I think I now understand why Microsoft puts efforts to build better apps for iOS and Android

[makarand14]

It started with the news that my friend was to leave for New York for a couple of weeks. It was a training assignment that his company laid upon him. After the initial excitement period, we fell upon discussing communication back home in India. Getting a prepaid number once liver there was the best one we found (T-mobile) and he did exactly that.

Soon he started calling back home to his wife, parents. One thing he noticed was that although cheap, the ISD calling was still expensive. He immediately purchased some credit on Google Voice (being a Nexus 4 user) and tried calling through Google Voice VOIP. Strangely, the calls still connected through his cellular network instead of VOIP. He was frustrated that Google Voice does not work as advertised. He tried to find Support over Phone but there isn't any, just the help over at their website. He called me up and mentioned his dilemma. First thing that came to my mind "Skype" He downloaded Skype and loaded the $5 credit and made calls to India and it worked on the first try.

I think I made him take the first step towards Microsoft's World.

PS: he also found errors on Google Maps and knowing the perfect navigation as it is on my Lumia 720, is planning to get a basic WP8 device (520, 630) just for navigation

 

[krox1105]

We are the windows phone community. Converting people to our beloved platform, one at a time

 

[taymur]

He better not switch to windows phone quickly as our Skype isn't ready yet.

 

[Georgi Ivanov3]

Microsoft earns tons of money on patents and licenses from Google. Therefore, if Android is growing = MS is growing. I believe 1 or 2 years ago, that was the main reason for MS not to develop a competitive Mobile OS, due to the above fact.. If they really try to compete with Android, they would convert more Android users than Apple ones. Thus, of the whole story, Apple is the one who would get bigger market share.. I believe that is not what MS and Google want.. so by keeping WP good enough, but not great, Windows is protecting the profits they get from Google.. The way I see things is that WP 8.1 and WP 9 would never try to compete Android, but help it develop further..

 

[makarand14]

In fact, I bought a BlackBerry Q5 as my primary device now. Android runtime 4.2 and I'm loving it

 

[Zuka_WPC]

I can't stand blackberry. Ew.

 

[akthelonelyman]

Well I guess we knowing the truth should be shifting platforms as we know Skype and microsoft apps are better in android.lol.
See its ok to develop great apps for rival platforms to get more customers.google do that with ios.but first they make their android apps atleast equal to ios counterparts not inferior.
If microsoft were making excellent Skype app for android after giving us wp users a top notch one?ok cool...but here in real world wp users are left with an inferior app while others have a top notch app