[aprilcy]

Someday I suddenly had this thought. Firstly I need an assumption that they are aware of those badly wanted functions: separate volume control/screen lock/etc. Though I can't prove they know, it's highly likely they do.

So next question is: are those hard to solve? I think the answer is no, at least under msft's technology power and funds. Surface RT does have separate volume control/screen rotation lock which is an evidence.

Then if they know the problems and have the solution, why didn't they do that while so many wp8 users sounded out so loudly and so frequently? It's not a secret that msft is building a surface phone. However I feel there is a secret agenda to use (the desperated) Nokia to promote the WP platform but never let it be as Samsung to android.

If anyone has a better reasoning, please share. Oh, there is another assumption just in case someone wants to use: MSFT is not a stupid/lazy/careless company.

[miodrage]

If u go back to the earlier days of iPhone, even iPhone4 on iOS4, u will see that it was a common thing - so if u volume down the music, or the game, u do the same to ur ringer...

[rockstarzzz]

The theory is Microsoft is aware of market saturation and economics and they have have been in this game for longer than I've lived on this planet.

The reason functionality is not introduced is because user base is small in a highly saturated market. By launching a "perfect" phone, Microsoft will still fail to win that 90% of saturated market. However, in tablets and hybrid PCs/laptops, Microsoft knows it has an upper hand. That is one market after enterprises that Microsoft can dominate so strongly that it can be a threatening monopoly. Thus, adding more money, resources on the line where opportunity costs are extremely low, makes sense.

ROI is small on WP and there is no point in rushing resources there. Its a marathon solely dependent on the success of Windows 8 - on PCs and hybrids.

[a5cent]

ROI is small on WP and there is no point in rushing resources there.

Actually, ROI is non existent. Developing WP is like shoveling money into your fireplace, by the hundreds of millions each month. It earns them nothing.

Otherwise I completely agree. There is no conspiracy theory or secret agenda. MS just doesn't have unlimited funds to throw at WP. The WP team must make due with the funds they have and prioritize feature requests.

Finally, WP8 wasn't at all about feature requests! It was only about compatibility with new hardware, the new kernel, porting existing OS apps to WP8 (mail, messenger, calendar, etc)and ensuring that most WP7 marketplace apps continue to run on WP8, despite the later being completely different under the hood. Those four issues alone are huge! They involve a lot more work than traditionally goes into an update. They just aren't things end users can easily appreciate. There is no plan to withhold features.

[rockstarzzz]

Actually, ROI is non existent. Developing WP is like shoveling money into your fireplace, by the hundreds of millions each month. It earns them nothing.

Otherwise I completely agree. There is no conspiracy theory or secret agenda. MS just doesn't have unlimited funds to throw at WP. The WP team must make due with the funds they have and prioritize feature requests.

Finally, WP8 wasn't at all about feature requests! It was only about compatibility with new hardware, the new kernel, porting existing OS apps to WP8 (mail, messenger, calendar, etc)and ensuring that most WP7 marketplace apps continue to run on WP8, despite the later being completely different under the hood. Those four issues alone are huge! They involve a lot more work than traditionally goes into an update. They just aren't things end users can easily appreciate. There is no plan to withhold features.

In sheer economic terms, ROI does exist. For example, I did throw away 100 by updating 4 laptops at home to Windows 8 because we all have tiles on our phones and we loved the idea of making it a streamlined ecosystem. Many of us (3%) user base people, are updating to Windows 8 because we love the tiles. So may be directly other than buying Windows Phone 8 after using Windows Phone 7, we don't contribute much. But indirectly we do help in ROI to Microsoft by other products. They've also managed to get 810 for Zune pass/Xbox pass from my household over last 3 years.

[a5cent]

^ ok, if you want to consider cross over affects that may be true, but that is rather unusual and not even Microsoft is able to quantify those affects..

[anon(5335899)]

Something to consider in all this would be that the consumer market in general is a playground for MSFT. It's not where they make their money..

[rockstarzzz]

^ ok, if you want to consider cross over affects that may be true, but that is rather unusual and not even Microsoft is able to quantify those affects..

Read somewhere, that Microsoft makes more money from Android sales and now that Nokia patent portfolio is shared, even a bit from iPhone sales, compared to WP sales. So I can't see them rushing WP development even though they can't quantify cross over effect, they are sort of winning at WP or smartphone arena.

[johninsj]

Someday I suddenly had this thought. Firstly I need an assumption that they are aware of those badly wanted functions: separate volume control/screen lock/etc. Though I can't prove they know, it's highly likely they do.

