Chinese Phone Maker ZTE Turns Down WP7 292
An anonymous reader writes "Chinese smartphone maker ZTE, fifth largest in the world, has publicly criticized Microsoft for the lackluster market reaction to its Windows Phone 7 operating system and said that ZTE has no plans to develop a WP7-powered phone. That's bad news for Microsoft for its well-regarded but not well-received mobile OS."
Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
Good. I don't have WP7, but that's because I owned WM6.5. In order to import contacts you HAD TO HAVE Outlook. You couldn't import from a text file. A simple list of names and phone numbers required a full install of Outlook. FU
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WP6.5 has no relation to WP7.
WP7 can import your contacts from Facebook, from Windows Live Contacts, and other places, including google contacts.
WP7 is completely unrealted to WP6.5. It's a refresh and wipe and start-over. As such, I don't think it's yet ready for prime-time (still behind iPhone and Android in features, and will be playing catch-up for the next year or two... but also has some things that are simply better than iPhone or Android, because it started out fresh and doens't have historical ba
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but also has some things that are simply better than iPhone or Android,
Such as?
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Microsoft shill is shilling? "in the 1980s" - it sounds more like you were born after the 1980s...
The WP7 interface is different but not better as a consequence. Already, people have run into issues where some title was longer than the space available and intuitively they wanted to scroll over to see the rest, but "scrolling" just switched to the next panel instead, leaving the previous title behind. How good is that to the end user?
Re:Good. (Score:5, Funny)
The marketing phrase (1 [slashdot.org], 2 [slashdot.org]) appears to be "head and shoulders above the iPhone" - they seem to think that if they say that a lot people might believe it.
So yeah, it's got a standardised website commenter buzz phrase. iPhone and Android don't!
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"head and shoulders over the iPhone"
Does this means WP7 is like iOS, but with dandruff?!
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Apart from for instance the Nokia N900 and whatever else "Docs to Go" has been ported to.
The N900 was dropped like a hot potato (software updates stopped etc) with the new ex-Microsoft CEO at Nokia but I'm sure there is something somewhere more current that can do it.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
"dropped like a hot potato" (Score:2)
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Vertical market leverage/lockin
Attempted vertical market leverage/lockin, (Olive Office http://www.oliveoffice.com/ [oliveoffice.com] is free for personal use on Android)
Vertical market leverage/lockin
Present on every Android I have access to.
Copy/pasted from MS promo material, and not true. There's a few social networking activities that may be marginally easier, but it's more confusing and error-prone.
Apart from the leverage/lockin stuff, which all OSs have some element of (iTunes, Google Apps
Re:Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it brings an innovative new UI to the game (rather than the "me too" of Android's copying of iOS's aging UI).
Umm, I have used both, and while I see some similarities, Android is not a "copy" of iOS. Android brings widgets to the screen, in order to get info, I do not have to open an App. I have much greater flexibility in customising pages, The notification system is very different. I can even switch out the launcher for another if I want.
I see most of the phone UI's share some features, where they differ is implementation of details. When I used an iPhone (3gs) the thing I missed the most was the ability to have widgets on the screen. I used a task manager, and a weather display on my previous phone. I also didn't appreciate all of my apps spread across many screens. Although it got better when folders became available. The other thing I really didn't like was the lack of a file system. I couldn't easily access my files. Of course, not having removable memory was a pain as well. I won't even mention my hate-hate relationship with iTunes.
I have not used wp7. I would be very interested in someone listing some of the features in comparison to Android and iOS. I do understand that it may not support removable memory, although the onboard memory can be augmented in some phones by a micro-SD card. So, what does the windows phone bring to the fight?
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And why would you rather be in this "middle ground"? Other than the fact that ALL >2,000,000 UID /. accounts so far have been subtly trying to big up MS while subtly dismissing Apple and Google? Because of a camera button? Because it's linked to your XBOX? What use is that? The unlimited Zune thing sounded okay, but the Spotify app does exactly the same thing.
My Android has a camera button, though in fact I'd prefer it didn't. Happily it is disabled on my preferred custom ROM. The wonderful thing about t
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a WM6.5 phone and WP7 offers so much less with little prospect of that being corrected in the next two years.
