Neowin: Microsoft's Windows Phone Business 'Is Dead' (neowin.net) 180
An anonymous reader quotes Neowin:
If you've been expecting Microsoft to issue a press release formally announcing the end of its Windows phone business, you're probably hoping for a bit too much. But make no mistake: its phone hardware business is dead. RIP-dead. Send-flowers-dead. Worm-food-dead. Some fans, and even some in the media, have consistently refused to acknowledge this, despite the clear signs in recent quarters. Now, Microsoft's own figures, and its statements regarding its phone division, should make it irrefutably clear that there is no life left in its Windows phone business.
During the quarter ending in December, Microsoft's phone revenue dropped to just $200 million, which included some sales of feature phones, before the company completed its sale of that business unit to Foxconn in November. That figure has now dropped to virtually nothing... Today, as Microsoft published its earnings report for Q3 FY2017, it revealed that its "Phone revenue declined $730 million". Based on its earlier financial disclosures, that means the company's phone hardware revenue fell to just $5 million for the entire quarter ending March 31, 2017. During Microsoft's earnings call today, its chief financial officer, Amy Hood, acknowledged this, stating that there was "no material phone revenue this quarter". The outlook for the next few months is similarly bleak, as Hood predicted "negligible revenue from Phone" in the coming quarter.
During the quarter ending in December, Microsoft's phone revenue dropped to just $200 million, which included some sales of feature phones, before the company completed its sale of that business unit to Foxconn in November. That figure has now dropped to virtually nothing... Today, as Microsoft published its earnings report for Q3 FY2017, it revealed that its "Phone revenue declined $730 million". Based on its earlier financial disclosures, that means the company's phone hardware revenue fell to just $5 million for the entire quarter ending March 31, 2017. During Microsoft's earnings call today, its chief financial officer, Amy Hood, acknowledged this, stating that there was "no material phone revenue this quarter". The outlook for the next few months is similarly bleak, as Hood predicted "negligible revenue from Phone" in the coming quarter.
But has Netcraft confirmed it? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So all Lumias will stop working? (Score:4)
If one has a Lumia, then one can still use it in the ways that one uses a cellphone. Talk, send text messages, use Bing maps for directions, listen to music, watch videos... I don't see any of that stopping. Is there an en masse migration of services to VoLTE-only that would make a Lumia unusable? So that it couldn't be used for Legacy GSM networks?
I agree that the Windows Phone platform has been stagnant, but that only matters if one is heavily into apps and is seeing them pulled from the Windows Store. But for the basic things that a phone does, Windows Phone is still fine. While there were complaints about the original tiles in Windows Phone 8, the look & feel of Windows 10 Mobile has been pretty fluent, and the only thing it lacks is a good app ecosystem. Heck, I'd argue that it's the best in work environments if Windows is the main OS being used - both for servers as well as laptops
Re:So all Lumias will stop working? (Score:4, Insightful)
It won't stop working today, but quickly things will become deprecated and unusable. Things like the web browser will stop rendering pages correctly as standards move on. Things like the app stores will start blocking the device. Things like Bing Maps and other utilities that are tied to the device will stop supporting it. Eventually other APIs will move on and no longer work with the device (like ActiveSync). Of course, somewhere in between IT departments will block it form checking email and syncing calendars/contacts. If Blackberries are of any predictor, this could happen all in the course of a couple of years. You will be left with a smart phone that can do phone calls and text messages.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why would they do that? It costs them virtually nothing to simply leave it running and continue to get the business of the users that are left,
They shut down the old thing to induce users to buy the new thing. Microsoft, Google, whoever.
Re: (Score:2)
They'd do that if there's something new that they were introducing. Like forcing Windows 7 or 8 users to go to Windows 10. But it's not the case here, where they don't have a succession product. Which is why what Hairyfeet says makes sense: they can just leave it alone and let current Lumia owners continue to use the store to get whatever they want. Other vendors might pull dated stuff from the store, but Microsoft needn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would they do that? I[...] its still gonna be profitable with as little as they have to support it.
Except... if there's a security breach that affects a lot of devices at a time when MS has already turned those development/maintenance teams into a skeleton crew, or those people already decided that working in legacy tech is not as interesting as everyone else's job at Microsoft and elsewhere.
MS should definitely keep support alive for x years after the last device they put on sale, and hope that x+1 years from now buyers have moved on rather than complain about lack of service.
