I've been a Windows Phone advocate for a long while (Not WP7 but right when the Lumia 1020 was released) and all the news I've read lately I just feel they should just give up. They are doing with Windows 10 Mobile the same as the always to with gaming.
We are going to be better! NOT!
Windows on Mobile is dead and they should just give up.
They should stick to what they're good at. Unfortunately with the telemetry-ridden Windows 10, I don't even think they're good at making OSes, either.
But now that I think of it, they're pretty good at disappointing long-time customers, so I think they _are_ sticking to what they're good at, after all.
Well I'm just upgrading an Ubuntu Server at work from LTS to LTS and I can say it's a painful experience and nothing close to as simple as it is made out to be. For example any "custom" stuff you have to recompile manually.
Then the fact that the server is behind a proxy and not all apps don't stick to a standard so you have to configure each of them (one of them being apt itself) on initial setup.
It's true. The only Microsoft Cloud product I recommend to clients is hosted Exchange. It falls under the Office365 umbrella but plan "Exchange Online Plan 1" for $4/month gives each user 50GB, full ActiveSync, spam protection, the domain is blacklist protected, and the full collaborative suite of Outlook (Calendar sharing, etc)
Considering Google charges $2 more per year ($50 instead of $48) for Gmail "Business" which STILL doesn't provide "ActiveSync" it really sucks for people who like using a mail client instead of a web browser (the best Google can offer to them is IMAP which is shit)
Every other Microsoft Cloud service is either inferior or noncompetitive. The elephant in the room, OneDrive, is just awful. Actually OneDrive is OK, but OneDrive Pro (based on Sharepoint) is just so damn unreliable and the clients are so awful, it's pretty obvious why Microsoft bought Dropbox. They need engineers to fix Sharepoint. Additionally, Office 2016 and all the new products in modern Office are crap. Lync is too complex, OneNote is clunky, Skype for Business is too proprietary/unsupported, and what the hell, exactly, is Sway supposed to do?
Lastly. Azure. Wow. It is unreliable, proprietary, requires Powershell to do anything low level, and EXPENSIVE. It isn't even close to competing with AWS (Amazon Web Services) in flexibility or price. The only reason this product is so successful is because IT depts are too lazy to learn AWS, and talk their top brass into paying out the ass for the "ease" for Azure and "plug & play" approach it has to connecting to Server 2012. The irony is I actually have a script to configure AWS accounts to the security schema and SAMBA revision required to plug into Server 2012 perfectly. Everything from Cloud Backup to simple file sharing works. Unless you need a virtual domain controller in the cloud, AWS handles everything.
Microsoft will innovate or die. They are making money, but the world is obviously catching up to them and they are NOT turning the YoY profits at the same margins they used too. Their profits are all in entirely different sectors than they were just a few years ago. Who would have thought the XBOX "consumer products" division would have higher margins than "mobile" in this market.
Microsoft should have bought Palm, not Nokia. At least Palm consistently had more market share.
We're using Office 365 (2016) at work and everything works pretty much flawlessly (on 10 year old PC's too) except OneDrive for Business, which a is piece bug ridden shit that requires constant maintenance to keep running.
The latest version of the OneDrive for Business client no longer uses the Office cache, which has been a miracle for us.
Uninstall the Groove-based version that was bundled with 2016 and start testing "next-gen" client available on the web. It's orders of magnitude more reliable than the old version, uses less space and makes coffee for you in the morning.
And I agree - the old Groove client was hot trash rotting in the sun.
They have some very strong areas. Their development tools are lightyears ahead of almost everyone else. Apple's development tools can come close in terms of usability, but cannot touch the sheer breadth of Microsoft's offerings in terms of languages, cross-platform story, support, developer productivity, hardware support, and so on.
Windows 10 may take your data, but it's an excellent operating system nevertheless. It's more stable, more featureful, and more secure than any previous Windows. It can hold its own against Ubuntu and OS X. There are some parts of it that are still shoddy (e.g. I swap out Edge for Chrome all the time), but one can say the same about any operating system.
The Office offerings are excellent, and improving year-on-year. I hardly use them because Google Drive makes collaboration simpler, but I cannot deny that they make it ridiculously easy to create good-looking things.
Microsoft Research is churning out some truly excellent work, and have been for some time.
Microsoft has genuine competitors that didn't exist (or weren't strong enough to challenge it) 10-15 years ago. In comparison to them, it's worse in some areas and better in others. It would be a serious mistake to write them off as not being good at anything, though.
The issue with Windows is that, on the desktop, 7 was almost flawless for its time. In their endeavor to unify all platforms, Microsoft took a flawless OS and instead of improving it, they uprooted it. Windows 8's user interface was a mess, a clash of styles and most of the Metro design language cues didn't translate terribly well to big screens and mouse driven input. They tuned it down with Windows 10 but it's still not as cohesive as the OS they released 7 years ago and a lot of people, especially non-geeks, are fussy about Microsoft constantly changing workflows and button-locations. Essentially, Microsoft seems to lack direction since 2009. Feels like they exchange key staff at least twice a year.
On the mobile side, Windows Phone 7 was bold and inspired. They made Apple de-skeuomorphize iOS. They lead. But Microsoft got afraid of their own courage. Again, lacking direction, they wavered with Windows 10 Mobile and have started to copy Apple's take on their own design.
Microsoft for the past 5-6 years looks like a company unsure of what it wants to be, of where it wants to go. They wanna be Google or Apple, but they are more like Samsung: a big, unfocused corporation afraid of missing a trend, releasing me-too products and more or less half-heartedly committing to every niche of IT.
The one area they are innovative in is the Surface division. There's been rumors that they'll make a Surface phone and that seems to be the only hope they have in the phone sector.
@tim851: "On the mobile side, Windows Phone 7 was bold and inspired."
Kinder words than they usually get, but you're not wrong.
@tim851: "... they wavered with Windows 10 Mobile and have started to copy Apple's take on their own design."
I'm afraid you lost me there. Admittedly, I don't keep up with iOS products very well, but I have several family members with iOS. Can you give a few examples here? I just can't see them as very similar at all.
@tim851: "The one area they are innovative in is the Surface division. There's been rumors that they'll make a Surface phone and that seems to be the only hope they have in the phone sector."
I'm curious as to what it may offer that the Lumia 950(XL) doesn't at this point. They're big focuses (according to the article) are: 1) Security - I've already seen fewer high profile security vulnerabilities, but they could have new security features to bring to the table. 2) Manageability - Seems like they got a lot of these features with Win10 mobile 3) Continuum - Check
I'd personally like to see proper alias support from any of the mobile ecosystems. It's frustrating not being able to respond to emails because it won't send the message back out as the alias that it was sent to.
Their tools and frameworks are so good that's why OS X's creation of Clang and billions invested in their frameworks and tools are eating their lunch on profits and global market share in complete presence. With over 1 billion iOS mobile devices sold its clear Microsoft was dead by 1996.
Considering how every other modern consumer OS sends as much or more information to it's creator, you look a bit foolish saying that. Android, as an example, sends significantly more of your personal information and usage details to Google. It's essentially datamining everything you do with your phone.
I agree. Peoples paranoia over Windows phoning home is a bit ridiculous. Hell, in a certain light I'd trust Microsoft with my data over Google.
The only OS you can really rely on for privacy is a open source Linux distro. OSX is fairly private but updates are still centrally source and the code is proprietary so unless you actually trust Apple as much as they say you should, all bets are off. But many of the top tier white hats and security engineers all use OSX and they are comfortable with it, so who knows.
@Samus: "But many of the top tier white hats and security engineers all use OSX and they are comfortable with it, so who knows."
