit more knowledge than what those "corporation who's staff isn't any more technical literate than the average Joe" would likely have

but even then, I wonder why the response wasn't a definite YES by most employees there, I mean, its perfectly fine that they use competing devices more just for the sake of being up to stuff with the real world and making sure their products work with what people actually use, and hey, they have lives outside microsoft's hq, but to not have and use, at least on occasion, a current w10m device AT ALL is the real issue here, there's just no reason for all of them not having a company provided lumia, testing and making sure w10m devices work with microsoft's products isn't equally important as competing devices? yea sure marketshare says it shouldn't be, but this is the company that wants to change that, isn't it?

 

[KimRM]

I think it's getting more and more clear that Microsoft really doesn't have a plan beyond the PC OS. They say they have, and HoloLens is a cool inovation, but it won't, if ever have any impact on the tech world, consumers or business users for many years. We will still use the small devices/phones for most of our doings, probably even more and more. We will most likely keep doing more heavy work on bigger screens, but both Google and Apple will most certainly have solutions for this in the next couple of years for their mobile OS's. So it doesn't matter that Windows 10 Mobile has Continuum.

 

[Krystianpants]

The main issue there is how established Steam already is. The type of PC games I like and purchase from Steam don't have any mobile equivalents on a any platform anyway.

Yes and when I say Play Everywhere titles, I mean actual Triple A xbox/steam titles. They just need to take care of the tech part which they have the R&D to do and then they have to take care of the development part as well. Mobile specific games would naturally follow. It's just they would have to partner with nvidia or AMD. They would likely need a dual chip solution even take advantage of their recent work with FPGAs or ASICs for emulating some parts. I think that a bit of thickness could be forgiven. They would also need a good gamepad solution which of course could be a separate case. Again, that's MS's job to figure it out and pour money into it. Likely wouldn't happen overnight unless they are already thinking of something like this. Nintendo seems to be quiet about their next console, but a lot of it seems to be pointing to a portable continuum like console solution. Heck it could be a phone too given their recent foray into mobile gaming.

MS must know that gaming is huge. This is probably why they are trying to sell UWP with it. What did they show off when demonstrating hololens? A game! Consumers love games.

 

[KimRM]

Yes and when I say Play Everywhere titles, I mean actual Triple A xbox/steam titles. .

But people will still not buy it. Most people don't care about AAA titles. The main reason gaming got to be a thing on mobile phones was that it was convenient and time consuming. The most popular games are the simplest games. The type of games where you don't have to think even. People want mobile devices that integrates and syncs with their life. Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to make this happen.

 

[a5cent]

But people will still not buy it. Most people don't care about AAA titles. The main reason gaming got to be a thing on mobile phones was that it was convenient and time consuming. The most popular games are the simplest games. The type of games where you don't have to think even. People wants mobile devices that integrates and syncs with their life. Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to make this happen.

It doesn't have to be something used by most people. It just has to be a legitimate business proposal, which it most definitely is, because successful AAA games make HUGE profits. Owning and controlling a good chunk of that market is infinitely better than owning no part of any market, which is where W10M and the UWP is now.

 

[sinime]

Well, if it's games that make the money... Maybe while MS is retrenching in business, they should be looking at making an XBox phone.

It's funny, but I rarely play phone games anymore... Not So much because there aren't any available, because there are several out there, but because WP7 spoiled me with having achievements on many of the games... I always went for XBL games and passed up the regular games.

Sent from mTalk

 

[KimRM]

It doesn't have to be something used by most people. It just has to be a legitimate business proposal, which it most definitely is, because successful AAA games make HUGE profits. Owning and controlling a good chunk of that market is infinitely better than owning no part of any market, which is where W10M and the UWP is now.

You're right. It's better than the current situation, but they would have to put a lot of resources on it to make that happen. I'm not sure they think it would be worth it, seeing how little they care about the consumer market.