As the eternal optimist Nok
Re: (Score:2)
If one has a Lumia, then one can still use it in the ways that one uses a cellphone. Talk, send text messages, use Bing maps for directions, listen to music, watch videos... I don't see any of that stopping. Is there an en masse migration of services to VoLTE-only that would make a Lumia unusable? So that it couldn't be used for Legacy GSM networks?
The heading and summary use the word "Business" several times. I don't feel that anything more than the end of the phone hardware business was implied?
Re: (Score:2)
If one has a Lumia, then one can still use it in the ways that one uses a cellphone. Talk, send text messages, use Bing maps for directions, listen to music, watch videos... I don't see any of that stopping.
A +5 comment above yours shows exactly why that will stop working. Much of the world depends on the latest shiny. Your OS will rot, your apps will update ... right until they don't. When they don't update you'll no longer be able to send text messages or talk (e.g. Facebook Messenger app which depends on Windows 10 and won't work if its out of date).
Maybe your browser will keep working. Maybe a POODLE style vulnerability is detected and the internet stops serving you sites like they did for IE6 or Android 2
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
From what I understood about Continuum, it's changing b/w desktop and tablet modes when something like a Surface is attached to, or removed from, the keyboard.
I've not seen that come to phones, nor do I see it as essential. As it is, Lumias are ARM based, and so any software - like MS Office - has to be specifically there for both platforms. Where they are useful is that if one uses OneDrive to store documents but needs to access them w/o their laptop, like say at an airport, the Lumia comes in handy.
How is this possible? Gartner said otherwise (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
You have to be fair to Gartner, they were not aware of Windows anal probe 10 and thus could not take it into account. Nobody likes perves, a lesson everyone except the arse holes at M$ learned in primary school, really, really uncool behaviour ask any reasonable child and they will tell you exactly that. So M$ is killing itself in the consumer market first in smart phones and now the XBone is following suit losing market share to Sony and XBone is the popular name for it, so not seen as cool what so ever. W
Obligatory Reference (Score:3)
RIP-dead. Send-flowers-dead. Worm-food-dead.
"It's pining!" [youtube.com]
"It's not pining, it's passed on! This is an Ex-Phone!"
Microsoft business plan. (Score:2, Troll)
Neowin: The PRo MS anti slashdot admits (Score:4, Informative)
I use that forum too and if it says it is dead that means alot.
I was hoping it would take around 20% marketshare just for healthy competition even if I do not use it anymore as this would benefit everyone. :-(
It is not WindowsCE (which sucked) and was a much different and better OS. It usess the same kernel as Windows Server 2012 R2! I loved the UI. Windows 8 rocked on a phone and the back and forward feels more natural than Android. It was stable and very lightweight and ran easier on slower but battery saving cpus. The tiles give you the notifications for news events perfect at a quick glance.
MS got it backwards with a start menu on WindowsCE and a phone UI on the desktop. Windows Phone should have come out in 2009 if it were to survive. Also WIndows Universal Apps or UWP was not mature until last year! If this was there in 2009/2010 it could have had significant marketshare and be a much needed 3rd player and kept IT and programmers jobs and not made --webkit CSS extensions standard.
My mom who is 68 years old and has dying eye sight and is techno illerate loves her $50 Windows Phone Nokia 640 unlocked. No way could Android run as good for that cheap for $50. The big tiles make it easier for her to see and understand what each tile does.
But it makes no sense to buy one as I did not want to invest $500 into a dead platform so I went back to Android 18 months ago. Even if Neowin of all places admits it now it is time to move forward. Ironically this is what killed Unix for Windows. People wanted standards and no one wanted to pay lots of money for Unix or a Commode as everyone was using Windows. Now MS got hit in reverse by the same logic.
Re: (Score:3)
And the irony is, they completely fucked over their PC GUI just to try and unify it with this mobile shit, and now the whole reason for it is basically gone. OK there's still tablets but they're nowhere near a big enough market to justify butchering the Win7 interface. Windows 10 could've been so much better.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, like Billy said above, they'd have done well had they come out w/ that Metro UI for phones back in Windows Phone 6 or 7, and had they come out w/ the current Windows 10 interface in Windows 8. That would have covered both touchscreens and legacy PCs
Good riddance! (Score:5, Interesting)
As we witness the end of this sad tale, let us not forget that Microsoft tried to hijack Nokia's rabidly loyal userbase by planting one of their own as CEO and switching the company to WP, only to be universally rejected. They killed the top-selling smartphone system of the time (Symbian) and the new system that everyone was hyped for (MeeGo), all to peddle a late, rushed, still unfinished piece of crap that no one wanted.
