Microsoft announces an inventory of 1.5 million WP7 phones - Page 2

Maybe it won't come at all if GSM modules will be returned back.

The anti MS spin is to be expected and generally amusing, but seriously actually get the facts right. Microsoft has a $500 million marketing budget for the entire company, not a $500 million budget for promoting WP7. Every article of MS irrespective of if it's about Bing, Kinnect, Office or Windows 7 seems to quote this figure. All it shows is they have a lot of products and therefore spend a lot of money on advertising.

Plus it's not like they have actually reached the same level of advertising the Apple do on one product. I haven't been able to go a day in the last few months without seeing an iPad advert. WP7 ad's I see around once a week.


Payments are coming in the last week of Jan, a month earlier than what they told developers when you signed up to develop an app. Stats are also already available.


Reading through the article though this doesn't actually sound that bad. Obviously there not going to have overnight success, these things take time for early adopters to buy the phones and recommend them to others.

Incorrect. MS announced they would be spending £500M in the launch of WP7 ALONE!!!!

Did they actually announce anything? I always thought that number was based off an estimate from some banker dude that did some consultancy for Microsoft.

Love aside, if I was her, i'd take the iphone over ^^

No the point, clearly missed by you, is that all of this wild, slanted reporting about developers not getting paid until 2011 was put forth like there was some kind of problem or change in policy. When in fact this was the documented plan all along, documented BEFORE you could submit any apps. That is the point.

In fact that same blog had a recent post stating that developers will now get paid in January and that the app for tracking your app sales is now up and running.

May I suggest www.rif.org

Utah? NO! Nevada? Yes!

It doesn't matter if you're right, don't you get it? This is an APPLE FAN SITE. People come here because they WANT slanted news, and opinions over facts.

AI is a great place to get Apple related news from a single source, but if you want a fair conversation about anything an Apple competitor does, you're barking up the wrong tree.

They know, and they don't care. This sort of irrationality is everywhere. For me, it's in sports. I know the Redskins suck, but I'm still a fan and if I reported news for them, it would be slanted

Have you even tried one of these phones? They're STUPID simple. The camera app is a good example. Really easy, which is what old people want.

Their ad campaign is clearly bad. Oh, but not for the reason you stated.

See, the ad campaign is actually saying you can get what you want to get done, in shorter time than other phones, so you won't have your head buried in your phone while life passes you by. Actually pretty brilliant, and appeals to a lot of people.

Here's the thing though (and why I say it's clearly bad): It was lost on you, and since the masses are morons, the message will be lost on them as well.

So basically, you're a good example of why their ad campaign is too smart for your average drone consumer.

You state that "Microsoft launched WP7 across 60 carriers in 30 countries, including all four major US carriers.", however, I don't know about international numbers, but WP7 is only available from AT&T, and T-Moblie in the US. WP7 does not currently run on CDMA networks and therefore isn't available from Verizon or Sprint.

Oh but that's just a minor detail. You can't expect people who pass themselves off as journalists to know to look into such a thing

If you're counting operating system numbers, you need to include iPod touch and iPad sales with the iPhone as they run the same operating system and the same apps.

Windows Phone 7 is far from dead on arrival. Microsoft may be slow, but they are relentless. Remember the Xbox? Horrible initial sales, no game library and everyone predicted it would be gone within a year- now Xbox is one of, if not the best selling game console out there.

I'm no Microsoft fan, but they've really impressed me with Windows Phone 7, and I've used most of the phone OS's out there- (WebOS- Palm Pre, Android- Evo 4G, iOS- iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS- no Blackberries though ). As someone who has used WP7 (an HTC HD7) as their daily driver since launch, here are the pros and cons as I see them from a consumer standpoint:

Pros:
1. Facebook Integration at the OS level. If you're not a Facebook user, you won't care about this, but the way Microsoft has implemented this is really fantastic. You can import all your FB contacts or just the ones in your phone's contact list. One tap on the people hub and you can look at your FB newsfeed. Contacts show their FB profile picture which saves you the hassle of assigning pictures to all your contacts (something the average user probably won't waste their time on). It's easy and quick to update your status, write on friend's wall, comment on their status, look at their pictures and comment on them. The Pictures hub automatically shows all your albums from Facebook- this is fantastic! It has saved me the trouble of having to sideload a lot of my pictures onto my phone, saving my internal storage for other things (music, apps, etc...).

