Microsoft To Abandon Windows Phone? 505
symbolset writes "Microsoft has had some trouble as of late getting adoption of their mobile products. Even Bill Gates has said it was inadequate. Despite rave reviews of Windows Phone in the press it has failed to get double digit share of the smartphone market. Now comes reports from WMPoweruser that WP8 will lose mainstream support in July 2014."
oh (Score:4, Interesting)
oh christ was my first thought to that....
I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft but I do feel for Nokia and the bus that their staff were thrown under.
I'd be kinda surprised if this is true though, Microsoft are known for flaunting failed products for years to save face. This would be another reason to add to the list for why metro sucks ... it's pretty sad that the whole windows ecosystem was imho designed from the mobile up rather than an extension of the desktop.
This sounds like FUD though and for once it's not coming out of Redmond.
BS Article title (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Headline title is sensational (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand the OS support date is reset with any never version of the OS, so a Windows Phone 8.5 or 9 update in November 2013 would bring along its own 18 month of security updates. Microsoft has already promised all current Windows Phone 8 handsets will receive the next major version of the operating system.
8.5 comes this summer. Some of the phones released this summer are already being promised to work with 9.0 which comes out next summer. All windows phones will be able to update to the next version at least which then updates the security updates. Some phones will even go longer. This is not that much different from Android updates. I would speculate 3rd party unlocks will allow updating to 9 on the current 8 phones that the manufacturers don't update.
Re:Perception is Reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows Phone 7.5 still works fine. Windows Phone 8.0 works even better (more features). I don't know anybody with a Windows Phone (myself included) that feels that they have gotten "burnt" from the product. Not that it's relevant anymore, but that link you provided wasn't exactly 100% accurate, either. Your "harsh truth" is really anything but.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Interesting)
Not going to believe it until/unless they stop selling the phones (and w/o a new version being offered).
All said, Microsoft likely makes enough money from the Great Android Extortion, so even if they stopped distributing WP8 tomorrow morning, they'd still make money hand-over-fist.
(OTOH, how would you think Nokia would react if such a thing happened?)
Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fixed that (Score:4, Interesting)
Now I know what we all think about actually reading articles around here, but,
Microsoft has already promised all current Windows Phone 8 handsets will receive the next major version of the operating system.
WP8 compatibility - forward and backward (Score:4, Interesting)
While WP7 is different from WP8, WP8 is based on the common architecture of NT 6.2 which will be used as the basis of current and future Windows OSs. So while WP8 may have broken compatibility w/ 7, the same need not necessarily be true of WP 9 and beyond.
I do agree that Microsoft should have had a way to upgrade WP7 phones w/ WP8. Although I wonder to what extent the carriers or OEMs (like Nokia) might have to say about that. For the OEMs, such an ability would simply mean that new phones not be bought, while for the carriers, it could involve unlocking the phones (which in the US would mean that a carrier, having financed a phone, now has to eat the costs while that phone can be used to switch to a competitor).
not just ms, but apple too, and also linux-wth-gnu (Score:3, Interesting)
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And the sad thing with the latest iteration of the apple OS is that Mountain Lion has turned into an iOS-copy-fest rather than leaving in the features that make a desktop useful like scroll-bars that stay in place, and not having to fucking scroll in order to see the scroll bars in the first place. That is a serious fail, imho, and enough for me to tell my parents not to upgrade their 10.6 machines up. Me, I'm linux-debian-knoppix (with gnu in there, of course), so I could say it doesn't affect me. But I read of all of the fury with gnome's meanderings and the first round of KDE 4.0 screwing up all of the features that 3.x had already gotten right.
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I played with older versions of knoppix with kde 3.x branches (I think it was a knoppix 5 distro) and I like how the desktop maintains state between shutdowns when you install it to hard drive. The new Knoppix 7.04 using LXDE does not maintain state between boot-ups. I put one of my mom's computers on Knoppix 5.something with KDE 3.something and she loves the fact that she can shut down with editor windows in a document and browser tabs open (not just hibernate or sleeeeeep) and actually reboot back into the work environment which she left open. It's fucking astounding when a desktop is done right.
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Unfortunately, all of the key gnu/linux desktop guys (kde, gnome, lxde), ms windows, and apple are all walking down the wrong path by bringing the wrong
(a) tablet-touch and
(b) phone-os-metrofication and
(c) clean-look-ma-no-widgets-apple-without-scrollers-or-buttons and
(d) look-i-can-fuckup-ubuntu-like-the-big-os-boys mistakes.
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520 and 720 (Score:3, Interesting)
Nokia alone is doing
35m for 2012
55m for 2013
85m for 2014
HTC did another 12m or so in 2012 and is expecting growth.
Carriers pushed through huge subsidies all during 2012 and Verizon continues to see Microsoft as key to their business strategy.
What sort of product doing 40% year-over-year growth, good reviews, moderate or better OEM support, so or better developer support, and a good fit for Microsoft strategy gets cancelled?
This article sounds like flamebait to me.
Re:WP8 compatibility - forward and backward (Score:2, Interesting)
Note the upgrade methods means 32-bit Windows 7. 64-bit Windows 7 can't run 16-bit DOS and Windows apps (though it's obviously possible to engineer a way to execute them on a 64-bit OS, given Wine on 64-bit Linux can run 16-bit Windows apps).
Re:Er, that likely means they'll be on WP9 (Score:3, Interesting)
That's odd, because I keep encountering apps that worked on older devices that claim they won't work on my Android 4.2 devices. Maybe that's a certification issue rather than a real compatibility problem, but it shows that upgrading isn't 100% perfect.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, windows phone doesn't need articles in crappy tech blogs to inspire FUD.
Windows 8 is a market place dud. Like WebOS before it. No matter how much tech bloggers like you, if the market doesn't like you, pack it up. It would be one thing if they had a niche and made money. Problem is, they're not making money on windows phone. Microsoft cant afford to keep flushing cash away.
How many windows 8s can they afford? They're not a well oiled machine like Apple, nor are they like Amazon or Google and use other lines of business to keep themselves afloat while they try things in other markets.
The major problem Microsoft faces is that outside of enterprise, who *needs* Microsoft?
Re:... not the engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
> Most of the Nokia engineers I know are self-starters, and most of them can't stand Ballmer's manner
Sure, some laid off Nokia engineers joined Jolla [jolla.com] to take MeeGo forward.
No matter how self starting you think they are, they still have careers to build and families to feed.
Ones who were shoved into new hands, such as Symbian engineers shifted to Accenture (a consulting company full of MBAs), took it without a peep and are suffering quietly. Microsoft, with all of its faults, values engineers.