It could be that they feel like there is less risk. Risk is a combination of threat, exploitable weaknesses, and potential damage. If we assume the threat is equal and the potential damage is equal, then implication is that OSX has fewer exploitable weaknesses (vulnerabilities). Apple may in fact have more weaknesses, but the more Apple pulls into their walled in garden, the harder they are to exploit. I'm sure using OpenBSD for their kernel doesn't hurt either. Of course, the threat is not in fact equal. Microsoft is still the most targeted OS and Linux is still the least targeted due to breadth of applicability for any vulnerability. Also, the risk to the system is lower the more applications and the OS isolate processes (think sandboxing). Sure sandboxes and VM can be subverted, but that is one more vulnerability that needs to be exploited before damage can occur.
Of course it could more simple than that. They may like OSX better because it is less risky than equally usable systems and significantly more usable than a clearly more secure system. Gentoo, OpenBSD, and other minimalistic operating systems tend to have very small attack surfaces and are most likely less vulnerable than OSX, but they aren't nearly as easy to use in practice, particularly if you have specific software needs.
Finally, while the two can overlap, privacy and security are two different things. Top tier white hats may prioritize security and/or usability over privacy. Note that not all top tier white hats use OSX, so there are probably differences of priority here. It is probably a tradeoff similar to the security posture. They may like OSX better because it is more usable than better privacy oriented systems and at least as privacy oriented as a more usable system (or some combination of the above tradeoffs).
I think because Microsoft recently, very explicitly portrayed Google in a negative light during a televised advertising run over the data mining and then turned full about on doing so themselves, it's left some consumers with a bit of animosity. It's also probably not sensible to excuse Microsoft of taking the same low road as Google and Apple just because "everyone else is doing it." That's a bandwagon approach to rummaging through your personal information for valuables and for many of us, its unacceptable. Some of the more outspoken proponents of data privacy do their utmost to evade mining efforts by using operating systems and software that don't do so (Linux), avoiding known services that collect data (Facebook, Twitter, etc), and rummaging through obscure privacy settings to disable data collection anyplace possible. A few of us have even given up smartphones partly because, despite offering a few interesting capabilities, they're essentially a pocket-portable lens into where you are, what you're doing, and who you're interacting with down to the keystroke level.
@BrokenCrayons: "I think because Microsoft recently, very explicitly portrayed Google in a negative light during a televised advertising run over the data mining and then turned full about on doing so themselves, it's left some consumers with a bit of animosity."
You're probably right, but if that's the reason you(the consumer) drop the platform, you should at least make sure the platform you switch to (or are currently using) isn't doing the same or worse.
@BrokenCrayons: "It's also probably not sensible to excuse Microsoft of taking the same low road as Google and Apple just because "everyone else is doing it." "
---------------------------RANT WARNING--------------------------- Fully agree here. When did trying to be better than the competition become a bad thing. I'm not going to move to a worse platform just to spite Microsoft, but I'm also not going to pretend like the loss of privacy, expansive data mining, and advertisements directly in the OS are a good thing either. Don't try to tell me that they are necessary evils either, how many decades has Microsoft prospered without using such things. The times are changing is also a cheap cop out. Of course times are changing. By definition times are always changing. It's up to you and me to make sure that they are changing for the better and not the worse. Sorry, got a little worked up. I digress.
>> The times are changing is also a cheap cop out.
To be fair, we now live in an internet connected world where people value connected/live services. Generally improving the quality of such services requires knowing what your target audience wants to actually do with them.
Plus a lot of the type of telemetry that microsoft is collecting in windows 10 is stuff they've collected before, but just never told you about. Like did you know that in Windows 7 it records every time you open the start menu and reports back to microsoft what you actually did in it? Did you immediately close it? Launch a recent app? Open my computer? Yes, they know.
It's not like you cannot just use your hosts file or any number of options to disable the stuff. WHat other choice do you have other than Apple or Google? Both of them have other issues.
With every new OS release, they state, we care about gamers! and proceed to do all sorts of stuff that shows they absolutely don't care about gamers.
examples: No DX12 on Windows 8.1, trying to push UWP/windows store games with broken/lacking features. Other notable examples from the past. Games for Windows Live refusing to bring console exclusives to PC, even if they might be 1 year later for extra cash grabbing.
The same is visible with their mobile division. First they buy Nokia and announce:"We will continue supporting all mobile segments" and now they cancel one thing after another: still awfull app support, the said they'd solve it with converter apps, 1 got canceled and they other you never hear of.
My friend keeps saying they are still going to do it, but I've given up. When my Lumia 1020 finally dies I'm going to go back to Apple. (Iphone 4 -> Lumia 1020 -> Iphone 7/7s)
DX12 depends on numerous kernel-level changes in the WDDM 2.0 driver model that is not easily backported to older OSs. Given that Windows 10 is a free upgrade all the way back to Windows 7, I don't particularly see this as an issue since they've offered it to you for free and you willingly chose to not accept it.
>> trying to push UWP/windows store games with broken/lacking features.
There are only two lacking features: Overlay support (e.g. steam overlay) in UWP and no real ability to disable vsync. The former is a valid complaint, and they mentioned they're working on resolving this. The latter has actually already been backported to the November release.
Tearing support is a requirement to enable displays that support variable refresh rates to function properly when the application presents a swap chain tied to a full screen borderless window. Win32 apps can already achieve tearing in fullscreen exclusive mode by calling SetFullscreenState(TRUE), but the recommended approach for Win32 developers is to use this tearing flag instead.
To check for hardware support of this feature, refer to IDXGIFactory5::CheckFeatureSupport. For usage information refer to IDXGISwapChain::Present and the DXGI_PRESENT flags. ---
The lack of crossfire/SLI support is commonly misattributed to an issue with UWP, but is in fact a combination of driver limitations and the games actually just not actually supporting it.
>> Games for Windows Live Fair enough :)
>> refusing to bring console exclusives to PC, even if they might be 1 year later for extra cash grabbing. They've slowly been doing this, though. Also a lot of console game engines are built and extremely highly optimized for consoles and it's actually a much larger pain than you think to port the game over to PC and actually work well. there's a reason why most studio contract out their ports to other studios.
As someone who does a lot of work in graphics and likes to write game in his spare time, I've found Microsoft's commitment to their games and graphics divisions to be absolutely top notch. Their tools are lightyears ahead of the competition and IMO the D3D API is much more pleasant to use than OpenGL and Vulkan. Some will disagree, but I stand by that claim.
I certainly agree that Microsoft's mobile game is lacking, but I would not in any way compare it to their games division which is, from everything I can see, exceptionally successful.
@inighthawki: "DX12 depends on numerous kernel-level changes in the WDDM 2.0 driver model that is not easily backported to older OSs."
True. Though, its Microsoft's fault that this is misunderstood. They've used DX to drive sales of a new OS before. Also, their nearest competitor Vulkan is putting out the effort to work with previous versions of windows. I give Microsoft only a little sympathy in this situation.
It's a tradeoff. The DX kernel is really nice to have since it makes behavior across drivers more consistent and reliable, but at the same time has the drawback that it is an OS level component, and so new features will seldom, if ever, be backported.
Vulkan (and other APIs like Mantle, OpenGL, etc) still run on top of the DX kernel, but they force the driver to implement all the missing features, sometimes with really awkward layers on top. For example, memory management in the DX kernel in Windows 7 (actually for all WDDM 1.x, so Vista through 8.1) works by providing a list of allocations that need to be resident each time work is submitted to the GPU. The DX kernel's memory manager is then in charge of paging in that memory and running the workload. The problem of this design is that it has a high cost for a large number of allocations, and doesn't support bindless textures (You cannot submit a list of allocations if you do not keep track of which ones you bound to the pipeline that frame). Vulkan and Mantle handle this by simply creating a giant list of every allocation ever created and submitting it with ever piece of rendering work. The overhead can get pretty high.
WDDM 2/DX12 created a new memory management system where user mode can request a certain allocation to be part of the residency set or not, and can avoid the list entirely. They also expose per-application "budgets" which inform you about overall system memory pressure and when you can use more memory or should trim your working set to play nicely with everything else. This functionality is exposed by the ID3D12Device::MakeResident/Evict APIs.