Multitasking is gone, at least for third party apps. Microsoft promises it later.
No Flash. Microsoft promises it later.
Office Integration - no cut and paste? Microsoft promises it later. No aftermarket app that truly does the job, like SoftMaker - coming soon to Android, not WM7
With Hubs Microsoft seems to created ^h^h^h^h^h^h^hcopied a nice interface by using some of the best front end ideas (UI's) from their WM6 phone manufacturers like HTC and app developers like SPB, Resco, and others and abandoned these same developers by changing the Dev tools and programming language. Few of the developers of the apps I use say they are going to port current or develop new apps for WP7. The good news is that all apps (dozens) should be available on Microsoft's Windows Mobile Market Place or maybe they'll change the name since WM is out and WP is in.
Apple may have garden walls for its apps, but Microsoft will have cemetery plots.
Disclaimer: I've owned WM since it was CE, but Android's next for me.
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My LG Optimus (running Android) has a camera button but I prefer to use a shortcut icon to take pictures.
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You get all that for the price of a worse web browser plus nagging issues like no copy and paste (though the update to fix that should be out soon). If you don't use much in the way of Microsoft products, it's a wash. Developing for WP7 is decent, though some of the missing classes from Silverlight leave me scratching my head.
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WINE only works on x86 architectures, ie "Wine Is Not an Emulator"
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WP7 is definitely related to WP6.5. The entire UI/shell layer is new, but the core OS is still CE. Dump the emulator kernel image and you will find CE kernel files.
The start-over is from the user's perspective.
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Isn't that the only perspective that actually matters to users? Which is what we're talking about here?
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No not really. If there are no apps, there are no users. Developers, Developers, Developers is the siren call of Monkey Boy. He is right. There must be developers to have applications. Even with old fashioned CE under the hood, you can run WM 6.0 or WM 6.5 apps on WP 7. So developers have to learn new tools.
There are developers, apps, the sweet smell of success and money to be made over with the iPhone/iPad.
There are developers, apps, the sweet smell of success and money to be over with the Android.
There is
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- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those that understand binary, and those that don't.
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Woosh, his point was that Microsoft pissed in his Corn Flakes on their last visit, and they won't be invited back just because they put some new pants on.
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You can load contacts into an iPhone via Gmail if you want if you have it setup via activesync/exchange mode or a .99c app will let you import a csv..
You could do this with free and pay apps available for windows mobile 5.x-6.x as well.
smart executives holding out for more MS money (Score:5, Insightful)
LoB
Slow burn (Score:3)
Honestly, I think WP7 is going to be a slow-burn. It started out way behind, but it's a decent mobile OS as far as it goes, with a lot of potential.
It's going to take a while to find traction. First, it has to "catch up" with what's already there (and that will take a while). There are also people who might be interested but who are already under contract with other phones (I fit in this category). I'm not even elegible to think about buying one for another year or so.
So there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here, along with a late entry into a relatively saturated market. I think it's highly likely that they'll slowly grow over the next year or 18 months into third place, and likely stay there for several years... eating away at a slowly increasing share. I think the Nokia deal will seriously help this, but so will it's release this year on other networks (Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint here in the States).
As long as Microsoft keeps the updates coming, and pushes updated hardware specs for a second generation that will keep pace with where iOS and Android are going, things will continue to improve.
Re:Slow burn (Score:5, Insightful)
It's going to take a while to find traction.
That's a problem. If you can't show strong sales out of the gate (which both iPhone and Android did) then after a few months, developers start to realize that there is no market for WP7 apps and they put their efforts for the platform on hold indefinitely. Then you have a platform lacking in users and applications, and the users are waiting on the apps while the app developers are waiting on the users.
