So... does this "paradigm shift" mean Microsoft is abandoning us?

TLRtheory

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If you're clicking on this, you probably have already read the article that spawned it and had your faith in WP shaken. Supporting WP has always been a fun game for me. Waiting for that troll to sensationalize one bank app we lost by pointing out the 20 new bank apps... watching them and their troll buddies go silent when the app returns as a much better UWP... pointing out that we do still get hundreds of new apps every day, and demonstrating how far the platform's come since the 2012 figure of "only 120,00 apps" that so many still pretend is where the platform is today. It's been good, easy fun.

There was a long period of being an Android diehard after my TyTn II with WM6.5, but then I got the Samsung Focus Flash and was shocked at how much I missed good battery life, smooth operation and stabiity (something I definitely wasn't getting out of my Nexus 5/LG G3 at the time)... then I was off the droid bandwagon and back on board for the (I'll try to remember this in order) Lumia 520, 1020, Icon, 1520, 820, 830, 635, Yezz Billy 4.7, 525, HTC 8S, 930, 950 and my current 950XL. Seeing the platform grow (albeit slowly) has been wonderful. Seeing us get an incredibly useful implementation of external storage, watching the UI evolve, watching it gain a sense of cross-platform usefulness far ahead of Google/Apple, getting NFC payment back, seeing Continuum's support growing far beyond just being useful for people who want Office... and yes, watching the app count grow by multiple hundreds of thousands over time.

As long as that slow trickle of consumer support would be there, and be a focus for Microsoft... I'd find good in it. Then the news of this "paradigm shift" happens. While I myself may be buying into hyperbole, it looks a hell of a lot like MSFT's pulling the plug on consumers, going straight for business customers... and it's not even appearing they're targeting new business customers, just existing ones (which is dumb for more reasons that I've even got time to explain).

So last week I did something I didn't want to do... and bought an iPhone 6S. Found any kind of IDE/software I needed for college/work and shelved my Surface Book for my MacBook Air too.

Figured it should be fine... iOS has more games anyway, so I can continue Achievement Junkie'ing through GameCenter as opposed to XBL and probably be better off... even got a 64GB so I could continue my crazy downloading habits. iOS10 update... and Apple pulls the plug on GameCenter... then it's immediately evident that the 6S camera at it's best doesn't come close to my 950XL on it's worst day... just took a week to get my SIM card back in my 950XL. Me and the MBA didn't work out either.

So I get to the meat and potatoes of this already too long post... is Microsoft truly giving up on their consumer market? ...at the closest they've ever been to having a massively appealing platform? Putting my sim back in the 950XL it all set on me how much I love the quick camera launch, the absolutely rad cameras themselves, the UI, the tight MSFT service integration, being able to dock my phone into my NexDock/Continuum Dock and write code with #Code or edit photos with Polarr, getting XBL achievements in games that count towards the same GS on my 360, X1, W10 and I don't even want to imagine the slow uphill battle changing direction.

It always felt like MSFT was on the tip on a paradigm shift... but it seemed like that paradigm shift should be moreso towards aggressively marketing the amazing things that can be done with continuum, their awesome cameras, their improved status in the app ecosystem, so on and so forth. It'd be silly to acquire LinkedIn without also pushing for businesses, but why leave consumers behind when there's obvious consumer appeal that our reluctant little community doesn't want to leave?
 
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libra89

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I think that they are giving up on consumers in the phone market. Consumers are always for services but not as much for phone. I kind of see them releasing and supporting enterprise but consumers are welcome to buy and use their products.

At the same time, I don't think they will stop supporting the phones that consumers have bought though.
 

ubizmo

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I think the answer is contained in the article. Microsoft is giving up on the smartphone market, with today's understanding of what smartphones are. They are working on the convergence paradigm, which they call "Continuum", in which handheld devices are nodes of a personal ecosystem. And apparently Google is heading in the same direction, trying to grow beyond just a mobile OS.
 

Joe920

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It always felt like MSFT was on the tip on a paradigm shift... but it seemed like that paradigm shift should be moreso towards aggressively marketing the amazing things that can be done with continuum, their awesome cameras, their improved status in the app ecosystem, so on and so forth.
Agreed, they have basically brought this up to the point where Win10 "just works" on PC and phone, and supporting the phone part (their own and those of partners) should now take less effort. I don't understand why they would send out such a negative message toward the consumer side of things.

Why not explain how well this works for business, while at the same time showing that you can buy cheap phones that run WP, a secure and well maintained platform with tons of apps, even if it's not quite as many as Android and iOS? Keep it around, educate why it's more secure, and keep selling phones like the Lumia 640 and 650.