So, good fucking riddance to stillborn WP, the mobile equivalent of "this is why we can't have nice things" (and by "nice things" I mean MeeGo).
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
MeeGo would have failed too.
This is the mobile equivalent of the mid 1990s. Unix dying, commodore dead, Apple II dead, Apple dying, OS/2 dying. Windows was the answer and won. Companies only wrote software for Windows as it was the winner because consumers only wanted what companies wrote software for in a cycle. Why blow $2000 on a dead platform when Windows was what everyone was using and was a sure bet etc.
Funny thing is same is killing WIndows Phone in reverse. Meego was too late. If you were not in by 2009 you were out. 2010/2011 is when mobile developers hit apps on smartphones and consumers knew if they wanted apps they had to make a choice. Apple or Google. MeeGo didn't ahve a playstore and was expected to have mobile carriers be the appstore. Remember the shitty $3.00 midi file ring tones back then? Vommit. Apple gave the carrier the finger. Google followed and rest is history.
WebOS was pretty cool too and so was QNX by Blackberry. All failed as people wanted companeis to set the standards like what MS did on the desktop.
I think in 2017 it is done. Move on. Even Steve Jobs admitted Windows won which is why he refused to hire corporate account executives. Same is true here. UWP apis came 8 years too late. Meego never caught on and was a late commer.
Re: (Score:2)
This is the mobile equivalent of the mid 1990s. Unix dying, commodore dead, Apple II dead, Apple dying, OS/2 dying. Windows was the answer and won.
Then Linux showed up and now rules everything that is not a desktop. And the Mac is still selling pretty well too.
MeeGo didn't ahve a playstore
It sure did, never heard of the Ovi Store? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
RMS of course would say this is why we call it GNU/Linux, not Linux :-)
Meego was Linux based but in the end the apps is why Windows is on the PC and Android on the phone. When I dropped my Nokia 830 I decided to go back to a crappy Android. Why? I do not want to invest money in a dead platform.
My mother has a unlocked $45 Nokia 640 which is great for her 68 year old eyes with the big tiles and ease of use. Outside of a simple feature phone it is useless these days as I remember using IE mobile to make up fo
Re: (Score:2)
http://saveie6.com/ [saveie6.com] results in a 404. I guess that's the joke? :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Cries NOOOO!
IE 6 is the best! It does websites the right way. Go ask any PHB? IE 6 teaches the Zen of patience, virtues, minimalism. Can Chrome teach life lessons? No
Re: (Score:2)
Back in 1995, Microsoft had just brought out Windows NT with OpenGL support. UNIX Workstation application vendors could really only afford support development on two or three OS's due to the fact that they had to pay per component for the hardware, the OS, the compilers and documentation, the API dev kits like X-windows/Motif, the number of users, the number of CPU's, separate graphics boards and UNIX priced monitors and cables. Alternatively, they could just buy Windows NT with everything ready to go. Comp
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad Microsoft didn't create a common NT development platform across the CPUs that it supported - Alpha and MIPS, in addition to x86. Had they done that, devs could have developed their stuff on Alphas and had awesome results
Re: (Score:2)
Why? It was a lot like Android at the same time only faster on the same hardware. It even had Angry Birds and was on the radar of other major application vendors.
By your argument above Android should be dead as well, so what additional reason do you have for MeeGo to die other than Elop killing it and telling Intel and the other partners to fuck off?
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong. It was called "ovi store".
Re: (Score:2)
Meego is there as Jolla's Sailfish - why is that not catching fire if it's so great?
Spoiler alert (Score:4, Funny)
At least their Zune business is alive and well.
Heard this beforw (Score:2)
Piffle (Score:2)
The author wrongly assumed that Microsoft's phone business is the manufacture and selling of cell phones. Microsoft's phone business is in patents, and it brings in far more money from patents that it does phones.
Reports range from 2 to 6 billions dollars every year in profits just from Android.
https://www.howtogeek.com/1837... [howtogeek.com]
https://fossbytes.com/microsof... [fossbytes.com]
Samsung alone pays Microsoft 1 billion per year
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1... [theverge.com]
Making handsets is simply a convenient way to stay in the patent creat
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Android came out in 2009. If the patents dated to that time they would still have 60% of their life left. Other countries have their own patent lengths which can be shorter or longer. For the meanwhile they are arguably make more profit from Android than any of the manufactures. That is a lot of billions over the years.