Worse yet, the phone manufacturers do the same thing -- if few people are buying WP7 phones then it makes no sense to pour R&D money into producing many different models with new features etc., and on top of that the Nokia deal has already said to all other manufacturers that they're second class customers. I assume here that Microsoft hopes Nokia will produce first class WP7 hardware in order to offset this, but the hardware by itself isn't sufficient, and the other manufactuers' business logic is sound -- if you continue to dump your money into R&D for a platform that nobody is buying, you're ultimately going to sink your operation. Or to put it another way, WP7 better not be a "slow burn" or else Nokia is going to have to defect to Android or exit the market, and either outcome would put a pretty serious pall on Microsoft's platform.
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It's quite ironic that Microsoft find themselves in exactly the same position in the mobile space as their desktop OS competitors have been stuck in.
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T-Mobile? What are you talking about? T-Mobile US carries the HTC HD7 and Dell Venue Pro, both WP7 devices, and has since the US launch day. They don't sell the DVP in their own stores, true, but they certainly do sell the HD7.
They don't advertise as heavily as AT&T, but it's certainly not true that they're only releasing this year.
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Honestly, I think WP7 is going to be a slow-burn. It started out way behind, but it's a decent mobile OS as far as it goes, with a lot of potential.
It's trying too hard to be an iPhone. Why would you buy it and then end up saying "I could have had all the same disadvantages with an iPhone and have it work, too"?
Story icon? (Score:4, Funny)
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I know this is a story about mobile phones, but why's that guy have such a comically oversized bluetooth headset? Stupid slashdot icons.
I think that's supposed to be Bill Gates demonstrating a development version of WP8.
Well-regarded? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to be obtuse, but where exactly is WP7 "well-regarded" beyond, say, WP7 commercials? I read a lot of reviews when it came out, and the most favorable ones seemed to view it as a passable mobile OS but short of features it'd need to really compete with the others. Saying "meh" or calling something mediocre doesn't strike me as regarding it well.
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Try it. UX wise it's easily on par with iOS and it's far better than android. Simply put, it's a well done, cohesive whole. It doesn't suck.
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The interface looks seriously goofy. What is it, 8 bit square two thumbs sized buttons on the whole screen? Ugly at best.
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Customer Satisfaction results seemed to be very positive. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-26/microsoft-says-it-shipped-2-million-windows-phones-last-quarter.html [bloomberg.com] Details are still a little sketchy, but as of January it seems to be "well-regarded" by most users.
Why Microsoft new products keep failing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft products become "must-have" only when they become the only platform available to run something the consumer wants.
Windows (Windows applications), Office (Office documments) and X-Box (X-Box games) are the main successful Microsoft products and all three follow this lock-in scenario.
Any other products, platforms or services they created (that don't depend on external content or software) were soon taken over by superior alternatives.
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Windows (Windows applications), Office (Office documments) and X-Box (X-Box games) are the main successful Microsoft products and all three follow this lock-in scenario.
I suspect that if you went back in time before Xbox360 you might find yourself saying the same things about how Xbox would never gain traction, MS is not a go-to company for savvy customers wanting cool and good stuff, etc.
Today, Xbox is a serious player in their field and probably will remain so for the next generations of consoles and other entertainment.
I easily see the same thing happening with WP7, especially when Nokia starts pushing their new products with MSWindows. Slashdot readers may be really cl
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Slashdot readers may be really clever, but the markets involve a lot more people than just Slashdot readers.... Microsoft and Nokia are established brands of enormous value and for that reason what these companies say has a good chance to stand.
They are both fading stars. Neither has anywhere near the brand value of Apple. And then Android has the advantage of being on many manufacturer's phones, many of them inexpensive.
Hard to see right now how the Microsoft and Nokia joint venture can seriously compete.
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Your guess is as good as mine. Let's look at this again in 3 years.
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P.S. the Xbox success was more of a failure on Sony's part than Microsoft winning on their own merits.
Nintendo concentrate on young children and family entertainment. Which meant Microsoft was competing with Sony for the older and more serious gamers. PSII vs Xbox was a clear win for PSII. But Sony screwed up with PS3 by making it too expensive to manufacture, thus meaning its retail price was too high compared to Xbox 360. Xbox 360 had the reasonably priced mature gamers console market to itself for a long
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P.S. the Xbox success was more of a failure on Sony's part than Microsoft winning on their own merits.