What's wrong with that? Does it look too unfocused for shareholders? I don't get it.
 

tgp

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Why not explain how well this works for business, while at the same time showing that you can buy cheap phones that run WP, a secure and well maintained platform with tons of apps, even if it's not quite as many as Android and iOS? Keep it around, educate why it's more secure, and keep selling phones like the Lumia 640 and 650.

What's wrong with that? Does it look too unfocused for shareholders? I don't get it.

Your point is valid, but the line "tons of apps, even if it's not quite as many as Android and iOS?" is still a big killer. The chasm between WM's apps and iOS/Android's is potentially lethal.
 

Joe920

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Your point is valid, but the line "tons of apps, even if it's not quite as many as Android and iOS?" is still a big killer. The chasm between WM's apps and iOS/Android's is potentially lethal.
I agree, for many users, but not all users. I still don't see why they need to basically tell the customers "no, please don't try". They need users to keep developers interested, why (almost) actively tell the users to stay away?

Producing a million or two low-cost decent quality WP phones annually shouldn't break the bank for them, right? My question is still what the thinking is. Do they not like being perceived as trying and then not selling in 'Apple numbers'? Are they losing tons of money on low-end Lumias? (certainly not more than killing Nokia cost them..) Is maintaining WP10 for many different models turning out to be a major resource drain?

Basically the short story is "WP is not doing well, so they stop pushing it". What I'm curious about is "How does MS decide whether it's worth it to keep supplying some Lumia models".
 

Joe920

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True, but it seems to matter to enough users to be the difference between viability and non-viability.
That still doesn't answer my question, but frankly I think none of us have the answer for this. Where does MS draw the line, and what makes up that line. Money only? Shareholders? Something else?
 

BobiBolivia

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I think it goes both ways - developers don't want to develop applications for minor platform, and in return, users are not convinced to even try it.
See "Snapchat" - I bet half of user base would say "but W10M does not have this app, so I don't want this phone" - and this is honestly quite stupid, but only logical explanation. Same goes for any other applications.
Banking applications are different story - I think we can blame banks, that they don't want to spend money on minor platform, while they are earning billions of $$$ monthly - and in case of W10M, they don't even have to develop from scratch - they can just port it via MS tools.
As for any other concerns - W10M is just not mature enough yet. I think it will be mature the moment it has fluidity and stability of WP 8.1 in terms of OS and its basic apps.

Business user base will have different opinion - they don't need fancy apps, targeted mostly for teenager users, they need stable systems without quirks, they want support for few corporate stuff, or maybe they are just enthusiasts, who want stable system, use few banking applications, and maybe order food - and maybe they will only need a phone, once Continuum is mature enough for such usage. That's where I personally belong.

For now I would suggest they work their ***es of on stability of W10M - there were times when I easily recommended budget WP8.1 phone, because it was better alternative for "mature users", who asked me on opinion - but now I don't know, because Apple is expensive toy, and Android is a guess-game in terms of further support of system (see Nougat on SD800/801, or any other variation of this problem).
 
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tgp

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As long as market share of systems is driven by laziness of developers,

This has been said here since I can remember. Are developers lazy? Should they be required to do things on WM that evidently they are not required to do on the other platforms? Or, they do on the other platforms but it is worth their while? Nah, if it would pencil for the developers, it would be done. They are not charities; they are a business and need to put food on the table.

For now I would suggest they work their ***es of on stability of W10M

Ah, I think we've figured something out. Why aren't the developers all over WM? If we're going to accuse someone of being "lazy", let's look elsewhere besides the developers. :eek:rly:
 

BobiBolivia

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This has been said here since I can remember. Are developers lazy? Should they be required to do things on WM that evidently they are not required to do on the other platforms? Or, they do on the other platforms but it is worth their while? Nah, if it would pencil for the developers, it would be done. They are not charities; they are a business and need to put food on the table.



Ah, I think we've figured something out. Why aren't the developers all over WM? If we're going to accuse someone of being "lazy", let's look elsewhere besides the developers. :eek:rly:

You are right. I will remove this completely, but for my own understanding - what is that different in developing on WM apart from iOS and Android ?
I was under impression that with all those porting tools, developers would jump like crazy on WM :straight:
 

tgp

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what is that different in developing on WM apart from iOS and Android ?

I was under impression that with all those porting tools, developers would jump like crazy on WM

Judging by the hype, a person would think so. Write once, deploy everywhere. I'm not a developer, but I do know enough about it to know that it doesn't work that way. What we read about the porting tools would give the impression that it is as simple as clicking checkboxes.

What about updates? Different OS's will reveal different bugs. What about scaling for all the different screen sizes? What about Microsoft services vs Google's services vs Apple's services for things like maps and cloud storage? All this (and a lot more I'm sure!) must be taken into consideration. With WM's market share so small, even a little bit of extra effort makes the viability questionable.
 

