The Silent Comeback Windows Phone Made In 2014

[TLRtheory]

READ ARTICLE: The Silent Comeback Windows Phone Made In 2014

The sensationalist in us loves to doom and gloom everything, but all things considered we're in a significantly better state.

 

[SammyD97]

Great read. Nobody can really say 2014 was a bad year for Windows Phone.

 

[N_LaRUE]

No offence but that article seems a bit too optimistic. I live in a country where there is supposedly +10% take up of WP and I rarely see one.

Those apps they talk about have rarely seen updates, let's not even discuss Instagram or the Icon issues...

In 2014 there was a drop in WP worldwide market share. Some areas saw growth, mostly developing markets.

There's still many prime apps missing on WP with only 3rd party equivalents (nothing against 3rd party but it's an image thing) and WP is still a not considered by many developers due to the ROI. Let's not talk about the banking apps shall we?

Not to take the shine off but I don't see how there was a comeback. What comeback exactly are we talking about?

We can hope W10 will change perception and maybe it will but I wouldn't by any stretch call 2014 a stellar year for WP.

 

[TLRtheory]

Let's not talk about the banking apps shall we?

You mean the whole two banking apps we lost from Chase and BoA? Not even the extreme exaggerators were able to blow that up into anything more than a 12 page name calling thread that got closed because it wasn't big enough news to keep people on topic.

I myself was bummed that there was no US Bank app... then that stopped being a problem because we got Mint - which eliminated the need for many bank apps and brought functions that most bank apps simply don't have. Managing my investments, property, expenses, transactions, credit and all the banks i use within one well-designed app simply proved to be more useful... and just like that the need for a US Bank app is gone.

I am glad you brought up sales though, because the article neglects to mention the jump in sales that even sparked good mention with Apple biased sites like The Verge (http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/23/7030831/microsoft-q1-2015-financial-earnings).

 

[N_LaRUE]

You mean the whole two banking apps we lost from Chase and BoA? Not even the extreme exaggerators were able to blow that up into anything more than a 12 page name calling thread that got closed because it wasn't big enough news to keep people on topic.

I myself was bummed that there was no US Bank app... then that stopped being a problem because we got Mint - which eliminated the need for many bank apps and brought functions that most bank apps simply don't have. Managing my investments, property, expenses, transactions, credit and all the banks i use within one well-designed app simply proved to be more useful... and just like that the need for a US Bank app is gone.

I am glad you brought up sales though, because the article neglects to mention the jump in sales that even sparked good mention with Apple biased sites like The Verge (Microsoft's Q1 2015: Surface growing strongly and Lumia sales up | The Verge).

I'm still missing my banking app on WP and I don't like using alternatives. I guess Mint would be great if I had all that stuff you have or needed that level of information or if it worked in the UK...

As for increases in sales, that's all great, easy to increase in sales when your so low. 9.4 million Lumia's isn't that spectacular and even with the increase in sales they still lost market share. Interesting isn't it?

 

[tiziano27]

I'm still missing my banking app on WP and I don't like using alternatives. I guess Mint would be great if I had all that stuff you have or needed that level of information or if it worked in the UK...

As for increases in sales, that's all great, easy to increase in sales when your so low. 9.4 million Lumia's isn't that spectacular and even with the increase in sales they still lost market share. Interesting isn't it?

The app gap is increasing for me as small companies, or big companies that aren't focused in tech, are publishing apps. It's unlikely they're going to support WP with such a low market share and the social stratification of the user base.

According to the numbers of Strategy Analytics, WP grew less than the smartphone market both sequentially and YoY. I would call the situation precarious. Although, they're still alive for a last chance with Windows 10.

 

[TLRtheory]

I'm still missing my banking app on WP and I don't like using alternatives.

...even with the increase in sales they still lost market share. Interesting isn't it?

Yes, but we have to judge this from much more than an individualized basis. You like to reference the tiny handful of banks that dropped support for WP and downplay Mint as a third party.

While these apps are no longer published, the app's page is still on the Store where we can see that (in the case of Bank of America) nothing of value was lost... Mint; on the other hand, isn't just some alternative - it's by Intuit - the same people behind software such as TurboTax and QuickBooks which earns them a name that's trustworthy enough such that most any bank is willing to be integrated into their aggregate services for a service that actually can provide features more useful than the bank apps we have.

While there's no US Bank app, I also use Amex so I took a break from Mint to check out the *official* AMEX app... and it was a cheap, lazy web wrapper that doesn't even work as well as some other web wrappers have, nor does it offer me the functions I get through Mint or the ability to pay balances in Prism. Would you really want to take a cheap web wrapper just to say it's *official* over a trusted, high-rated service that consistently ranks higher than the dedicated bank apps?

Additionally, the marketshare is something that can be shifted by the improvement of others - that's not actually taking away from the money that goes into OEMs/developers' pockets. If WP were to have dropped from it's 2013 figure of 8.8mil to 7.4mil, that would be a real world a negative impact, but it hasn't - it's gone up 5.6%.

If you're really having that much trouble seeing where the "comeback" is, I suggest going to sources that don't try blowing a two-app loss out of proportion to seem as if it were a 500 app loss, because that's essentially what's happening every time someone tries to use the loss of two bank apps to spell doom when so many factors are improved to an undeniable extent. Not that they're perfect by any means because I can (and I plan to) pick apart what's wrong with the platform. That's all the article's there to prove - that things have improved.

 

[N_LaRUE]

Sorry didn't realise it was your article.

I'm not saying there weren't any positives about 2014 what I'm saying I don't get your 'comeback' statement. A comeback is where someone starts to succeed. WP marketshare dropped to 3% it went up in a couple of places and crashed in others. How is that a comeback? What makes it a comeback? Selling 9.4 million handsets is not a comeback.

Getting apps and games that they couldn't be bothered being released during peak interest is not a comeback. Not having prime apps updated and basically ignored is not a comeback. Having apps pulled is not a comeback.

Your definition of a comeback and mine are at odds and you still haven't succeeded in explaining it to me and your article doesn't explain it either. It's a fan article.

That was my initial point.

 

[TLRtheory]

Getting apps and games that they couldn't be bothered being released during peak interest is not a comeback. Not having prime apps updated and basically ignored is not a comeback. Having apps pulled is not a comeback.

All the same, having an increase year-over-year in sales does indicate success, and while you may have failed to realize it progression over time has allowed us to see a number of apps during the peak of their interest. This just recently happened with Trivia Crack and that's very far from the first occurrence.

Fan articles begin and have an extent solely revolving around opinions... increase in sold units having a bigger impact on future development than marketshare isn't something that's just my opinion, nor is the improvement in public presence, or app growth there's very little of this content that I can even opinionate. My opinion didn't make things look better, improved firmware, more apps and more sales did. This is no more than a compilation of things that happened since news outlets collectively took a look at the platform.

The thing you should take from this is... when you get to be too sensationally inclined and start trying to exaggerate small losses into doom situations, you have major lapses in logic and fail to pay attention to key things that are right in front of you.