So how does Vulkan support it? They just don't. That's how they support every OS - they just ignore certain things like memory management on the platforms where it exists. The closest alternative to evicting an allocation in other APIs is to just completely destroy the resource (freeing the memory for someone else), then recreate it and repopulate/copy the contents again later. Creating and destroying resources will be orders of magnitude slower than just inserting and removing from a list.
@inighthawki: "DX12 depends on numerous kernel-level changes in the WDDM 2.0 driver model that is not easily backported to older OSs."
True. Though, its Microsoft's fault that this is misunderstood. They've used DX to drive sales of a new OS before. Also, their nearest competitor Vulkan is putting out the effort to work with previous versions of windows. I give Microsoft only a little sympathy in this situation.
I used to be a Windows Mobile fan, but after how badly Microsoft handled the Windows Phone 7-8 transmission I bought a Nexus 5 and never looked back. Microsoft hasn't had a competitive Phone platform for years and they're so slow implementing features that the situation is never going to change. They're outclassed, they know it and they've given up trying.
Hmm... they had quite a few W10M updates in 2016, I don't think they gave up on mobile platform, really. And speaking of which, W10M went from glitchy to very stable on my work Lumia 830, since I did an upgrade in late 2015.
My old Lumia 920 is not getting official W10M update. While I do find that disappointing, realistically 920 does feel a bit sluggish on 8.1 these days. Especially with load times. Apps run OK in general but it does take some chunky time to load Skype and some others... so eventually, if W10M would make my 920 even less responsive, then no thanks - I'd rather keep it on 8.1 while it lasts. Back in the days, I was really pissed when Apple nagged me into updating 3Gs to iOS6, rendering my phone from quite useful to pretty much dead horse. 3Gs was already 4 years old and I thought that leaving it with iOS5 would make much more sense. Here and now, 920 is 3.5 years old, so I guess the same applies.
It is not that I don't think W10M cannot be optimized for 920. It is supposed to run on some current entry Win Phones, which are dual core and in general probably not any more capable than 920. But. Considering how many 920 were sold and how many might still be in use, I can imagine that investing a lot of time into optimizing W10M for that hardware could be somewhat pointless exercise.
At this point I'm thinking about W10M as a "hobby" for MS. They are not successful but they will keep trying - simply because there are not to many other segments where they can grow. Eventually, I think that this new prime directive - premium devices and enterprise - do make most sense. Enterprises care less for apps - in fact many will prefer to have bare phones with only work tools installed, likes of email, Skype for Business etc. which are core apps and executed quite well by Microsoft. Then, since so many enterprises do run on Microsoft platforms and service, it should be reasonably easy for MS to integrate phones into this - without depending on others to develop or allow development (as with youTube, google Maps etc). And finally, Surface line has proved that MS can do premium and can make it sustainable, if niche - Surface branding carries good vibe with it, we are seeing (and selling) more Surfaces and clones to our customers than traditional computers these days, throwing their phone into that bandwagon makes a lot of sense, imho.
If they would just kick off the guy that came out with the Metro interface in the first place and switch to an interface like Android or old Windows phones had back in the days that would pretty much solve their problems. Aside from that I think Microsoft has some Big Mole inside the company that's doing it's rivals evil work ruinning the companies products by pushing bad ideas forward.
Every last person on earth could see that Nokia going solely for Windows Mobile was going to run the company into the ground even further. Well, Stephen Elop, the Microsoft plant, ensured that. Now without even Nokia's good name, this is a dying ecosystem.
When Nokia committed to a monogamous Windows Phone relationship, the Android market wasn't dominated by Samsung yet. Being the biggest name in the phone industry, having the best camera technology, offline apps and some of the best phone designs they could have arguably made a better last-ditch attempt by going with Android. It was a huge gamble to go with WP exclusively, sweetened by a billion bucks out of Redmond.
I f***ing hate Microsoft! They completely ruined Nokia, and in the process tens of thousands of Finns are now unemployed. The city of Salo, whose thriving economy was completely based on all the Nokia related stuff that was located there, is in a huge financial crisis because thousands of well-paid Nokia workers are now unemployed or have moved elsewhere. If you ask me, I hope the entire board of directors and whatever else blood-sucking low-lives are in charge of what they do at Microsoft dies in a horrible ball of fire.
Oh and let's just add that for all the "good" work mr. Eflop did at the helm of Nokia, he was awarded a bonus of millions of dollars when he left Nokia and went back to M$. All this injustice drives me completely mad...!! If I ever happen to see Eflop somewhere, I'm going to kick his sorry ass.
Forgive me but that's stupid. MS saved Nokia by buying its division in their attempt to become a 3rd player. Nokia outwardly refused Android comparing it to little kids pissin' in their pants to keep warm on an arctic day. And from certain technical standpoints they were right. Symbian and Meego were better than Android in stability but sucked in usability. Nokia's phone division and its sense of pride would have brought the entire Nokia down.
Elop came from Microsoft, and suddenly right after that Nokia completely abandoned the very promising MeeGo project and all the devices they had planned and went 100% for Windows Mobile instead. After a couple of years of releasing products nobody wanted to use because of WinMo, Nokia's share prices had fallen enough for M$ to buy their phone division for cheap. After that, Elop went back to M$ and got millions of dollars as a reward for his good job of bringing Nokia down.
All that might be true, BUT it doesn't change the fact that pre-MS Nokia was running around like a chicken without a head in the face of iPhone and Android. To imagine that they could have achieved some sort of save, given everything their culture and history displayed is fantasy. The most likely path would have been the same as that of RIM.
You can't just claim that MeeGo was "very promising". Making OS's is brutally difficult; making mobile OS's, substantially more so; making mobile OS's that substantial numbers of people want to use is something that only two companies have ever actually achieved. Even MS didn't get there, and they had a substantially better chance in terms of talent pool. But MS was crippled by an insistence on stupid ideas, and I suspect, if Nokia HAD ever got MeeGo out of the lab, they would likewise have been crippled by stupid ideas (in their case, most likely a constant dumbing down of the OS so that some version of it could run on dumbphones).
We're about to see a grand experiment on whether a third contender (Tizen on watches) can actually make a go of it. Are you betting they succeed? Because I certainly am not.
Nokia was dead anyways. They had 0 compelling products and were circling the financial drain at the time of MS's purchase. If anything, Microsoft's cash infusion helped keep the lights on longer than would have been possible.
They were circling the drain due to Elop's boneheaded decision to go Windows and the rookie mistake of making the announcement before they had any products ready, thus osborning the business. With Android, they stood a slim chance.
Ultimately it's Nokia's board that bears responsibility in choosing Elop for CEO, not Microsoft.
Calm down. Microsoft likely kept the Nokia staff employed longer than Nokia would have managed if left alone, and then paid them generous severance packages at the end.
Nokia, Motorola and RIM were all in the same boat - getting their asses handed to them by Apple at the top of the market and Android at the middle and bottom.
I think Nokia shareholder at that time would Microsoft. Once the deal announced Nokia share price almost double. It was a pity for the employee though.
Realistically, it can't be believed that Nokia didn't know which OS, or even if they were going to use a new OS, before they hired Elop. That just doesn't wash.
Much more likely, they decided this, consulting with Microsoft first. Then, they, Microsoft and Elop consulted on his hire.
They had a new OS, MeeGo. They even released the N9 which used it. But they basically abandoned MeeGo before the N9 even got to market. So they released the phone and then announced that it was going to be the first and last MeeGo device. Such a great business strategy to try to sell a product you've already publicly declared abandoned and obsolete.
Nokia also had plans for a MeeGo tablet and a MeeGo phone based on the N9, but with a physical keyboard. Those were both axed by Elop in favor of Windows Mobile devices. Which sold sooooo well that Nokia took back their former position as the smartphone market share leader! No wait..
Elop also unleashed the burning platform memo, which basically told that all the S40 and S60 devices are going to be abandoned ASAP. That's some great marketing right there, when all your current smartphones are based on S40 and S60.