So next question is: are those hard to solve? I think the answer is no, at least under msft's technology power and funds. Surface RT does have separate volume control/screen rotation lock which is an evidence.

Then if they know the problems and have the solution, why didn't they do that while so many wp8 users sounded out so loudly and so frequently? It's not a secret that msft is building a surface phone. However I feel there is a secret agenda to use (the desperated) Nokia to promote the WP platform but never let it be as Samsung to android.

If anyone has a better reasoning, please share. Oh, there is another assumption just in case someone wants to use: MSFT is not a stupid/lazy/careless company.

You've never done
Commercial Products
Software
or
Service

development, have you?

Every company that makes any product that competes with other products has
A roadmap of when new features will be added
A list of compete features where they are ahead, at parity, or behind the competition
A list of known deficiencies (ie, bugs).
A list (usually ranked) of customer feature requests.

Product managers balance their budgets for putting resources into all four of those. The weighting of the choices varies at any given time - when feature parity is a goal, more effort goes into adding features that are missing. When differentiation is the goal, adding new unique features is a priority. When bugs become a problem, more effort goes to bugfix.

The "reasoning" is business 101. The platform has a small market share, and not much feature parity - there is a heavy focus on differentiation. Not to mention that the whole platform had to be moved three times (WinMo -> WP 7x -> WP8) which soaks up a lot of effort.

[Alex Rodriguez Jr.]

Something to consider in all this would be that the consumer market in general is a playground for MSFT. It's not where they make their money..

Consumer market opens the doors for Office & Bing integration in corporations & business though.

[aprilcy]

I agree the theory said by you guys that limited sources must go the most important fileds. But my concern is how much efforts really need to solve those problems. Given we already have certain features in win8/rt, how much extra resource do they need to put in for transferring to WP? To use the limited resources theory, let us assume a simplified ratio (ranking factor=importance/resources needed) to determine the order of problem to solve.

Let's see my case. Is screen lock/volume/notification centre important? Yes. Someone may argue purely function wise they are basic not critical. I agree. But the smartphone market is not in its early stage. WP's success highly depends on attract users from ios/android. No matter how you see those features useless, they have become standard. And most people got used to these features. Therefore the image of WP will be "below standard" for some one and I don't think this helps. Differentiation is cool but standards are really hard to beat. If there is an other "Word"-like application that has cool feature of speech-to-words but lacks of font/table features, will you choose it?

I don't want to argue with limited resources theory but just can't get why those basic features' importance/resources needed are so low internally in MSFT.

[Abdul Rahman Noor]

Economics and ROI aside, holding up features for future products is the oldest trick in the book.
When the first iPad came out, do you think Steve Jobs wasn't aware it would've been more awesome with a camera?

If MS fixed every problem they could with WP8, what new features would they put in WP9 (or Blue or whatever)?

[conanheath]

Well, MS needs to add a few more zeros to their wp8 budget. Like 0000000000 this many. And crack the whip on their timeline. They need a new strategy for mobile period.

[WanderingTraveler]

If Vista exists, then the answer to your question is yes.

However, Microsoft actually got around to fixing all the bugs in Vista.
I'd say WP8 = Vista in this regard, since both featured kernel overhauls.

Oh, and should this be in General Microsoft News and Discussion?

[a5cent]

Well, MS needs to add a few more zeros to their wp8 budget. Like 0000000000 this many. And crack the whip on their timeline. They need a new strategy for mobile period.

Completely disagree. The strategy is sound, they just need to execute faster.

[T Moore]

Quite a few feature requests on the MS windows phone site.

Feature Suggestions: Hot (23580 ideas)

[Dave Blake]

As long as we are speculating with no real facts let me add a couple I have been pondering.

First maybe there is just no secure way to add some features. At least Microsoft hasn't figured out a way yet. Using sandboxing of data limits what the OS can do and how some things like volume control can be affected by apps. Add 5 apps to volume control with each having their own data file would eat up space in the memory quickly and could affect how the OS runs. I would think.

Second it could be that Microsoft is using WP8/9 as a stop gap in anticipation for Windows RT or some variant of that OS to become the tablet and phone OS of the future. That is when technology catches up with that OS. This might be causing Microsoft to dedicate lass of their resources to the WP8 OS.

Third maybe this was the plan all along. Release the OS WP8 then have a consistent train of OS improvements roll out over time. Each increasing market share and interest in the OS. Maybe just maybe Microsoft new that even if they built a super phone OS and put it out day one it would fail because people are so entrenched in the ecosystem of their current devices. Maybe leaving holes in the OS for developers to fill will increase developer interest. As entrust grows Microsoft can spend more of their efforts on the things developers aren't interested in fixing or didn't fix. I am also thinking that all this has to be done while keeping the OS safe and fluid. At this point I think we are doing Ok for an OS that is less than 6 months old and built for the future.

