Microsoft ships 2 million Windows Phone 7 handsets in holiday quarter

245

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 85
    dreyfus2dreyfus2 Posts: 1,072member
    Apple's channel inventory is what, 3.5 million iPhones? If you just consider the approx. activation numbers from Apple, all Androids, RIM and Nokia... that is not even a 3% smartphone share. By all means, based on the big claims, comments in places like Engadget and Gizmodo forums, and the iPhone and RIM funeral held by MS employees... this is a disaster, a Zune that does calls. And this does include the holiday season plus pent-up demand, if any...



    MS is stubborn, and they will keep trying. But these sales numbers do not even cover the marketing cost, if the rumored cost of a WP7 license is somewhat in the ballpark.
  • Reply 22 of 85
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MJ Web View Post


    Steve Bummer will eat the rest! LOL!



    No, they'll go out to the same landfill where all those Atari 2600 ET cartridges were buried.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by halhiker View Post


    They've shipped 2 million and I've yet to see one in the wild.



    I've seen only one, and I live in the land of Microsoft (I used to see Zunes when I took the bus to work - my bus ran by the MSFT campus). It was owned by the husband of a Microsoft employee who was almost forced into having one. Apparently Microsoft no longer provides discounts on carrier service to employees who have iPhones (apparently Android or feature phones are okay, but iPhones are not). He hated the thing and missed his iPhone.
  • Reply 23 of 85
    oc4theooc4theo Posts: 294member
    Microsoft did not ship phones because it does not manufacture phones. Microsoft licensed WP 7 software to vendors who shipped the phones to carriers like AT&T.



    And as far as 2 million is concerned, they are are already going for "Buy 1 and get 1 free".
  • Reply 24 of 85
    msanttimsantti Posts: 1,377member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by grking View Post


    MS can't report phone sales, because they do not make phones. It would be like asking how many HDTVs does Apple sell?



    MS and Apple have different business models.



    However, as I said before, one would have to assume that the Phone makers are knowingly and willingly throwing money away, and decreasing their profits, if WP7 is not selling at all. The most parsimonious explanation is that the phones are selling at a respectable, if not astronomical rate, hence the phone makers continue to buy the OS for their phones.



    Google sure likes to tout activation numbers.
  • Reply 25 of 85
    This isn't actual phone sales, but the fact that the number has increased means that enough phones have been sold to require more licenses to be purchased. So on the whole it seems good. Not iPhone beating in the slightest but these things take years to gain momentum. Just look how many more iPhones got sold last year and it was already popular.
  • Reply 26 of 85
    I don't see why several sites hate on Windows Phone 7. It's not a bad product. Just too late in the game.
  • Reply 27 of 85
    Shipping guarantees no revenue; even invoicing OEMs for licences guarantees no revenue. They might count as sales for accountancy purposes, but it's disingenuous to suggest that these sales are a sign of success of the MS phone OS. All it is a sign of is the size of arm twisting that MS can apply to its OEMs to take high minimum order numbers with no payment for multi-month periods, perhaps even more than a year.



    The question nobody's asking though is why is it that with 90% (OK, maybe less these days) of the world computer market and an estimated 180 million Windows users out there, how come they only sold 2 million licences? That's just a tiny fraction over 1% of their installed user base; Apple's numbers are far higher than this for one reason - user satisfaction. Now that's something MS don't usually care about because their Business Model cuts the user out of the decision making process and concentrates instead on the needs of OEMs. Apple's business model in contrast is designed around making you, the user, happy and content.
  • Reply 28 of 85
    jd_in_sbjd_in_sb Posts: 1,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by grking View Post


    Microsoft does not make phones, hence, MS did not ship phones to carrier stores.



    As solopsism pointed out, the business models are different. Apple sells consumer electronics, and sells phones. MS, for the most part, does not sell consumer electronics products, but sells the OS. In other words, there are no MS branded phones. So, what this means is that MS sold 2 million licenses to Phone makers during the period.



    Thus, it is a sale just as Apple selling a phone is a sale.



    The question of market share is different, and cannot be assessed based on MS sales numbers, without making assumptions because MS does not sell phones.



    Unless you wish to assume that the laws of economics have been repealed, and phone makers are buying licenses for phones that are not selling, and that have no hope of being sold, then it is safe to assume that the phones are selling at a reasonable enough rate for the phone makers to continue buying the licenses.



    Good point. I had forgotten that they just sell licenses not hardware.
  • Reply 29 of 85
    So Microsoft sold 2,000,000 licences in the same quarter apple sold 16.5 million phones. What's a licence worth - about $25 bucks? Vs an iPhone at about $600.
  • Reply 30 of 85
    grkinggrking Posts: 533member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by msantti View Post


    Google sure likes to tout activation numbers.



    And your point is?
  • Reply 31 of 85
    grkinggrking Posts: 533member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SwissMac2 View Post


    All it is a sign of is the size of arm twisting that MS can apply to its OEMs to take high minimum order numbers with no payment for multi-month periods, perhaps even more than a year.



    What evidence do you have of "arm twisting" or delayed payments?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SwissMac2 View Post


    Now that's something MS don't usually care about because their Business Model cuts the user out of the decision making process and concentrates instead on the needs of OEMs. Apple's business model in contrast is designed around making you, the user, happy and content.



    The article states that WP7 generates 93% consumer satisfaction.
  • Reply 32 of 85
    wonderwonder Posts: 229member
    Satisfaction Survey:



    93% are either Satisfied or Very Satisfied.



    So 1% Very Satisfied and 92% Satisfied?



    It does matter what the split is, strange they have not indicated what it is!!!
  • Reply 33 of 85
    penchantedpenchanted Posts: 1,070member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by grking View Post


    MS can't report phone sales, because they do not make phones. It would be like asking how many HDTVs does Apple sell?