When Elop sent an e-mail telling tens of thousands of people that they are going to be laid off, he started it with "Hello there!"
I bought a Lumia 950 back in November and I love it, but it seems like all news about Windows Mobile is bad news these days. I have noticed a nice uptick in app development with UWP apps, but it's not likely to save the platform. I'll pick the best of Apple / Android options in 2018.
I like how it is calling it streamlining when talking about laying off people and like it is a good thing. Why not streamline the board of directors by getting rid of dead weight there or better yet why can't these board of directors take a small decrease. It always seems to come down to laying off the common worker to bring the numbers up in the books. Anyways end of comment...lol
Its maybe good platform for just cheap smartphones, but for something better they are dead without android compatibility and even this it, were is any killer feature? I see only 1 way, refresh Winitel, because intel is also dying in phone market, make x86 phones with docking possibility and desktop Windows app compatibility in dock mode + add some not crippled tablets line.. But i think, its too much work for these lazy guys..
'I fell into a burning ring of fire, I went down, down, down and the flames went higher And it burns, burns, burns, The ring of fire, the ring of fire.' -Johnny Cash
Mistake 1: Abandoning Symbian/Series 60 phones as opposed to evolving the OS to make it more modern and competitive. Mistake 2: Choosing Windows Phone instead of Android as the platform of choice.
Microsoft mistakes:
1) Releasing a half baked OS into the market in the form of WP7.
2)Abandoning WP7 owners when moving to WP8.
3) Giving up on the Lumia line in 2015 as opposed to capitalizing on the 3% odd market share they had and releasing compelling devices across the price ranges. What we were given is a couple of high end handsets and a glut of weak snapdragon 200/400 handsets as opposed to good balanced mid rangers. They could have gone on from 2014 and become a 10% player in 5 years, more than enough to make their business more than sustainable. Instead, they gave up on the Lumia line, did not release any compelling handsets in the mid end and generally lagged behind in software.
4) Abandoning WP8 owners (Lumia 925/Icon, Lumia 920, Lumia 1020, Lumia 1320, Lumia 928, Lumia 820, Lumia 720 and other phones with decent dual core processors and 1 GB RAM.
5) Not working closely with Intel on their mobile chipsets to achieve real convergence between full windows and windows mobile, through the ability to run legacy windows applications. Imagine a 6 inch Intel powered Phone that could run 85% of the programs/apps a laptop can on windows 10.
Imagine a full line of full Windows Handsets from 5 inches to 8 inches, all having Intel processors of different prowess'. That would have given them a real edge in the market.
Now Intel is quitting mobile and Windows phone is dead.
So many mistakes and poor strategic decisions. 2015-16 killed the Windows Mobile phone, due to MS' strategy. Remember 2013-14 and 14-15 were relatively good for WP at around 2.8-3.5% share depending on the source. They did not even TRY to capitalize on that.
Considering the brand equity enjoyed by Nokia in markets such as China, India and South East Asia, switching over to Android or even a mixture of ANdroid, WP and Symbian would have put them in a much better position to fight the oncoming Samsung wave.
People used to buy Nokia phones because of the brand name. I am almost certain that Nokia fans who switched over to android handsets would have loved a Nokia branded Android phone that amrried Nokia's traditional strengths in imaging and build quality with the emerging ecosystem for android.
Even now they have a good opportunity to gain some of the amrket share they lost if they play it right.
RIM had plenty of "brand equity" in a lot of countries, like Indonesia or South Africa. Didn't help them a damn thing. "Brand equity" doesn't last longer than one refresh cycle if you don't have a competitive product, and all the evidence suggests that what Nokia had in store was NOT competitive.
If they would just kick out the guy that came out with the Metro interface in the first place and switch to an interface like Android or old Windows phones had back in the days that would pretty much solve their problems. Aside from that I think Microsoft has some Big Mole inside the company that's doing it's rivals evil work ruinning the companies products by pushing bad ideas forward.
This pretty sad....I see no future for WP or Lumia as a brand, and sorry to say its just plain sad. I have a lumia 640, and I don't know where I'll go after it. I don't want a flagship, and the 650 won't be offered on any major carriers like previous models were ( Lumia 1020, 930, 1520, 530, 535, etc). I know they had alot of models, but still...
We are now down to less than %1 of the market...seriously, could you have failed any worse than Blackberry???? Really???
Considering how much cash has MS to make something to happen the result of less than 1% market share is EPIC FAIL. It tells you how incompetent management MS has. No matter how stupid decisions are made by few idiots,the rest of team probably just follow blindly like zombies without questioning. if something goes wrong they probably just pretend it never happened and all wait for some miracle instead of solving it :).
Im just guessing here but i would really love to know what exactly happen to MS mobile OS division or whatever it was named. How difficult was to make sure MS mobile OS works perfectly fine on up to 10 almost the same Nokia Lumia phones? How difficult it was to make a free developing platform for developers and to pay a few grand to developers of most successful Android/iOS apps to make sure they make their apps for Windows too?
You see, there is no accountability. Or diligence.Or innovation. Or transparency. Or apology. Their penises are all micro and soft. They shoould have been split up into separate en-tities long ago.
So many people lost their jobs. So much for joining the Microsoft family!
The entire MS mobile biz has been a joke. They couldn't get anyone to really sell WP7, other than giving lots of money to Nokia. Then bought them out, then killed Nokia, but not the actual patents or important stuff. Wow. Who out there really makes a Windows Phone buy MS?
At the AT&T stores, the Windows phones are in the BACK corner next to feature phones, old tech phones and Blackberries. With Blackberry near the front - of the back. :)
WP7/10 UI is very good for mobile, but it never caught on. WPhone is a dead platform. I said it was dead with the failure of Windows 8 and onward.
There is less and less reason to buy Microsoft products. Win7 and Office 2010 is the LAST things I have or will every buy that is MS.
(forgot to add) The only markets that MS/Lumina had was emerging markets like India and S.America with low-end phones. Otherwise... bleh.
MS, Nokia, HP and RIM/Blackberry didn't see the writing on the wall and tried to go their own way rather than go Android. Blackberry is doing OKAY since they have gone Android + security.
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QinX - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I've been a Windows Phone advocate for a long while (Not WP7 but right when the Lumia 1020 was released) and all the news I've read lately I just feel they should just give up.They are doing with Windows 10 Mobile the same as the always to with gaming.
We are going to be better! NOT!
Windows on Mobile is dead and they should just give up.
JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
They should stick to what they're good at. Unfortunately with the telemetry-ridden Windows 10, I don't even think they're good at making OSes, either.But now that I think of it, they're pretty good at disappointing long-time customers, so I think they _are_ sticking to what they're good at, after all.
boozed - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
What are they good at though?Their only strength in most markets seems to be incumbency.
beginner99 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Well I'm just upgrading an Ubuntu Server at work from LTS to LTS and I can say it's a painful experience and nothing close to as simple as it is made out to be. For example any "custom" stuff you have to recompile manually.Then the fact that the server is behind a proxy and not all apps don't stick to a standard so you have to configure each of them (one of them being apt itself) on initial setup.
Samus - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
It's true. The only Microsoft Cloud product I recommend to clients is hosted Exchange. It falls under the Office365 umbrella but plan "Exchange Online Plan 1" for $4/month gives each user 50GB, full ActiveSync, spam protection, the domain is blacklist protected, and the full collaborative suite of Outlook (Calendar sharing, etc)Considering Google charges $2 more per year ($50 instead of $48) for Gmail "Business" which STILL doesn't provide "ActiveSync" it really sucks for people who like using a mail client instead of a web browser (the best Google can offer to them is IMAP which is shit)
Every other Microsoft Cloud service is either inferior or noncompetitive. The elephant in the room, OneDrive, is just awful. Actually OneDrive is OK, but OneDrive Pro (based on Sharepoint) is just so damn unreliable and the clients are so awful, it's pretty obvious why Microsoft bought Dropbox. They need engineers to fix Sharepoint. Additionally, Office 2016 and all the new products in modern Office are crap. Lync is too complex, OneNote is clunky, Skype for Business is too proprietary/unsupported, and what the hell, exactly, is Sway supposed to do?