2. UI innovation and responsiveness. You may like the metro UI or hate it, but I love it. I love the finger friendly tiles, and this OS is the first that is just as responsive as the iPhone, if not more so. Multi-touch gestures are smooth and fluid- there is simply NO LAG in the OS at all. Microsoft is to be commended on this. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to scream at my Evo for either lagging or choppy performance. Even my iPad skips a beat every now and then since upgrading to iOS 4.2. Not Windows Phone 7- buttery smooth and incredibly responsive- it is both fun and a pleasure to use.

3. Xbox Live integration. The games are coming. Apple clearly has a lead in the mobile games department, but the Xbox live community is bigger by far than Apple's Game Center. Additionally, many of the top iPhone games are already being ported to WP7 and have Xbox Live integration (Fruit Ninja, Pocket God, etc...) as well as some great original titles (The Harvest). I am not an Xbox user, but I must admit, I have fun tracking my accomplishments, tweaking my avatar, etc...

4. Live Tiles and a lock screen that actually tells me something. Why Apple does nothing with its lock screen is completely beyond me- there's so much wasted space. WP7 will show you your next appointment and number of text and email messages without having to unlock the phone. I also love the live tiles. The calendar tile (icon) displays your next appointment, the Weatherbug tile shows you the temperature, contacts show their latest FB status or uploaded picture- there's just more information available. They aren't as good as full blown Android Widgets, but get the job done and done well.

A physical back button and a physical camera button. You can wake the phone by depressing the camera button for 3 seconds and it's ready to shoot. Sure beats having to hit a button, unlock the phone, find the camera icon, and tap it. Also, having a back button is one of those things that you don't miss until you have one. For example: You're looking at your twitter timeline. There's a link, so you click it. It opens Internet Explorer. You read the page. You tap the back button and your back in your twitter app. It's so much easier- app developers don't have to include a built in web browser. Apple's implementation of multitasking is good, but the lack of physical buttons makes it feel clumsy- having to double tap the home button to bring up a list of apps, and then tap an icon is an extra, cumbersome step.

Cons:
1. No Cut, Copy, or Paste. Really???

2. No direct USB sync with Outlook. Not a big concern for me since all my contacts are in Gmail, but I understand this is a huge concern for a lot of people.

3. No multitasking or fast app switching. Kind of feels like iOS pre iOS4. At least the OS is smooth and responsive, but this needs to be implemented ASAP.

4. Skydrive integration with Office. When you sign up for a live account (necessary to purchase apps), you also get a skydrive account with 25GB of free storage. Why can't you use this to store Office documents??? This doesn't make any sense.

5. No multiple calendar support for Exchange, Gmail, or Windows Live calendars. WP7 can only sync the primary calendar of each of these services. Really??? This is a STUPID limitation that will hopefully be overcome soon.

6. No turn by turn directions in Bing maps. I know this is coming soon, but after having this in Android, I really miss it.

I'm sure there are other things I have missed, but those are the biggies for me. Oh, and BTW, your other comment, "locked to the super expensive proprietary Microsoft OS"???????

What do you think the iPhone is locked to? iOS is anything but open. This is not a criticism of Apple, just pointing out the fact that people who use a phone tightly locked down to one corporation (Apple) shouldn't throw stones at someone because they use a phone tightly locked down to another corporation (Microsoft).

Sorry for the long post. Peace.

Only "old people" want easy? So what do all those not-old people want, needlessly complicated?

deleted

Edited by MacRulez - 5/4/12 at 12:55pm

When did I say only old people?

Why did you reply to me?

Hes only counting thing that make the iPhone look bad. Why else would one compare HW to an OS?

EXACTLY! Who does Microsoft think they're dealing with? idiots? They don't think we can tell the difference between the number of units shipped to carriers and the actual number of units sold to end-users? They're obviously skirting the issue. They have no problems touting their Kinect sales. I guess the only people they'll fool are the the people who actually end up buying one of their phones. I give Microsoft credit for an interface that doesn't mimic iOS. At least they didn't go the Android route and copy iOS. But, they're setting themselves up to be an app-limited platform. That user interface wouldn't be very useful if you had more than apps. It would be a pain in the arse to navigate through 20 apps with huge tiles and no folders.

That graph comes from an Apple Insider article. I did not make it.

Everyone knows iPod sales are waning. Unless Apple releases an Itunes app for Android (and hell freezes over) Apple will start losing music retail market share.

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/17/mac-s...od-sales-down/

It is inevitable.