My point is that by keeping their phone OS alive they give a practical means by which their developers can look for 'new' things that can be patented. Those patents are worth far more than th
Still a very good phone OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're on WP10, how do you handle scheduling updates and forced restarts. As far as I can tell you have to give WP10 a 6 hour window in which it can install updates and restart, during which it can be down for up to 20 mins. For me this made it completely unsuitable as a work phone as there are days when I do 24 hr on call.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cancer (Score:2)
Beaten by Linux. [theregister.co.uk]
(Monkey boy got one thing right.)
Microsoft offer us money... (Score:3)
A year or two ago Microsoft offered our company money and even some engineers to help to port our mobile product to Windows phone. Since we were really strapped for engineering resources, which we would still have to devote to the port despite the assistance, but not short on cash, we turned them down because we felt our other priorities were more important than Windows phone. We must have been the minority to do so because they were incredulous at our rejection. Just as well it seems.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, but that's a very common tactic of salesfolk and when it's especially over the top it's a fair indication that they are being rejected a lot.
Goodbye Windows Universal (Score:2)
Bummer (Score:2)
As usual, Windows phone users are flabbergasted.
Both of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Gets more updates than my Android tablets (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm on the Insider program, and my Lumia 640 gets more updates in a month than either my Android 4.3 and 6.0 have ever gotten throughout their entire lifetime.
Seriously, when walking out of the store, Android feels like abandonware. At least I know the known vulnerabilities are getting addressed on WP. On Android...the list is just getting bigger over time.
I wonder if ... (Score:2)
I wonder if this means they'll stop trying to turn Windows UI into an phone OS...
Who am I kidding, that ship has long since sailed... sigh.
It's been dead for years (Score:2)
Conflicted (Score:3)
I'm conflicted about this. Although I'd never own one, I felt it was important for Windows Phone to continue as competition (however feeble) against Android and IOS. It's important to have multiple vendors pushing each other to excel.
I'm worried now about Microsoft tablet. Of all the tablet makers, Microsoft seems the only one who at least pays lip service to content *creation* rather than mere content consumption. If Microsoft fails in the tablet market (which could easily happen, considering all the other missteps they've made) the message could easily be that nobody wants to create content on a tablet, which is profoundly untrue. Its that there haven't been good solutions yet.
I'm saying all of this not as a Microsoft fan. I run Winders because it runs the Adobe suite and I can't justify the cost of a mac. (I can build a PC to my specifications for a fraction of the cost.) The OS is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If the Adobe suite ran on Linux, M$ and Apple could both go screw.
Really? (Score:2)
Was it ever alive?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm replying to the post above because for some reason I cannot just 'Post'.
I have to admit, this makes me sad. I love my Windows Phone, because it is the easiest to program and configure of all the phones in my household (I have an Android for business, my wife has an iPhone from work, and we both have WIndows Phones for personal use)
I find the iPhone and Android very unfriendly unless reconfigured from the ground up. The Windows Phone leaves you the illusion you own it. It is an illusion, it still does
Re: (Score:2)
Just b'cos Microsoft has stopped selling them doesn't mean your phones will stop working. If you and your wife like your Windows phones, why're you looking for new hardware? Just stay w/ this one until it dies. I too have all 3 types of phone, and while I use my iPhone due to FaceTime, I do prefer my Lumia 550 over my Moto-X.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I just had this vision of Monty Python's Dead Parrot.
Gee, Wally, I just had this vision that Windows Phone burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
My wife is using my old (first) Windows Phone. Our daughter just impacted the volume control last week... which was the first physical damage, but won't be the last. My own phone is more than two years old.
Between my first comment and this one, I have been browsing the new Lumias... but I know that at some point, I may want newer technology, if only for processor power.
Re: (Score:3)
But it does mean that existing bugs won't be getting fixed, nor will there be much needed improvements.
I'd been a happy Windows Phone user since it first came to Verizon back in 2011. Eventually I got a better carrier (just to be able to stick with the platform), but eventually even I had to relent and go Android just a couple of months ago as it was abundantly clear that the even my 950 XL was suffering some some of the
Re: (Score:2)
If noone makes windows phones anymore they will be dead over 3-4 years, when most units will have physically died.