Lastly. Azure. Wow. It is unreliable, proprietary, requires Powershell to do anything low level, and EXPENSIVE. It isn't even close to competing with AWS (Amazon Web Services) in flexibility or price. The only reason this product is so successful is because IT depts are too lazy to learn AWS, and talk their top brass into paying out the ass for the "ease" for Azure and "plug & play" approach it has to connecting to Server 2012. The irony is I actually have a script to configure AWS accounts to the security schema and SAMBA revision required to plug into Server 2012 perfectly. Everything from Cloud Backup to simple file sharing works. Unless you need a virtual domain controller in the cloud, AWS handles everything.
Microsoft will innovate or die. They are making money, but the world is obviously catching up to them and they are NOT turning the YoY profits at the same margins they used too. Their profits are all in entirely different sectors than they were just a few years ago. Who would have thought the XBOX "consumer products" division would have higher margins than "mobile" in this market.
Microsoft should have bought Palm, not Nokia. At least Palm consistently had more market share.
LuxZg - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Sorry, when did Microsoft buy Dropbox?nathanddrews - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
They didn't, I think he's thinking of this:https://news.microsoft.com/2014/11/04/microsoft-an...
Kvaern1 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
I can't agree with your conclusions.We're using Office 365 (2016) at work and everything works pretty much flawlessly (on 10 year old PC's too) except OneDrive for Business, which a is piece bug ridden shit that requires constant maintenance to keep running.
Kvaern1 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
btw can someone tell me what the logic is in Office caching Onedrive office files which is already residing on your PCs SSD?I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to delete the entire office cache to make OneDrive work again after having broken down.
Garbage.
Weaux - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
The latest version of the OneDrive for Business client no longer uses the Office cache, which has been a miracle for us.Uninstall the Groove-based version that was bundled with 2016 and start testing "next-gen" client available on the web. It's orders of magnitude more reliable than the old version, uses less space and makes coffee for you in the morning.
And I agree - the old Groove client was hot trash rotting in the sun.
Kvaern1 - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
You sir are my hero.Thanks a lot for the new client tip
Carmen00 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
They have some very strong areas. Their development tools are lightyears ahead of almost everyone else. Apple's development tools can come close in terms of usability, but cannot touch the sheer breadth of Microsoft's offerings in terms of languages, cross-platform story, support, developer productivity, hardware support, and so on.Windows 10 may take your data, but it's an excellent operating system nevertheless. It's more stable, more featureful, and more secure than any previous Windows. It can hold its own against Ubuntu and OS X. There are some parts of it that are still shoddy (e.g. I swap out Edge for Chrome all the time), but one can say the same about any operating system.
The Office offerings are excellent, and improving year-on-year. I hardly use them because Google Drive makes collaboration simpler, but I cannot deny that they make it ridiculously easy to create good-looking things.
Microsoft Research is churning out some truly excellent work, and have been for some time.
Microsoft has genuine competitors that didn't exist (or weren't strong enough to challenge it) 10-15 years ago. In comparison to them, it's worse in some areas and better in others. It would be a serious mistake to write them off as not being good at anything, though.
tim851 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
The issue with Windows is that, on the desktop, 7 was almost flawless for its time. In their endeavor to unify all platforms, Microsoft took a flawless OS and instead of improving it, they uprooted it. Windows 8's user interface was a mess, a clash of styles and most of the Metro design language cues didn't translate terribly well to big screens and mouse driven input.They tuned it down with Windows 10 but it's still not as cohesive as the OS they released 7 years ago and a lot of people, especially non-geeks, are fussy about Microsoft constantly changing workflows and button-locations.
Essentially, Microsoft seems to lack direction since 2009. Feels like they exchange key staff at least twice a year.
On the mobile side, Windows Phone 7 was bold and inspired.
They made Apple de-skeuomorphize iOS.
They lead.
But Microsoft got afraid of their own courage. Again, lacking direction, they wavered with Windows 10 Mobile and have started to copy Apple's take on their own design.
Microsoft for the past 5-6 years looks like a company unsure of what it wants to be, of where it wants to go. They wanna be Google or Apple, but they are more like Samsung: a big, unfocused corporation afraid of missing a trend, releasing me-too products and more or less half-heartedly committing to every niche of IT.
The one area they are innovative in is the Surface division. There's been rumors that they'll make a Surface phone and that seems to be the only hope they have in the phone sector.
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
@tim851: "On the mobile side, Windows Phone 7 was bold and inspired."Kinder words than they usually get, but you're not wrong.
@tim851: "... they wavered with Windows 10 Mobile and have started to copy Apple's take on their own design."
I'm afraid you lost me there. Admittedly, I don't keep up with iOS products very well, but I have several family members with iOS. Can you give a few examples here? I just can't see them as very similar at all.
@tim851: "The one area they are innovative in is the Surface division. There's been rumors that they'll make a Surface phone and that seems to be the only hope they have in the phone sector."
I'm curious as to what it may offer that the Lumia 950(XL) doesn't at this point. They're big focuses (according to the article) are:
1) Security - I've already seen fewer high profile security vulnerabilities, but they could have new security features to bring to the table.
2) Manageability - Seems like they got a lot of these features with Win10 mobile
3) Continuum - Check
I'd personally like to see proper alias support from any of the mobile ecosystems. It's frustrating not being able to respond to emails because it won't send the message back out as the alias that it was sent to.
mdriftmeyer - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Their tools and frameworks are so good that's why OS X's creation of Clang and billions invested in their frameworks and tools are eating their lunch on profits and global market share in complete presence. With over 1 billion iOS mobile devices sold its clear Microsoft was dead by 1996.mdriftmeyer - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
When you adopt Clang/LLVM to prop up your Visual Studio you are tacitly admitting defeat.ddriver - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
They are good at exploiting their monopoly and subsequent economic and political connections.Flunk - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Considering how every other modern consumer OS sends as much or more information to it's creator, you look a bit foolish saying that. Android, as an example, sends significantly more of your personal information and usage details to Google. It's essentially datamining everything you do with your phone.Samus - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
I agree. Peoples paranoia over Windows phoning home is a bit ridiculous. Hell, in a certain light I'd trust Microsoft with my data over Google.The only OS you can really rely on for privacy is a open source Linux distro. OSX is fairly private but updates are still centrally source and the code is proprietary so unless you actually trust Apple as much as they say you should, all bets are off. But many of the top tier white hats and security engineers all use OSX and they are comfortable with it, so who knows.
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
@Samus: "But many of the top tier white hats and security engineers all use OSX and they are comfortable with it, so who knows."It could be that they feel like there is less risk. Risk is a combination of threat, exploitable weaknesses, and potential damage. If we assume the threat is equal and the potential damage is equal, then implication is that OSX has fewer exploitable weaknesses (vulnerabilities). Apple may in fact have more weaknesses, but the more Apple pulls into their walled in garden, the harder they are to exploit. I'm sure using OpenBSD for their kernel doesn't hurt either. Of course, the threat is not in fact equal. Microsoft is still the most targeted OS and Linux is still the least targeted due to breadth of applicability for any vulnerability. Also, the risk to the system is lower the more applications and the OS isolate processes (think sandboxing). Sure sandboxes and VM can be subverted, but that is one more vulnerability that needs to be exploited before damage can occur.
Of course it could more simple than that. They may like OSX better because it is less risky than equally usable systems and significantly more usable than a clearly more secure system. Gentoo, OpenBSD, and other minimalistic operating systems tend to have very small attack surfaces and are most likely less vulnerable than OSX, but they aren't nearly as easy to use in practice, particularly if you have specific software needs.