That's a bunch of crap. I bought both PS2 and Xbox and the Xbox had better games... IMNSHO. I didn't buy PS3 because by that point it was clear that Sony is the Green Day of electronics companies; buy our stuff, come to worship us, and we will spit on you. I do have a 360. Probably next generation I will only buy Nintendo; I had more trouble finding games I wanted in this generation than any previous generation. Wii Bowling is the best video game ever. I said it.
To fragment or not to fragment. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with WM7 for manufacturers is that with the fear of fragmentation Microsoft went ahead and :
1 Dictated the hardware, so as manufacturer don't have much say on how the device going to look, no small screen with dedicated keyboard or such designs, so in essence no real distinction between one manufacturer’s phone to another. This would not be a problem if it was not for the second point.
2 Manufacturers are not allowed to change the UI to place there own “look & feel” to the phone. So end of the day one WM7 phone is exactly like the other.
We all know a HTC (Android), Apple (iOS), or Motorola (Android) phone just by looking at it. But all the WM7 phones look and feel the same. For some people that is selling point but for a manufacturer it not. How can you make someone buy your WM7 phone and not your competitions.
I do think that ZTE will sell WM7 phones they just want a cash incentive to do so.
Personally I don't like the WM7 blocky interface or the half words that break to show that there is a next screen, and I do think Microsoft did a bad thing aiming something that you cant really customize to gamers 1st (Xbox Live). They should have targeted a market that hates customization – the work place, in other words they should have build better Office/ Exhange/ Sharepoint integration instead, cause that is where they can seriously 1 up the competition.
Re:To fragment or not to fragment. (Score:4, Informative)
There are exactly 8 requirements phones must meet to run WP7:
Manufactuers are free to add dedicated keyboards, larger screens, faster processors, more memory, better screen tech, different colors, more buttons, better cameras, different materials, etc. The real limitation imposed on manufacturers is that they can't create a cheap phone which can't handle the OS, which they seem to love to do with Android phones.
And as far as UI customization, the manufacturers might not appreciate that, but I sure do. I'd prefer to keep the default UI. And manufacturers are free to add their own hub if they so choose.
THE REAL SCOOP ON WINPHONE 7 SERIES FAIL !! (Score:2, Interesting)
â--¦Capacitive, 4-point multi-touch screen with WVGA (480x800) resolution
However, no way to get more than 1 point using standard framework (silverlight)
â--¦1 GHz ARM v7 "Cortex/Scorpion" or better processor
No native code so compiler optimized/programmer-tightened assembly, is not available; not possible to do any cpu-critical coding - at all
â--¦DirectX9 rendering-capable GPU
Within constraints, like 2000x2000 max pixel area; poorly if at all documented are these thing since so l
WP7 (Score:2)
Well regarded?? (Score:2)
I dont know where this comes from except a couple of known fanboys and paid bloggers. Amongst normal people and people in the mobile industry, WP7 is anything but well regarded. Its just a huge big "meh..." and thats it. An also ran without anything even remotely interesting, but at the same time lacking many things we take for granted in a mobile phone.
With WP7 i cant friggin set different volumes, on a smartphone! Multitasking only avaliable if my lips are up against Microsofts bottom. No copy/paste, WP7
The biggest problem with WP7... (Score:3)
Is that it has all the vendor lock in of Apple (Closed Source, one App store) with all the (hardware) fragmentation of Android. Atleast Android and iOS has one of two bad things; WP7 has both.
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You know a device is bad when even China doesn't want to touch it (and clone it).
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Who would have purchased an android phone 6 months after launch? Who would have predicted that Android market share would outpace iphone market share as quickly as it has?
Right now MS is moving at a glacial pace with windows 7 phones, which isn't encouraging for their business, but the one thing you don't want to be is a 3rd party supplier and find out you've made enemies with the new big dog in town. In 12 or 18 months with nokia on board MS could have a vastly superior product to anything else on the ma
Re:well regarded ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who would have purchased an android phone 6 months after launch? Who would have predicted that Android market share would outpace iphone market share as quickly as it has?