Re: (Score:2)
Totally agree - this is sad. I am primarily an iPhone user, and have experience with Android tablets, but I had to use the Windows phone for a while and I ended up liking it better than either. The UI is far less intrusive and needlessly complicated: it just works, to coin a phrase. When my Dad wanted a smartphone, despite his fears of being overwhelmed, I got him a Windows Phone and he had no problems at all. Even he was surprised at how easy it was to use. It was easier than the Jitterbug he replaced. Yet
Re: (Score:2)
Which is kind of ironic as that's exactly how the computer OS situation worked out. Windows was the shittiest OS but ended up owning the market much like Android does for phones. Apple is on the sideline in both situations providing an alternative at a premium price.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.alcatelonetouch.us/... [alcatelonetouch.us]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Any phone you can't prevent from shutting itself down and applying updates is a phone you don't own. The best you could do is schedule no less than 6 hours where the phone could make itself unavailable for up to 20 minutes at a time. If you see the update come I understand in your can put it off for some hours, but if you don't catch it in time, tough. Totally unusable as a 24 hr on call support phone. I consider my lower end Windows phones to be toys.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait... your Windows phone gets updates??!!!
Wow, you are the lucky one then, because my my Lumia 625 and 635 were promised Win 10,(along with 78% of the MS phone market), then left to die alone in the digital wilderness, like ALL MS hardware eventually does. So Skype,Messenger, and Whatsapp are all unsupported now, in fact, even with the latest FB update, you get stuck in the loop, where if someone messages you, the screen asks to download Messenger, which you cant, they couldnt even roll it back to letting FB receive/reply PM'S,even thought the icon is still there.
No MS, you lost because your place in the phone arena because you ABANDONED it, it was a TOY to you, Like your first Surface was, Like the Zune was,like...well, ANYTHING not PC related.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair the first Surface was a toy to everyone with a toy OS even less useful than Windows 10 mobile.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, you are the lucky one then, because my my Lumia 625 and 635 were promised Win 10,(along with 78% of the MS phone market), then left to die alone in the digital wilderness
Same thing happened to my sony xperia play, same thing happened to my moto g 2nd. In both cases the community stepped up and provided something but the vendor? nope nope. Anyone who gets updates (which don't render the device a total turd) is lucky.
Re: (Score:2)
MS is just "special" - locking anyone else out who would be capable of doing updates and then abandoning a product which is not even old enough to need a new battery.
It happens on PCs as well like those folks with TV tuner cards that suddenly found them unsupported in Win10 media player.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, w/ the Windows 8 & 8.1 phones, Microsoft did leave it up to the carriers to provide their updates, which turned out to be a fiasco, particularly w/ Verizon. Now, Microsoft provides all the updates in Windows 10 Mobile, and those come at the same time as the desktop updates. Microsoft did the right thing here in following Apple's example, and even Google's gotten the hint, since every phone that has Lollipop and beyond is upgradable. Good luck doing that w/ Gingerbread, Ice Cream sandwich
Re: (Score:2)
and even Google's gotten the hint, since every phone that has Lollipop and beyond is upgradable
It's not up to Google, it's up to the handset OEM. That said, I especially doubt most of them will actually provide timely updates.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait... your Windows phone gets updates??!!! Wow, you are the lucky one then, because my my Lumia 625 and 635 were promised Win 10,(along with 78% of the MS phone market), then left to die alone in the digital wilderness, like ALL MS hardware eventually does. So Skype,Messenger, and Whatsapp are all unsupported now, in fact, even with the latest FB update, you get stuck in the loop, where if someone messages you, the screen asks to download Messenger, which you cant, they couldnt even roll it back to letting FB receive/reply PM'S,even thought the icon is still there.
I'll grant you that the initial Windows Phones - 8 & 8.1 - didn't get updates on their own, since those were tied to the carrier. Like when I had an Icon, I never got an update for that b'cos Verizon never released one: it took them forever to test the thing.