Finally, while the two can overlap, privacy and security are two different things. Top tier white hats may prioritize security and/or usability over privacy. Note that not all top tier white hats use OSX, so there are probably differences of priority here. It is probably a tradeoff similar to the security posture. They may like OSX better because it is more usable than better privacy oriented systems and at least as privacy oriented as a more usable system (or some combination of the above tradeoffs).
JoeMonco - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
OS X doesn't use the OpenBSD kernel. Whereever did you hear such nonsense?osxandwindows - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
I think what he meant was that os X used part of the BSD code for darwin/xnu.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
I think because Microsoft recently, very explicitly portrayed Google in a negative light during a televised advertising run over the data mining and then turned full about on doing so themselves, it's left some consumers with a bit of animosity. It's also probably not sensible to excuse Microsoft of taking the same low road as Google and Apple just because "everyone else is doing it." That's a bandwagon approach to rummaging through your personal information for valuables and for many of us, its unacceptable. Some of the more outspoken proponents of data privacy do their utmost to evade mining efforts by using operating systems and software that don't do so (Linux), avoiding known services that collect data (Facebook, Twitter, etc), and rummaging through obscure privacy settings to disable data collection anyplace possible. A few of us have even given up smartphones partly because, despite offering a few interesting capabilities, they're essentially a pocket-portable lens into where you are, what you're doing, and who you're interacting with down to the keystroke level.BurntMyBacon - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
@BrokenCrayons: "I think because Microsoft recently, very explicitly portrayed Google in a negative light during a televised advertising run over the data mining and then turned full about on doing so themselves, it's left some consumers with a bit of animosity."You're probably right, but if that's the reason you(the consumer) drop the platform, you should at least make sure the platform you switch to (or are currently using) isn't doing the same or worse.
@BrokenCrayons: "It's also probably not sensible to excuse Microsoft of taking the same low road as Google and Apple just because "everyone else is doing it." "
---------------------------RANT WARNING---------------------------
Fully agree here. When did trying to be better than the competition become a bad thing. I'm not going to move to a worse platform just to spite Microsoft, but I'm also not going to pretend like the loss of privacy, expansive data mining, and advertisements directly in the OS are a good thing either. Don't try to tell me that they are necessary evils either, how many decades has Microsoft prospered without using such things. The times are changing is also a cheap cop out. Of course times are changing. By definition times are always changing. It's up to you and me to make sure that they are changing for the better and not the worse. Sorry, got a little worked up. I digress.
inighthawki - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
>> The times are changing is also a cheap cop out.To be fair, we now live in an internet connected world where people value connected/live services. Generally improving the quality of such services requires knowing what your target audience wants to actually do with them.
Plus a lot of the type of telemetry that microsoft is collecting in windows 10 is stuff they've collected before, but just never told you about. Like did you know that in Windows 7 it records every time you open the start menu and reports back to microsoft what you actually did in it? Did you immediately close it? Launch a recent app? Open my computer? Yes, they know.
damianrobertjones - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
It's not like you cannot just use your hosts file or any number of options to disable the stuff. WHat other choice do you have other than Apple or Google? Both of them have other issues.inighthawki - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
"They are doing with Windows 10 Mobile the same as the always to with gaming."I'm not following... To what specifically are you referring to with respect to gaming?
QinX - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
With every new OS release, they state, we care about gamers! and proceed to do all sorts of stuff that shows they absolutely don't care about gamers.examples: No DX12 on Windows 8.1, trying to push UWP/windows store games with broken/lacking features.
Other notable examples from the past.
Games for Windows Live
refusing to bring console exclusives to PC, even if they might be 1 year later for extra cash grabbing.
The same is visible with their mobile division. First they buy Nokia and announce:"We will continue supporting all mobile segments" and now they cancel one thing after another: still awfull app support, the said they'd solve it with converter apps, 1 got canceled and they other you never hear of.
My friend keeps saying they are still going to do it, but I've given up. When my Lumia 1020 finally dies I'm going to go back to Apple. (Iphone 4 -> Lumia 1020 -> Iphone 7/7s)
inighthawki - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
>> No DX12 on Windows 8.1DX12 depends on numerous kernel-level changes in the WDDM 2.0 driver model that is not easily backported to older OSs. Given that Windows 10 is a free upgrade all the way back to Windows 7, I don't particularly see this as an issue since they've offered it to you for free and you willingly chose to not accept it.
>> trying to push UWP/windows store games with broken/lacking features.
There are only two lacking features: Overlay support (e.g. steam overlay) in UWP and no real ability to disable vsync. The former is a valid complaint, and they mentioned they're working on resolving this. The latter has actually already been backported to the November release.
http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-unlocks-fr...
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/d...
DXGI_SWAP_CHAIN_FLAG_ALLOW_TEARING
Tearing support is a requirement to enable displays that support variable refresh rates to function properly when the application presents a swap chain tied to a full screen borderless window. Win32 apps can already achieve tearing in fullscreen exclusive mode by calling SetFullscreenState(TRUE), but the recommended approach for Win32 developers is to use this tearing flag instead.
To check for hardware support of this feature, refer to IDXGIFactory5::CheckFeatureSupport. For usage information refer to IDXGISwapChain::Present and the DXGI_PRESENT flags.
---
The lack of crossfire/SLI support is commonly misattributed to an issue with UWP, but is in fact a combination of driver limitations and the games actually just not actually supporting it.
>> Games for Windows Live
Fair enough :)
>> refusing to bring console exclusives to PC, even if they might be 1 year later for extra cash grabbing.
They've slowly been doing this, though. Also a lot of console game engines are built and extremely highly optimized for consoles and it's actually a much larger pain than you think to port the game over to PC and actually work well. there's a reason why most studio contract out their ports to other studios.
As someone who does a lot of work in graphics and likes to write game in his spare time, I've found Microsoft's commitment to their games and graphics divisions to be absolutely top notch. Their tools are lightyears ahead of the competition and IMO the D3D API is much more pleasant to use than OpenGL and Vulkan. Some will disagree, but I stand by that claim.
I certainly agree that Microsoft's mobile game is lacking, but I would not in any way compare it to their games division which is, from everything I can see, exceptionally successful.
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
@inighthawki: "DX12 depends on numerous kernel-level changes in the WDDM 2.0 driver model that is not easily backported to older OSs."True. Though, its Microsoft's fault that this is misunderstood. They've used DX to drive sales of a new OS before. Also, their nearest competitor Vulkan is putting out the effort to work with previous versions of windows. I give Microsoft only a little sympathy in this situation.
inighthawki - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
It's a tradeoff. The DX kernel is really nice to have since it makes behavior across drivers more consistent and reliable, but at the same time has the drawback that it is an OS level component, and so new features will seldom, if ever, be backported.Vulkan (and other APIs like Mantle, OpenGL, etc) still run on top of the DX kernel, but they force the driver to implement all the missing features, sometimes with really awkward layers on top.
For example, memory management in the DX kernel in Windows 7 (actually for all WDDM 1.x, so Vista through 8.1) works by providing a list of allocations that need to be resident each time work is submitted to the GPU. The DX kernel's memory manager is then in charge of paging in that memory and running the workload. The problem of this design is that it has a high cost for a large number of allocations, and doesn't support bindless textures (You cannot submit a list of allocations if you do not keep track of which ones you bound to the pipeline that frame). Vulkan and Mantle handle this by simply creating a giant list of every allocation ever created and submitting it with ever piece of rendering work. The overhead can get pretty high.
WDDM 2/DX12 created a new memory management system where user mode can request a certain allocation to be part of the residency set or not, and can avoid the list entirely. They also expose per-application "budgets" which inform you about overall system memory pressure and when you can use more memory or should trim your working set to play nicely with everything else. This functionality is exposed by the ID3D12Device::MakeResident/Evict APIs.
So how does Vulkan support it? They just don't. That's how they support every OS - they just ignore certain things like memory management on the platforms where it exists. The closest alternative to evicting an allocation in other APIs is to just completely destroy the resource (freeing the memory for someone else), then recreate it and repopulate/copy the contents again later. Creating and destroying resources will be orders of magnitude slower than just inserting and removing from a list.