Chintan Gohel

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I haven't really read the article, will do later at my own time. By the way, this is the article: Microsoft is betting on 'paradigm shift' for Windows 10 Mobile to be competitive | Windows Central

There are a few issues

Why businesses and not ordinary consumers?

Consumers can be motivated or demotivated easily by friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances. Their purchasing decision can be very finicky in the developed world while in the developing world they are more loyal but take longer in making decisions on which platform to go with. In either case, the platform has to be attractive for people to buy into it. It looked promising 2-3 years ago but things stagnated. Consumers have a choice to choose any platform and because that choice is easy to make, sales can vary too widely.

Businesses on the other hand are more rigid, more established, have more in common. Units sold are not one or two but dozens, even hundreds or thousands. Making sales of this magnitude in one go has benefits. Advertising costs are lower (pitch the mobile to one CEO rather than 1000 random people on the street), tech support costs are lower, apps can be customised more easily, there's less clamour for popular social apps since the phones are meant to be for business



Apps situation

This has been deliberated again and again. I feel I have very little to contribute here but let me try nevertheless. App numbers are lower on the W10M platform and in some cases of lower quality.
I was under impression that with all those porting tools, developers would jump like crazy on WM

The problem is developers don't see the need to jump like crazy, regardless of how easy it is to port the app. Porting the app is not the same as developing it from scratch. A prime example is facebook app which has a lot of issues, mainly because it's a port from iOS. It doesn't work ideally since it has a lot of dead or unusable code in it.

A developer that has 50 million users on the 2 big mobile platforms will not see the need to port the app to W10M where they may only get half a million users more. It won't make sense to them. Or for the developer that has 10000 downloads and then puts in the effort to develop an app for a 100 W10 mobile users

They may feel interested in the UWP if they can see a way of making the app work on pc/tablet and mobile. A good example is fresh paint which works well on both pc and mobile



MS strategy

Businesses have more money than ordinary consumers. Selling half a million high end phones to a large organisation in one go can make a lot more money than selling the same half million devices around the world. Distribution costs are lower, support costs are lower, manufacturing costs are lower, customising costs are lower etc
 

aximtreo

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True, but it seems to matter to enough users to be the difference between viability and non-viability.

The perception of viability to me is the potential of success. If you say you are bad then you are bad. If you give the perception of being good then more people will give it a go to see.

But, some of us believe that Microsoft suffers from the terminal Ostrich syndrome.
 

BobiBolivia

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Can we expect that MS at least will not restrict consumers from buying those "for-business" units ?
I would be more than happy to pay a little more for rigid system.
 

techiez

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You are right. I will remove this completely, but for my own understanding - what is that different in developing on WM apart from iOS and Android ?
I was under impression that with all those porting tools, developers would jump like crazy on WM :straight:

With all those porting tools, MS didnt even bring its own apps to W10M for a long time, Delve and Sway were on IOS since ages and were brought to W10m a couple of weeks back I believe(or not?)

so if MS doesnt bring its apps to W10M, do you think developers believe MS marketing talk that its very easy to port apps etc?

Just look at MS apps on W10M/Wp8.1, on one hand we talk about how beautiful and elegant the live tiles look, yet live tiles of MS apps look ugly because they havent enables tranparent tiles. why should developers consider W10M if MS treats its own OS as a dog of a slave of a 2nd class citizen.
 

sinime

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Your point is valid, but the line "tons of apps, even if it's not quite as many as Android and iOS?" is still a big killer. The chasm between WM's apps and iOS/Android's is potentially lethal.

But at the end of the day, what apps does a person use? I found myself only using about 4 apps (7+ month stint on iOS and 3 weeks with Android) email, web, twitter, & FB... I'd download a "must have" app on iOS, open it once, think "that's nice this is available to me now!", then never open it again.

I was ecstatic when Bethesda released the PIP Boy app on WP... It's great that I have it and I love them for not forgetting WP, but I never use it.
 

kaktus1389

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I think we are going in circles discussing this very topic again and again on these forums.

No, I do not think they are going to abandon us because why would they develop Red Stone 2 otherwise? Because they have too much time, money and other kinds of resources? I do no think so.

Yes, market share is shrinking, but does this really matter so much? People who like Windows 10 Mobile will stay, people who don't will go. Maybe very few Android and iOS users could come over every little while, but until MS doesn't push developers with all the power they've got as they are I believe the largest software company in the world, there won't be many new people coming.

P.S.: I would trust HP and Alcatel that they know what they're doing as I do not think they would make those phones just to throw some money through the window...
 

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