Ummm anyone who was watching the market. There was clear signs that Android would be the next Sybian when the Open Alliance formed back in 2007 made up of many mobile device and chipset manufacturers. Then there were clearer signs in 2008 when another 14 companies joined the alliance which now pretty much included every handset manufacturer except Nokia. This very site has been praising the platform ever since it was announced that it would be open source and based of the 2.6 kernel.
The parent was right, given what we know about WP7 who would buy it? 6.5 was UI disaster of epic proportions, 6.0 was an inconsistent slow buggy mess which spent more time with an hourglass on the screen then it did making calls. On top of that, up until Nokia joined the Windows camp the only major handset provider pushing windows 7 phones was HTC, and even they are selling at glacial pace, and few manufacturers are pushing the platform.
Not to mention that the ads Microsoft push as of late are not only crap in quality, but also testing new waters such as at the start of Youtube videos providing them not with positive advertising, but instead a stigma of "the company who helped ruin youtube" and not just youtube. The only place I've seen microsoft ads is where I don't expect them, and haven't previously seen advertising.
Re:well regarded ? (Score:5, Funny)
"There was clear signs that Android would be the next Sybian"
I know some people love their phones, but that's getting into Jerry Springer territory.
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Re:well regarded ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention that the ads Microsoft push as of late are not only crap in quality, but also testing new waters such as at the start of Youtube videos providing them not with positive advertising, but instead a stigma of "the company who helped ruin youtube" and not just youtube. The only place I've seen microsoft ads is where I don't expect them, and haven't previously seen advertising.
Microsoft's ad problems are a whole 'nother issue - I have a friend who's a copywriter and has recently worked for Microsoft. Even after the disastrous ad campaigns of the past decade, they still require broad consensus before approving a new ad. Even worse, their division heads often co-opt the process altogether - basically rejecting the professional ad copy and then writing their own.
It's something I see with faculty at my university a lot - because they are smart in one specific area, they seem to think that makes them experts on all topics, no matter how diverse from their actual area of expertise.
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You mean television isn't real?
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Of course, two months later and so far I've run into the "goes flat in t
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It is heads and shoulders above the iPhone in almost any respect.
It's funny how that phrase - that EXACT phrase - is creeping into multiple comments on this discussion. You'd almost think it was coordinated.
Re:well regarded ? (Score:4, Informative)
After a couple of weeks using product A, it replaced product B as my primary device. It is a brand of shampoo above product B in every respect.
It's not even subtle. A better shill comment would be:
I really liked product B, but I found feature X to be a bit cumbersome to use and I really missed feature Y. Product A has some faults, but feature X is a lot easier to use, and it has feature Y.
An ever better shill comment would be expanding on one of these points, for example explaining that using feature X on product B required this sequence of actions, while on product A it only required a shorter sequence, and explaining why anyone should care about feature Y. Of course, at this point, you're getting dangerously close to giving an honest review, which may not be what your corporate overlords are looking for.
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Just the browser makes WP7 bad as far as what I would use it for. Go to the acid3 test in mobile Safari, then in WP7's bastardized IE version. Safari renders it correctly and gets 100/100 on my phone. IE produces garbage and a low score.
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As far as I am concerned, ZTE is exhibiting amazingly good taste.
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Actually, ZTE are currently pumping out surprisingly decent Android handsets. For the past few months the ZTE Blade (AKA Orange San Francisco, Base Lutea and possibly a few other names) has been the go-to handset for Android newbies here in Europe (UK, Germany, Switzerland)... cheap, good specs (same as a HTC Legend but with more RAM and higher screen res), awesome.
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I've watched the marketing attempts. Overall I'd have to say their marketing is much better than WP7. It could be that people aren't buying windows phones not because they are bad phones but because the droid and iphones are better. One thing you've got to remeber is, while you as a developer may love wp7 that means nothing at all to the people that buy phones.
Re:Microsoft's "Problem" (Score:5, Informative)
One thing you've got to remeber is, while you as a developer may love wp7 that means nothing at all to the people that buy phones.