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
@QinX: "refusing to bring console exclusives to PC, even if they might be 1 year later for extra cash grabbing."Wait! Did you just suggest Microsoft not cash grabbing was a BAD thing? (0_0)
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
@inighthawki: "DX12 depends on numerous kernel-level changes in the WDDM 2.0 driver model that is not easily backported to older OSs."True. Though, its Microsoft's fault that this is misunderstood. They've used DX to drive sales of a new OS before. Also, their nearest competitor Vulkan is putting out the effort to work with previous versions of windows. I give Microsoft only a little sympathy in this situation.
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Need edit/delete feature.Flunk - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I used to be a Windows Mobile fan, but after how badly Microsoft handled the Windows Phone 7-8 transmission I bought a Nexus 5 and never looked back. Microsoft hasn't had a competitive Phone platform for years and they're so slow implementing features that the situation is never going to change. They're outclassed, they know it and they've given up trying.damianrobertjones - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Let us know when you can no longer update your Nexus 5! (No, not with cooked roms either)tim851 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
The Nexus 5 was released in 2013 and it's getting Android N, so will be supported until at least 2017.Is there a Windows device older than the Nexus 5 getting Windows 10 Mobile?
nikon133 - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link
Hmm... they had quite a few W10M updates in 2016, I don't think they gave up on mobile platform, really. And speaking of which, W10M went from glitchy to very stable on my work Lumia 830, since I did an upgrade in late 2015.My old Lumia 920 is not getting official W10M update. While I do find that disappointing, realistically 920 does feel a bit sluggish on 8.1 these days. Especially with load times. Apps run OK in general but it does take some chunky time to load Skype and some others... so eventually, if W10M would make my 920 even less responsive, then no thanks - I'd rather keep it on 8.1 while it lasts. Back in the days, I was really pissed when Apple nagged me into updating 3Gs to iOS6, rendering my phone from quite useful to pretty much dead horse. 3Gs was already 4 years old and I thought that leaving it with iOS5 would make much more sense. Here and now, 920 is 3.5 years old, so I guess the same applies.
It is not that I don't think W10M cannot be optimized for 920. It is supposed to run on some current entry Win Phones, which are dual core and in general probably not any more capable than 920. But. Considering how many 920 were sold and how many might still be in use, I can imagine that investing a lot of time into optimizing W10M for that hardware could be somewhat pointless exercise.
At this point I'm thinking about W10M as a "hobby" for MS. They are not successful but they will keep trying - simply because there are not to many other segments where they can grow. Eventually, I think that this new prime directive - premium devices and enterprise - do make most sense. Enterprises care less for apps - in fact many will prefer to have bare phones with only work tools installed, likes of email, Skype for Business etc. which are core apps and executed quite well by Microsoft. Then, since so many enterprises do run on Microsoft platforms and service, it should be reasonably easy for MS to integrate phones into this - without depending on others to develop or allow development (as with youTube, google Maps etc). And finally, Surface line has proved that MS can do premium and can make it sustainable, if niche - Surface branding carries good vibe with it, we are seeing (and selling) more Surfaces and clones to our customers than traditional computers these days, throwing their phone into that bandwagon makes a lot of sense, imho.
JamesDean17 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
If they would just kick off the guy that came out with the Metro interface in the first place and switch to an interface like Android or old Windows phones had back in the days that would pretty much solve their problems.Aside from that I think Microsoft has some Big Mole inside the company that's doing it's rivals evil work ruinning the companies products by pushing bad ideas forward.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Every last person on earth could see that Nokia going solely for Windows Mobile was going to run the company into the ground even further. Well, Stephen Elop, the Microsoft plant, ensured that.Now without even Nokia's good name, this is a dying ecosystem.
damianrobertjones - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
It was dead waaayyyyyyyyyyyy before WM appeared.Murloc - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Nokia was dying regardless, at least they made a last-ditch attempt.tim851 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
When Nokia committed to a monogamous Windows Phone relationship, the Android market wasn't dominated by Samsung yet. Being the biggest name in the phone industry, having the best camera technology, offline apps and some of the best phone designs they could have arguably made a better last-ditch attempt by going with Android.It was a huge gamble to go with WP exclusively, sweetened by a billion bucks out of Redmond.
Kepe - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I f***ing hate Microsoft! They completely ruined Nokia, and in the process tens of thousands of Finns are now unemployed. The city of Salo, whose thriving economy was completely based on all the Nokia related stuff that was located there, is in a huge financial crisis because thousands of well-paid Nokia workers are now unemployed or have moved elsewhere. If you ask me, I hope the entire board of directors and whatever else blood-sucking low-lives are in charge of what they do at Microsoft dies in a horrible ball of fire.Kepe - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Oh and let's just add that for all the "good" work mr. Eflop did at the helm of Nokia, he was awarded a bonus of millions of dollars when he left Nokia and went back to M$. All this injustice drives me completely mad...!! If I ever happen to see Eflop somewhere, I'm going to kick his sorry ass.JoeMonco - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
No you're not. You'll slink away like the scared little keyboard warrior that you are.id4andrei - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Forgive me but that's stupid. MS saved Nokia by buying its division in their attempt to become a 3rd player. Nokia outwardly refused Android comparing it to little kids pissin' in their pants to keep warm on an arctic day. And from certain technical standpoints they were right. Symbian and Meego were better than Android in stability but sucked in usability. Nokia's phone division and its sense of pride would have brought the entire Nokia down.Kepe - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Elop came from Microsoft, and suddenly right after that Nokia completely abandoned the very promising MeeGo project and all the devices they had planned and went 100% for Windows Mobile instead. After a couple of years of releasing products nobody wanted to use because of WinMo, Nokia's share prices had fallen enough for M$ to buy their phone division for cheap. After that, Elop went back to M$ and got millions of dollars as a reward for his good job of bringing Nokia down.name99 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
All that might be true, BUT it doesn't change the fact that pre-MS Nokia was running around like a chicken without a head in the face of iPhone and Android.To imagine that they could have achieved some sort of save, given everything their culture and history displayed is fantasy. The most likely path would have been the same as that of RIM.
You can't just claim that MeeGo was "very promising". Making OS's is brutally difficult; making mobile OS's, substantially more so; making mobile OS's that substantial numbers of people want to use is something that only two companies have ever actually achieved.
Even MS didn't get there, and they had a substantially better chance in terms of talent pool. But MS was crippled by an insistence on stupid ideas, and I suspect, if Nokia HAD ever got MeeGo out of the lab, they would likewise have been crippled by stupid ideas (in their case, most likely a constant dumbing down of the OS so that some version of it could run on dumbphones).
We're about to see a grand experiment on whether a third contender (Tizen on watches) can actually make a go of it. Are you betting they succeed? Because I certainly am not.
JKflipflop98 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Nokia was dead anyways. They had 0 compelling products and were circling the financial drain at the time of MS's purchase. If anything, Microsoft's cash infusion helped keep the lights on longer than would have been possible.fazalmajid - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
They were circling the drain due to Elop's boneheaded decision to go Windows and the rookie mistake of making the announcement before they had any products ready, thus osborning the business. With Android, they stood a slim chance.Ultimately it's Nokia's board that bears responsibility in choosing Elop for CEO, not Microsoft.
sorten - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Calm down. Microsoft likely kept the Nokia staff employed longer than Nokia would have managed if left alone, and then paid them generous severance packages at the end.Nokia, Motorola and RIM were all in the same boat - getting their asses handed to them by Apple at the top of the market and Android at the middle and bottom.
NitT - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
I think Nokia shareholder at that time would Microsoft. Once the deal announced Nokia share price almost double. It was a pity for the employee though.NitT - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Edit : Nokia shareholder at that time would love Microsoft.damianrobertjones - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
No, no they didn't ruin Nokia. Nokia was dead waaayyy before MS came along.melgross - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Realistically, it can't be believed that Nokia didn't know which OS, or even if they were going to use a new OS, before they hired Elop. That just doesn't wash.Much more likely, they decided this, consulting with Microsoft first. Then, they, Microsoft and Elop consulted on his hire.