As long as we are speculation.

[denzilla]

Because they feel the need to hold onto them for months, so they can roll them all together, give it some lame codename and throw a stupid launch party. This way, the dev team feels a greater sense of accomplishment.

Sarcasm = off

[rimlover]

The theory is Microsoft is aware of market saturation and economics and they have have been in this game for longer than I've lived on this planet.

The reason functionality is not introduced is because user base is small in a highly saturated market. By launching a "perfect" phone, Microsoft will still fail to win that 90% of saturated market. However, in tablets and hybrid PCs/laptops, Microsoft knows it has an upper hand. That is one market after enterprises that Microsoft can dominate so strongly that it can be a threatening monopoly. Thus, adding more money, resources on the line where opportunity costs are extremely low, makes sense.

ROI is small on WP and there is no point in rushing resources there. Its a marathon solely dependent on the success of Windows 8 - on PCs and hybrids.

wo....just wow. where to start? MS: 'lets not lunch a perfect phone because you know we're so ahead of the curve with all the market share we have'. do you think thats what they're thinking? of course they're trying to lunch a 'perfect' phone because they need the market share, BADLY.

[rimlover]

If u go back to the earlier days of iPhone, even iPhone4 on iOS4, u will see that it was a common thing - so if u volume down the music, or the game, u do the same to ur ringer...

that maybe true but when a phone is lunched it's compared to what the current OSes are out there. I cant compare WP 8 to iOS 4 that was like 2 years old that doesn't make sense. compare current to current.

[conanheath]

Completely disagree. The strategy is sound, they just need to execute faster.

Their strategy is slow, slower and slowest. How is that a good strategy?

[johninsj]

that maybe true but when a phone is lunched it's compared to what the current OSes are out there. I cant compare WP 8 to iOS 4 that was like 2 years old that doesn't make sense. compare current to current.

Just want to point out the early days of the iPhone, the one that came out without 3G in 2007, there was no app store. No cut and paste. No SDK. No developers. It took a year to get an SDK and um nearly two years and two full OS revs to get cut and paste into iOS

iOS Version History: A Visual Timeline | Visual.ly

Let's not forget that just because you're behind doesn't mean you can code awesome faster.

[lipper2000]

You've never done
Commercial Products
Software
or
Service

development, have you?

Every company that makes any product that competes with other products has
A roadmap of when new features will be added
A list of compete features where they are ahead, at parity, or behind the competition
A list of known deficiencies (ie, bugs).
A list (usually ranked) of customer feature requests.

Product managers balance their budgets for putting resources into all four of those. The weighting of the choices varies at any given time - when feature parity is a goal, more effort goes into adding features that are missing. When differentiation is the goal, adding new unique features is a priority. When bugs become a problem, more effort goes to bugfix.

The "reasoning" is business 101. The platform has a small market share, and not much feature parity - there is a heavy focus on differentiation. Not to mention that the whole platform had to be moved three times (WinMo -> WP 7x -> WP8) which soaks up a lot of effort.

+1
Great post. I think most people who complain about the lack of this or that and why can't MS fix this quickly don't work in any environment that sells products...no offense to anyone but it's quite obvious.
On top of that, MS is a massive organization where I'm sure to get the smallest thing accomplished they have to have multiple meetings to see if it fits in with the current pipeline and if it will delay existing roadmaps....Google doesn't fix things that quickly either....MS is just behind as they started later and then they rebooted once again with WP8.

On top of that, it seems MS is melding WP8, Windows 8, Xbox, etc... all into the same pot....making some changes right now might not make sense if these are going to be addressed anyway in a future update as a result of windows blue...

Who knows....
Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that MS is behind in some areas of the WP8 OS...certainly the whole experience is better than the competitors for me but I do agree that some things need to be fixed (volume control for example...).

[lipper2000]

Their strategy is slow, slower and slowest. How is that a good strategy?

They released a completely new kernel in an insanely quick period of time...
I don't think they are slow at all in the big picture but many of you are speaking about tiny feature lists which they do take too long to implement.

[rimlover]

Just want to point out the early days of the iPhone, the one that came out without 3G in 2007, there was no app store. No cut and paste. No SDK. No developers. It took a year to get an SDK and um nearly two years and two full OS revs to get cut and paste into iOS

iOS Version History: A Visual Timeline | Visual.ly

Let's not forget that just because you're behind doesn't mean you can code awesome faster.

i'm confused as to where you're going with the point.