Was the death of RT the precursor to mobile going into a spiral?

[TechFreak1]

Here is a question for a you all, one that floated through the ambassador chat and I thought would make for an interesting debate (aware it may result in some heated opinions as after all some of people get really passionate about a platform :grin.

So the question is - "Was the death of RT the precursor to mobile going into a spiral?"

What are your thoughts?

 

[Laura Knotek]

I don't think so. IMO, the reason mobile went into a spiral is because UWP and Store apps got ignored by desktop users. Microsoft hoped the UWP would convince devs to create apps for both desktop and mobile. However, desktop users didn't care about Store apps, and mobile lacked the necessary market share for devs to make money on their apps.

 

[Guytronic]

Good question!

I guess RT was a failure out of the box for Microsoft.
For me shortly after disposing of my RT I kind of thought MS moved misdirected focus over to mobile and started hobbling it with improvements that many were clamoring for.

I guess the RT was mostly a failure because it was a halfway product dependent on apps.
So are phones running WM in the same boat?

 

[libra89]

This is a great question!

I'm going to cop out and say that it was neither. RT was doomed to fail for the lack of apps, even though the idea was nice. On mobile, for a while, it was acceptably niche, kind of in the way how BB was/is.

 

[jmshub]

As Laura said, if Windows RT had succeeded, that would have created a more vibrant app store for Windows that would have buoyed WinRT and Windows Phone as a whole.

But I think Windows RT was a flawed plan from the beginning, and didn't really have a chance to succeed, where Windows Phone was a good OS that just unfortunately didn't catch on in the marketplace.

 

[T Moore]

Two months prior to the release of the RT, Engadget came out with a story based on an anonymous source that said the release price of the RT would be $199. https://www.engadget.com/2012/08/14/microsoft-surface-199/
This was repeated throughout all the tech sites and this was left to ferment for a while.
This was what users grew to expected and when the release price of $499 was announced the backlash started and the RT never recovered.
There probably been more users and developers may have worked on more apps, we will never know.

 

[PerfectReign]

Here's a great reason also. The FUD spread by Industry bloggers always shows the "death" of Windows Mobile. (Odd since the FUD used to be Ballmer talking about Linux.)

So, today I get an article that Facebook Messenger will "stop working" on 3/4 of Windows phones. In reality, Microsoft is upgrading the version and deprecating the existing version.

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquire...rking-on-76-per-cent-of-windows-phone-devices

Sheesh!

Sent from mTalk

 

[sd4f]

So, today I get an article that Facebook Messenger will "stop working" on 3/4 of Windows phones. In reality, Microsoft is upgrading the version and deprecating the existing version.

But it's true. I got an email that FB messenger will stop working as the WP8.1 app is going out of support at the end of the month. The statistic of 3/4 is accurate because that's the proportion of WP8.1 devices still out there of. Only about 1/4 of windows phones are on W10M.

With that, I now really need a new phone.