Apple writes all their code and creates all their services to SELL MORE HARDWARE. Explain to us how Apple can sell more HW by licensing FairPlay for Android-based devices?

Apple is taking the lions share of PMP, cellphone and PC profits across the globe, but you think they should give all that up to license FairPlay. How exactly does that make sense?

Latest figures show that iTunes has actually increased its share of digital music sales. Since this comes during a period of explosive Android growth, it would appear that there is more to capturing online music sales than having an iTunes compatible app for your phone.

Since Android users arent big on paying for apps, I cant imagine they would be big on paying for music either.

I think you will find that technically Nokia has sold the device, just like Apple does when they have sold a device to a local importer. But if you are't happy with that maybe you should discount them, or ask Nokia (or the local importer) to take them back for a credit, like Apple does with the old iPods etc.

And remember, Nokia doesn't force an importer to purchase items of them, maybe the importer, or your employer should start practicing better stock management.

Windows Phone 7, like Android, is irrelevant to iOSs growth.

iPod sales are waning in as much as Zune sales are waning. I'd be surprised if the sales didn't slow, since the iPhone and WP7 can do the same things. Redundancy will kill sales of the music only hardware, however, iTunes pretty much takes care of Apples retail market share in the mobile music/game/video arena's.

Having never used a Zune or the software associated with it, I can't comment on whether it is competitive with iTunes?

Apple is DOOMED!

Yep. I guess we might argue that the rise of Android will skew the dl numbers back towards illegal file sharing, but that's rather a different thing from claiming that iTunes is doomed because they don't have an Android client. Moreover, that kind of stuff is just going to make it more difficult for Google to negotiate deals with content providers.

A certain demographic of user might celebrate Android's "openness" as a means to help themselves to whatever they want for free, but you're not going to get too far in providing legitimate services (as in the case of, oh, I don't know, Google TV?) if you have the reputation as the platform for thieves.

A good son. (or daughter).

Something you once loved, but no longer use, does not equal piles of N97's that were never sold, thus never used.

(responding to the question of who buys phones for their parents)
So in essence you're a cheapie, buy one for yourself and give the free one to your mom, huh?

Most likely in exchange for free rent of the basement for another year!

Chronster, I love your point. However, the angle that people will buy the WP7 phone because they will get things done in a shorter time is, pardon me, utter nonsense. All it will mean is that they will call more people and check more things over the Internet in the same 24 hours than they have been. Yesterday I was just about run over by some lady in a parking lot doing something with her BB smartphone while not paying attention to the road. If she had a WP7 phone, she still would have been doing something with her phone. Mobile phone and smart phone use is addictive and people just won't stop using them no matter how much MS believes they will. Whether these folks are actually more productive while using a WP7 remains to be seen. Again, good point.

So, Betti, are you just going to attack AI, or are you going to defend the Microsoft PR's faux-interview with some actual points? No? Then what are you complaining about?

Strange, because I'm quite sure if you look at Microsoft's financials, their marketing budget is quite alot more than $500M.


To be fair, consumers only think of TV ads as marketing, while companies like Microsoft actually spend quite alot on print, while Apple spends very little on print. Also, marketing budget funds are also used to pay hardware OEMs to put little stickers on their products, that sort of thing. And, they go to things like developer conferences where they try to wine and dine developers, and give them free hardware to develop on. In other words, marketing budget money goes to lots of things that AREN'T tv ads.


I guess so, if we were talking about a small company trying to make inroads into the smartphone market with their first generation phone and OS, but this is Microsoft who have been in the smartphone business for a decade and this isn't their first smartphone OS.

Dude, Nielsen surveys are just that surveys. At this point, noone knows how reliable they are. Nielsen as you know do television ratings, but they have been trying to branch out their business lines. Until they show some validity in their surveys, I wouldn't hang my hat on their data.

Obviously not you.


It's a little sad, and somewhat disturbing actually, to see Microsoft fail this hard.


Yes, again, disturbing is the right word to use.

Right... iPod sales slowing means iTunes media sales is going down. And this would be solved with an Android app.


"That's nice of you to do all that, sonny, now can I just have the damn iPhone?"

I don't suspect you're one of the serial trolls plaguing this board because his replies were somewhat more intelligent.

If anything, that graph confirms that Apple has been able to hold strong against the onslaught of competing smartphones. Remember, it is just one company against virtually everyone else on Android. Will Android gain further? Maybe, but Apple losing market share in smartphones doesn't mean it loses. And I'm not even going to dignify your post by addressing your last sentence.