Let’s not forget the multiple platform reboots. Once is bad enough, but Microsoft did it thrice, abandoning their old users every single time.
Windows Phone 7 was kind of acceptable, except for the restrictions it imposed on hardware. But then Microsoft decided not to upgrade the early adapters to Windows Phone 8. Nobody likes being abandoned, nobody. Imagine the dismay of a user with a high end phone only a few months old being told that (s)he would get one final update to Windows Phone 7.8 and no more. No (or very few) updates was, and remains, Android’s biggest weakness that Microsoft failed to capitalise on. Surely, they could have come up with a version of Windows Phone 8 that could run on the higher end Windows Phone 7 devices, sans a few features, maybe? A customer, once burnt, is unlikely to come back.
Despite the misstep, Windows Phone 8 was gaining traction in 2013 (and early 2014) especially on the lower end of device spectrum. Back then, Android was horrible on all but the high end devices. In a world of laggy UI and almost no updates, Windows Phone felt like a breath of fresh air. Many developers had started writing (or porting) their apps to the platform. Windows Phone 8.1 had filled almost all gaps in the functionality of the OS. By mid-2014, it seemed destined to occupy a niche in the smartphone market despite limited OEM support.
And then came the deafening silence. Microsoft realised that they were not selling many high end devices and hence they stopped making them. There were no high-end devices launched for almost a year and a half between Lumia 930 and 950 – the likes of Lumia 830 were horribly underpowered (and overpriced for what they offered). At first glance, that might sound like a good idea – why make expensive high end devices that weren’t selling? There is just one problem – the people who evangelise the platform are not satisfied by anything but the best. Even in the world of ubiquitous connectivity, people tend to consult that geeky friend while making gadget purchasing decisions – especially in developing countries where internet connectivity is not so ubiquitous. And with no word of new releases (hardware or software) coming from Redmond in about a year (an eternity in smartphone world), even the die-hard fans were migrating away by mid-2015. All anyone ever got till the big launch of Lumia 950 and Windows Phone … err… Mobile 10 was rumours. And Microsoft does have a known history of producing vapourware…
When Windows Mobile 10 finally launched, it turned out to be another reboot – a disastrous one at that. Most devices running Windows Phone 8.1 were not going to be upgraded. And unlike its rock-solid predecessor, the software was buggy and had given up on some of the key features that differentiated it from iOS and Android. On the other hand, Google had already released Android Lollipop and followed it up with Marshmallow, making it almost as aesthetically pleasing (to most) and feature complete as iOS, in addition to coming up with some unique features of its own. By the time Windows Mobile 10 was launched, the market had no place left for a third smartphone platform – let alone a buggy one.
In the end, it was the uncertainty surrounding the platform that killed Windows Phone/Mobile. There were other factors, of course. Factors like Microsoft pursuing the already saturated North American market too aggressively for too long while ignoring the rest of the world, the unavailability of Google apps, licensing costs leading to almost no OEM support etc.
I personally hoped for the longest time that Windows Phone would succeed, if only to provide some real competition to Android. Let’s face it, Apple markets its iOS devices to completely different demographic than Android – there is almost no overlap. As a result, someone looking for a low to mid range smartphone has no choice other than Android. It is a well known fact that lack of competition can cause any platform to stagnate – look at Internet Explorer 6. One can only hope that Google, having already conquered the smartphone market, doesn’t decide to let Android stagnate. This is even more of a danger in an engineering driven company like Google – key developers can move on to other, more exciting projects and the management might just let them – they don’t have any competition to worry about, after all.
Overall, I don’t expect Windows Phone/Mobile/whatever to recover unless both Apple and Google commit major blunders. And even then, it is more likely that another smaller vendor will swoop in to fill the void.
I never really thought that the likes of Blackberry OS 10, Ubuntu Phone, Firefox OS, Tizen, and Sailfish OS had a chance at success – iOS and Android had become too big to fail by the time they even managed their first launch. But Windows Phone was different – it had the backing of the Redmond Giant – one of the richest companies in the world that once held a complete monopoly on the world of Operating Systems. But in the end, they will be remembered for the opportunities they squandered.