    MS and Apple have different business models.



    However, as I said before, one would have to assume that the Phone makers are knowingly and willingly throwing money away, and decreasing their profits, if WP7 is not selling at all. The most parsimonious explanation is that the phones are selling at a respectable, if not astronomical rate, hence the phone makers continue to buy the OS for their phones.



    This is a respectable start but needs to be put in context.



    The 2M licenses MS sold to the manufacturers represents an upper bound on the number of WP7 phones. You then need to consider how many handset manufacturers are building WP7 phones and how many models and realize that the channel inventory must be built for each of these models. It is possible that the 2M number is really just the channel fill for all the models.



    I hope that WP7 does well. Along with Kinect, it is the first sign of interesting product design from MS in years.
  • Reply 34 of 85
    grkinggrking Posts: 533member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by penchanted View Post


    This is a respectable start but needs to be put in context.



    The 2M licenses MS sold to the manufacturers represents an upper bound on the number of WP7 phones. You then need to consider how many handset manufacturers are building WP7 phones and how many models and realize that the channel inventory must be built for each of these models. It is possible that the 2M number is really just the channel fill for all the models.



    I hope that WP7 does well. Along with Kinect, it is the first sign of interesting product design from MS in years.



    Quite true, 2 Mil is the upper bound, and in no way do I think that they sold all of the OSs. However, they originally said they sold 1.5 mil and then recently announced 2 mil, so an additional 500K were sold over the holidays. So, apparently enough units sold to justify the additional OS purchases.
  • Reply 35 of 85
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Pennywse View Post


    Windows shipped 2 million phones, but Apple sold 16.2 million.



    These are not the same things are they?



    NO. The sentence actually reads, ". . . but Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones"
  • Reply 36 of 85
    bilbo63bilbo63 Posts: 285member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by djames4242 View Post


    No, they'll go out to the same landfill where all those Atari 2600 ET cartridges were buried.







    I've seen only one, and I live in the land of Microsoft (I used to see Zunes when I took the bus to work - my bus ran by the MSFT campus). It was owned by the husband of a Microsoft employee who was almost forced into having one. Apparently Microsoft no longer provides discounts on carrier service to employees who have iPhones (apparently Android or feature phones are okay, but iPhones are not). He hated the thing and missed his iPhone.



    I saw my first Windows Phone7 (in the wild) last Friday. I asked the guy how he liked it and he said he still wasn't able to use it as a phone due to troubles with activating the device. He could however surf the web. So far, he said that likes it "okay".
  • Reply 37 of 85
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by grking View Post


    MS can't report phone sales, because they do not make phones. It would be like asking how many HDTVs does Apple sell?



    MS and Apple have different business models.



    However, as I said before, one would have to assume that the Phone makers are knowingly and willingly throwing money away, and decreasing their profits, if WP7 is not selling at all. The most parsimonious explanation is that the phones are selling at a respectable, if not astronomical rate, hence the phone makers continue to buy the OS for their phones.



    Your disconnect is the assumption that the OEMs have completed the transaction. These are more than likely conditional sales. You take the inventory but do not pay until a retail sale is made.
  • Reply 38 of 85
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    ... The shipment numbers for Windows Phone 7 are also lower that those reported by Gartner for Microsoft's own, earlier Windows Mobile 6.x platform in the third quarter of 2010, which amounted to 2.25 million units worldwide. ...



    Microsoft is terrible at migrating users from old to new. They managed to transition DOS users to Windows 3.1, then to Windows 95/98. Because 3.1 and 95/98 were built on top of DOS. "Whipped cream on a road apple," as Scott McNealy used to say.



    Microsoft didn't do so well migrating people to NT. Vista was a catastrophe. And now Microsoft expects deeply entrenched corporate IT users to make the leap from Windows Mobile 6.x to Windows 7? There's no easy transition. Apps must be totally re-written. Cold turkey. And that alone is enough to trigger the "wait and see" response in corporate IT. That's one reason why they're still buying Windows Mobile 6.x phones, even though the OS itself is a dead end.



    The "wait and see" approach gives corporate IT plenty of time to review their options. Including iPhone / iPad, BlackBerry / PlayBook, and whatever random generic Androids have been dumped onto the market. And unfortunately for Microsoft many CIOs will switch. Why? Because transitioning to WP7 would be just as costly and difficult as transitioning to a competitors' solution. Even if Microsoft donated WP7 phones to them in an effort to buy market share.



    So how did this happen? Why was it impossible to evolve WinMob into a more modern OS? Because Microsoft doesn't have a forward-looking plan. They hacked up a quick and dirty version of Windows that ran on a smaller screen, called Windows CE, and shipped it. It has been renamed several times (Pocket PC, etc.) to make it seem like Microsoft has made progress. But it has evolved precious little over the years.



    And what happens when you don't have a plan? When you can't evolve your products and make them better every year? You end up like Palm. Palm did close to zero work on Palm OS, for various reasons. some of which were out of their control. I know. I had a Visor, Treo 180, Treo 600, and finally a Treo 680. Palm got leapfrogged and became so weak that HP snapped them up just for their IP. Good riddance.



    Maybe it's time Microsoft spun off their mobile phone division. HP might still be looking.
  • Reply 39 of 85
    grkinggrking Posts: 533member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by atsysusa View Post


    Your disconnect is the assumption that the OEMs have completed the transaction. These are more than likely conditional sales. You take the inventory but do not pay until a retail sale is made.



    Again, what evidence do you have that this is the case?
  • Reply 40 of 85
    Rounding error.
Sign In or Register to comment.