This is an excellent point. Microsoft is accustomed to having huge market share and trying to woo developers to their platforms (and away from other platforms) by making reasonable developer tools (which don't produce cross-platform binaries). In this case how easy it is to develop for WP7 is almost totally irrelevant right now, because developers aren't going to want to spend resources writing non-portable applications for WP7 if nobody is buying the phones.
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Overall I'd have to say their marketing is much better than WP7.
It should be.
They've paid half a billion dollars for it. http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dollars-windows-phone-7/ [techcrunch.com]
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Even if Windows phones are just as good as droids and iphones, the current market shares can be the determining factor in purchase decisions. Maybe what MS needs is to have WP7 be better than its competition. And that is going to be hard to do.
Re:Microsoft's "Problem" (Score:5, Funny)
I have found the OS to be fairly well engineered,
So are bricks, which is all your phone'll be useful for after their next update...
Re:Microsoft's "Problem" (Score:5, Informative)
+1 for this one; got a genuine giggle from that!
Having been involved on the fringes of a microsoft-backed WP7 project (sub-contractor to the sub-contractor to the sub-contractor kinda deal), I can say the OS, ok it's not iOS, but it's a lot better than what you'd expect from a Microsoft mobile effort. But the hardware-software interlink is awful, shoddy and downright crap, it has NOTHING on the iPhone experience, and where it really, really falls down is the fact that, MS-backed (financed) projects aside, not much is being made because it's almost as easy as iOS to write for, with no actual plus points; no community, no customers, no hype, no nothing.
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I can say the OS, ok it's not iOS, but it's a lot better than what you'd expect from a Microsoft mobile effort.
They could use that in their adverts.
"WP7: It's a lot better than you'd expect from a Microsoft mobile effort."
Add a little end of advert jingle and it's a winner.
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The developer tools might be decent but the finished product of what they shipped now is still 5 steps behind what everyone else is offering.
I'm not a massive Microsoft hater. I'm just being honest. A decent API for developing apps, and a decent interface (Metro) don't overcome the massive shortcomings, not to mention it is also easy to develop iPhone and Android apps currently.
Windows Mobile is a massive sinking ship.
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Linux is everywhere right now. It can be found in mobile phones, TVs, settop boxes, blu ray players, NAS, not to mention all the servers that run it. OK these devices are not running Ubuntu but from where I'm sitting Linux has taken over the world. It couldn't get traction on the desktop for a number of reasons but now that the desktop is becoming less relevant Linux is coming to the fore in a big way.
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If Google prevails over Oracle in the "java" lawsuit started by Oracle, Microsoft (or their favorite proxy) is likely to come up with their own patent
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You are being disingenuous with that quote. The article is about comments made by "Wu Sa, ZTEâ(TM)s U.K. director of mobile device operations", but the words you quoted are a comment by the author of the article, not by the above ZIE executive. They are words by someone whose livelihood is following Microsoft.
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It sure is a marketing problem, "-- the drop the phone in the urinal ads --".
Seriously now, they probably meant "social stigma" when they said "marketing problem".
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Re:Microsoft's "Problem" (Score:5, Informative)
You're confused or uninformed (or misinformed).
The updates you refer to in (1) and (2) are the same update. They had some issues getting out the door and getting the update train running. Hopefully that's all smoothed out now.
And the first "real" update is scheduled for next week. It includes copy/paste, faster app launching, and a few other features.
A major update is scheduled for next fall, that includes a lot of new features, from multi-tasking to IE9/HTML5 support, etc. So yes, they DO have a plan to 'catch up', and in fact have been pretty clear in communicating it (they've showed off the fall update recently, demonstrating many of its new features).
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Microsoft is not out of the game yet. I can't see a lot of people buying a WP 7 in the next 4 to 6 months, hoping that those updates do happen this year. Most of the people I know who have been WM 5 or WM 6 users have jumped ship to Android. My boss was sick and tired of having the phone lock up at the oddest times and it taking over a minute to reboot a phone. There is no excuse for that. It may very well be the fault of the hardware manufacturer, not of Microsoft, but the results are still the same. I don
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That update which is coming "soon" was previously scheduled to be available in january... Saying something is coming just doesn't cut it, the proof is when its actually delivered.
