Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerard
As for why, it seems fairly obvious that the two reasons already mentioned are fundamental; pricing and marketing, which in this case blend together somewhat. A good WM phone with a screen anywhere nearly as nice as that of the iPhone (size for ease of finger use and viewing pleasure, pixel count for the latter, colour saturation in any sort of ambient light) costs a small fortune. Any idiot with slightly better than minimum wage income can pick up an iPhone with a cellular contract. Bingo - market a shiny, pretty toy to everyone, make it affordable, then reap the rewards in data plan costs and long term contracts.
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But the iPhone presents a different challenge. An iPhone can do things this week which it couldn't do last week, and will do even more things next week, all thanks to the abundance of developers just leaping at this opportunity gone wild. So what if most of these new applications are pure garbage? It doesn't matter. Some of them are golden. I've been impressed more than a few times with the clever integration of finger-operability, beautifully rendered and cleverly designed graphics, and simple, does what it's supposed to do functionality of some of these apps. And they're cheap, or free, like the iPhone itself. People like cheap and free. People generally do not like $30 or more for a file explorer or a text editor or a media player... etc. Handango and PocketGear have long since encouraged inflationary pricing on apps for Windows Mobile devices, and even developers who sell independently tend too often to charge inordinate fees for simple functionality. Add the cost of a handful of WM apps ($100+) to the cost of an average iPhone-league device ($500+) and the $600 or more is going to put a lot of people off before they even get started.
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I think these two paragraphs explain it best. Many here are fixated on the "touch" aspect of the device and the "simple interface" and those are factors. But when you compare the ownership cost of an iphone to WM, WM does not compete. Add in the aforementioned simplicity factor and it's not even close for many consumers. So on the consumer side of things Microsoft and their OEM partners have chosed NOT to compete. Windows Mobile devices are more expensive, the apps are often 3- 5 times as expensive, they have smaller screens, far less memory and aren't as user friendly. I know many power users say - but I can do XX on WM and can't on the iPhone. What you fail to realize is that power users can and will jailbreak the iPhone, significantly reducing that WM advantage. Regular old consumers would NEVER take advantage of that stuff on WM anyway.
On the corporate side, RIM has always offered the perception of an easier to use, easier to manage email eco-structure. I have to carry a blackberry for work and hate it. I don't find it all that usable, but I have to admit that it NEVER crashes, has great battery life and does well at retrieving email.
So, when I'm in airports or public places, I see many, many blackberrys and iPhones and a rare WM device. But I'm not surprised, since Microsoft has been running out the same OS for the last 7 years without any significant improvements. On the hardware side, WM devices, except in rare cicrmstances have NOT pushed the hardware envelope. How long have been running 400 - 600 Mhz Processors? It's still a rarity to see a phone with more than 256-512 ROM. What did they think was going to happen??