Kepe - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
They had a new OS, MeeGo. They even released the N9 which used it. But they basically abandoned MeeGo before the N9 even got to market. So they released the phone and then announced that it was going to be the first and last MeeGo device. Such a great business strategy to try to sell a product you've already publicly declared abandoned and obsolete.Kepe - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Nokia also had plans for a MeeGo tablet and a MeeGo phone based on the N9, but with a physical keyboard. Those were both axed by Elop in favor of Windows Mobile devices. Which sold sooooo well that Nokia took back their former position as the smartphone market share leader! No wait..Elop also unleashed the burning platform memo, which basically told that all the S40 and S60 devices are going to be abandoned ASAP. That's some great marketing right there, when all your current smartphones are based on S40 and S60.
When Elop sent an e-mail telling tens of thousands of people that they are going to be laid off, he started it with "Hello there!"
Such a great leader...
boozed - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I nominate "streamlining" for euphemism of the year.Murloc - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
it's a post-acquisition classic along with "creating synergies" and "integrating our businesses".Michael Bay - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Doubling down should be a contender.sorten - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I bought a Lumia 950 back in November and I love it, but it seems like all news about Windows Mobile is bad news these days. I have noticed a nice uptick in app development with UWP apps, but it's not likely to save the platform. I'll pick the best of Apple / Android options in 2018.rocky12345 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I like how it is calling it streamlining when talking about laying off people and like it is a good thing. Why not streamline the board of directors by getting rid of dead weight there or better yet why can't these board of directors take a small decrease. It always seems to come down to laying off the common worker to bring the numbers up in the books. Anyways end of comment...lolruthan - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Its maybe good platform for just cheap smartphones, but for something better they are dead without android compatibility and even this it, were is any killer feature?I see only 1 way, refresh Winitel, because intel is also dying in phone market, make x86 phones with docking possibility and desktop Windows app compatibility in dock mode + add some not crippled tablets line..
But i think, its too much work for these lazy guys..
Amandtec - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
'I fell into a burning ring of fire,I went down, down, down and the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns,
The ring of fire, the ring of fire.'
-Johnny Cash
LiverpoolFC5903 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Nokia mistakesMistake 1: Abandoning Symbian/Series 60 phones as opposed to evolving the OS to make it more modern and competitive.
Mistake 2: Choosing Windows Phone instead of Android as the platform of choice.
Microsoft mistakes:
1) Releasing a half baked OS into the market in the form of WP7.
2)Abandoning WP7 owners when moving to WP8.
3) Giving up on the Lumia line in 2015 as opposed to capitalizing on the 3% odd market share they had and releasing compelling devices across the price ranges. What we were given is a couple of high end handsets and a glut of weak snapdragon 200/400 handsets as opposed to good balanced mid rangers. They could have gone on from 2014 and become a 10% player in 5 years, more than enough to make their business more than sustainable. Instead, they gave up on the Lumia line, did not release any compelling handsets in the mid end and generally lagged behind in software.
4) Abandoning WP8 owners (Lumia 925/Icon, Lumia 920, Lumia 1020, Lumia 1320, Lumia 928, Lumia 820, Lumia 720 and other phones with decent dual core processors and 1 GB RAM.
5) Not working closely with Intel on their mobile chipsets to achieve real convergence between full windows and windows mobile, through the ability to run legacy windows applications. Imagine a 6 inch Intel powered Phone that could run 85% of the programs/apps a laptop can on windows 10.
Imagine a full line of full Windows Handsets from 5 inches to 8 inches, all having Intel processors of different prowess'. That would have given them a real edge in the market.
Now Intel is quitting mobile and Windows phone is dead.
So many mistakes and poor strategic decisions. 2015-16 killed the Windows Mobile phone, due to MS' strategy. Remember 2013-14 and 14-15 were relatively good for WP at around 2.8-3.5% share depending on the source. They did not even TRY to capitalize on that.
Michael Bay - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Android would have buried Nokia just the same, as it buried everything that isn`t Samsung.LiverpoolFC5903 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Considering the brand equity enjoyed by Nokia in markets such as China, India and South East Asia, switching over to Android or even a mixture of ANdroid, WP and Symbian would have put them in a much better position to fight the oncoming Samsung wave.People used to buy Nokia phones because of the brand name. I am almost certain that Nokia fans who switched over to android handsets would have loved a Nokia branded Android phone that amrried Nokia's traditional strengths in imaging and build quality with the emerging ecosystem for android.
Even now they have a good opportunity to gain some of the amrket share they lost if they play it right.
name99 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
RIM had plenty of "brand equity" in a lot of countries, like Indonesia or South Africa. Didn't help them a damn thing."Brand equity" doesn't last longer than one refresh cycle if you don't have a competitive product, and all the evidence suggests that what Nokia had in store was NOT competitive.
JamesDean17 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
If they would just kick out the guy that came out with the Metro interface in the first place and switch to an interface like Android or old Windows phones had back in the days that would pretty much solve their problems.Aside from that I think Microsoft has some Big Mole inside the company that's doing it's rivals evil work ruinning the companies products by pushing bad ideas forward.
dsraa - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
This pretty sad....I see no future for WP or Lumia as a brand, and sorry to say its just plain sad. I have a lumia 640, and I don't know where I'll go after it. I don't want a flagship, and the 650 won't be offered on any major carriers like previous models were ( Lumia 1020, 930, 1520, 530, 535, etc). I know they had alot of models, but still...We are now down to less than %1 of the market...seriously, could you have failed any worse than Blackberry???? Really???
milkod2001 - Monday, May 30, 2016 - link
Considering how much cash has MS to make something to happen the result of less than 1% market share is EPIC FAIL. It tells you how incompetent management MS has. No matter how stupid decisions are made by few idiots,the rest of team probably just follow blindly like zombies without questioning. if something goes wrong they probably just pretend it never happened and all wait for some miracle instead of solving it :).Im just guessing here but i would really love to know what exactly happen to MS mobile OS division or whatever it was named. How difficult was to make sure MS mobile OS works perfectly fine on up to 10 almost the same Nokia Lumia phones? How difficult it was to make a free developing platform for developers and to pay a few grand to developers of most successful Android/iOS apps to make sure they make their apps for Windows too?
pav1 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
You see, there is no accountability. Or diligence.Or innovation. Or transparency. Or apology. Their penises are all micro and soft. They shoould have been split up into separate en-tities long ago.Belard - Thursday, June 9, 2016 - link
So many people lost their jobs. So much for joining the Microsoft family!The entire MS mobile biz has been a joke. They couldn't get anyone to really sell WP7, other than giving lots of money to Nokia. Then bought them out, then killed Nokia, but not the actual patents or important stuff. Wow. Who out there really makes a Windows Phone buy MS?
At the AT&T stores, the Windows phones are in the BACK corner next to feature phones, old tech phones and Blackberries. With Blackberry near the front - of the back. :)
WP7/10 UI is very good for mobile, but it never caught on. WPhone is a dead platform. I said it was dead with the failure of Windows 8 and onward.
There is less and less reason to buy Microsoft products. Win7 and Office 2010 is the LAST things I have or will every buy that is MS.
I totally skipped the W10 "free" upgrade scam.
Belard - Thursday, June 9, 2016 - link
(forgot to add)The only markets that MS/Lumina had was emerging markets like India and S.America with low-end phones. Otherwise... bleh.
MS, Nokia, HP and RIM/Blackberry didn't see the writing on the wall and tried to go their own way rather than go Android. Blackberry is doing OKAY since they have gone Android + security.
BiTesterEmailer - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
.BiTesterEmailer - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
.BiTesterEmailer - Thursday, July 21, 2016 - link
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