They might not even release updates at all, the Kin was due to be updated and that never happened.
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There have been to many cases of Microsoft promising something to be in the next release, but then taking ages to deliver on that promise, if at all, that I no longer believe them. I drank the cool aid when they announced Chicago/Windows'95, but stopped believing the fairy tales somewhere around 2000.
I still buy their stuff occasionally, but not based on promises, but on actually working hardware/software. And even then you can't be sure that your PlayForSure music will keep playing.
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But the Zune had almost no marketing at all. The only ads I ever saw were some late night ads on Adult Swim, which was for Zune Pass and didn't even show the device.
By contrast, I've seen WP7 ads on facebook and around the internet, I've seen TV ads, and hear at least one WP7 ad on the radio every time I'm in the car.
Eheh (Score:5, Interesting)
You are aware that the techies don't see ads on the internet, don't watch ad blocks on the tv and have an mp3 player in their car?
Who exactly are they advertising to? The late late late adopters?
The problem is also from my own experiences is that people who are at the lower end of the market tend to have bad windows experiences. They don't have a choice for their desktop OS but are hardly going to want their phone to be as malware riddled as their desktops.
MS just doesn't have a rep.
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Kept charged it even has 99.7% uptime in a leap year!
Re:Microsoft's "Problem" (Score:4, Interesting)
The trouble with the Zune? They (a) put wifi in (b) didn't put a web browser in. They could have had the iPod Touch beaten by six months and made everyone realise they could have a full working Internet in their pocket! ... and they just didn't. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
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you (and almost everyone here) forget that MS in its infinte wisdom did not even launch let alone promote the Zune in Europe. wtf? If it was such a hot music player why on earth didn't hey do that.
Did they offer it in Asia?
Did they offer it in S. America?
The Zune was a failure full stop. It might have had some advantages over the iPod but when the majority of the worlds population can't buy one then it has to be regarded as a failure. MS never explained why they didn't launch it worldwide.
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Re:Microsoft's "Problem" (Score:5, Interesting)
Second time in two days that meme has surfaced. To be fair, though, there does seem to be a pattern to these things
1: News story breaks impacting on Microsoft in some way
2: Story gets posted to Slashdot.
3: A thoughtful, well-written and strongly pro-Microsoft comment gets quickly posted and rapidly modded up to +5
4: The rest of slashdot gets to read the article, and it quickly becomes apparent that the early post isn't at all representative of the majority opinion on Slashdot.
This seems to happen fairly consistently. which tends to suggest that Microsoft advocacy on this board is very well organised. So it's not unreasonable to assume that some degree of astroturfing is going on.
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3: A thoughtful, well-written and strongly pro-Microsoft comment gets quickly posted and rapidly modded up to +5
4: The rest of slashdot gets to read the article, and it quickly becomes apparent that the early post isn't at all representative of the majority opinion on Slashdot.
Moderation isn't an "Agree/Disagree" vote, I don't know why you think it should be. To me this sounds exactly like how well reasoned minority opinions should be treated to get meaningful discussion.
It's pretty much establish canon that slashdot is extremely anti-Microsoft, like "The only thing Micro$oft would make that wouldn't suck is a vacuum cleaner. It would blow." category. Reality is a lot more complex, many people here probably manage Microsoft servers or desktops and think they're all right. Or at l
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I know they've sold some but I've never seen anyone use one. Lot's of droids, a few blackberries and iphones, but never seen a win7 phone in the wild. But then I use a motorola tracphone and love it. It's a great phone, lousy computer, shitty camera, bad mp3 player, but makes and receives calls so well that I can't bring myself to part with it.
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Wait, what? Dammit!
Re:Alternative... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's backed by MS and everyone likes to kiss some Microsoft butt in hopes of making big money. It's probably just a negotiation ploy to get Redmond to sweeten the deal for them. They know that MS is going to have to open the wallet and spend big to get back in the mobile game against the droids, berries, and iphones.
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Or in other words, their new CEO isn't an ex-microsoftie.