Microsoft changed things in Windows 10, where they made the updates automatic. Like on my Lumia 550, everytime I've had a major Windows update on my laptop, I've had one on that phone. It may change going forward in Redstone, but as long as the
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft fanboy detected, the single Windows Phone user that still thinks it's great.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Under Gates or possibly even Ballmer, this could have been a reality. They both cared about businesses and to a degree consumers, too. This is why there was such an emphasis on usability in Windows until recently. Nedalla cares about one thing and one thing only: subscription services. If it isn't this, he doesn't give too fucks about it. And this totally makes sense, too, he comes from Microsoft's Azure Cloud as a background. Gates was all about being a cutthroat business man, so this is the type of people
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Really? (Score:2)
You obviously never tried to develop for Windows Phone. I tried on a 6.1 and it had a kiloton of unimplemented api calls.
Re: (Score:2)
I never owned a Windows phone until Nokia adapted that platform w/ version 8. From what I heard, the CE based ones were crap. The first Windows phone I had was a Lumia 520 - their entry level - and it was a breeze, going from a flip phone Moto RAZR. Until then, I never used to text, but once I had this, texting was a breeze. As was HERE maps, OneNote and a host of other features.
In fact, at the time, Windows 8 had the best phone typing platform: Android and iOS have since caught up. But at the
iOS10 is much better than iOS9 on an iPhone6 (Score:3)
iOS 10 blows chunks on an iPhone 6 even
My wife has an iPhone 6 and iOS 10 performs pretty well on it, and has a number of substantial improvements from iOS9... if nothing else the messaging app is much better and what do most non-technical people use anyway?
On top of that are the invisible things like allowing call management apps and other app improvements possible on iOS10, and it has been nicer for her than iOS9 was.
We'll see if that continues to hold through other iOS updates but she'll keep the phone 2
Re: Really? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Forced updates and AD stuff is only wanted by MS-indoctrinated sysadmins. That group is too small to make it profitable.
Re: (Score:3)
Here you go. Build it yourself.
https://learn.adafruit.com/pip... [adafruit.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Newer one.
https://hackaday.io/project/19... [hackaday.io]
Re: (Score:2)
Apps: No. For Android, there are stingray detectors once you're root (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.srlabs.snoopsnitch, only if you have a Snapdragon soc).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's in USA.
In a lot of countries, phone companies don't even sell phones. They sell only SIM cards.
Re: (Score:2)
As someone else who's travelled, it's nothing like the US. There, phone companies sell you a SIM, and as for the phone, it's up to you whether you wanna buy one from them, or provide your own. Also, the system of getting a 'free' phone w/ a 2 year contract doesn't exist: you simply buy the phone at cost upfront, and then put in the SIM of your choice. Of course, that's due to all of them being GSM standards: not sure what the practice is in Japan or Korea.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want a phone without a company controlling it, either flash an open soure ROM or root your android and kill the Google analytics and adservices.
Re: (Score:2)
And if you want to stop making Tysons rich, start your own chicken farm
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft failed because they tried to make a platform that had all of the weaknesses of iOS and Android, with none of the strengths of either:
- Whitelist only app publishing model
- "Live tiles" that aren't actually live, and compared to Android's widget system are just big icons that change at an interval that neither the developer nor the end user can control.
- Demanded ridiculous prices for app development and publishing (until only very recently)
- Not once, or twice, but THREE times changed the app fram
Re: (Score:3)
Microsoft have a big event on Tuesday.
Mega lols if they release a new phone, along with a Surface Pro 5.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Non of the big phone sellers in my country sell Windows Phones anymore. They were pretty angry when Microsoft's flagship phone was sold for 750 euro when it finally arrived in our country only to see it appear in a low cost supermarket for only 199 euro 5 weeks later. They were still selling their phone for 750 euro while they were dumped in the supermarket. How do you explain your customers that you ripped them off, even when it is not your fault?
I've read that these phone sellers couldn't even tur
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say "Ni" at will to old ladies.
Re: (Score:2)
I am hanging onto my Windows 7 machines until MS releases an OS with a Windows 7-like UI.
While you're waiting, you can dual-install Linux and have that right now. [kde.org] (KDE)
Re: (Score:2)
With the Internet Microsoft didn't get in early enough since they weren't in the UNIX server/storage market. ISP's offering home Internet with SLIP/PPP came out in 1993. Trumpet Winsock was the choice for many ISP's, offering PC owners a command prompt text based USENET browser and Email. As the large companies had already abandoned their proprietary network protocols into supporting TCP/IP, they weren't going to just switch over to another standard. So Microsoft just had to adopt TCP/IP in order for PC's t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
WebOS is alive, as a smart TV OS. It was HP that killed it on phones - by buying Palm one day and dismantling it another. Like Microsoft did w/ Nokia's.