LG Representative Thinks Windows Phone 7 Could Have Had a Bigger Splash

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/37912/windows-phone-7-launch-dissapointed' target='_blank'>http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/379...ch-dissapointed</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"LG has gone on record saying that Windows Phone 7 hasn't performed as well as it thought it would, following the launch of the mobile OS in October. "From an industry perspective we had a high expectation, but from a consumer point of view the visibility is less than we expected", James Choi, marketing strategy and planning team director of LG Electronics global told Pocket-lint in a one-to-one interview."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/wpt/auto/1295305627.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Much has been made about this in the blogosphere, but I think if you cut through the fluff you get to a couple of key points: one, that LG was hoping for more "visibility". I think that means advertising and&nbsp;promotions&nbsp;- a bigger bang in the market. I can't speak for other places in the world, but in Canada I don't think I've seen a single TV ad for Windows Phone 7 on a Canadian wireless network. What I've seen instead is a steady stream of promotions on US TV networks - so some promotion is clearly being done. The other comment from the LG representative is related to the minimum hardware spec for the phone; he feels that a lowered hardware spec would result in more sales. I'm not sure that's the case - although there's supposed to be an HVGA (480 x 320) option in the pipeline, will lower-resolution phones really be what drives sales? I tend to think better-designed phones will do that - and that's in LG's court.</p><p>One of the comments on the PocketLint article also made a lot of sense: none of LG's Windows Phone 7 devices are available on his carrier, and he's not going to switch carriers just to get an LG phone. What about you? Do you have easy access to an LG Windows Phone 7 device, or would you have to switch carriers to get one?</p>

[Don Tolson]

Two things I read out of this:

a) Specs too high -- LG thinks that lowered specs would have enabled them to produce a cheaper phone which MAY have gained greater acceptance / sales upon launch. Most of WP7 phones were pretty expensive if you weren't looking to renew / start a new contract. No contract costs were around the $600 mark which would definitely turn off a large portion of the consumer market. That said however, to run the WP7 O/S with a reasonable 'feel' (both my sons have remarked how 'smooth' WP7 is compared with Android or WM6.5) you need some pretty hefty power.

b) Lack of carriers -- as Jason mentioned, there was quite a bit of market play from the US, but very little here in Canada. From LG's perspective, the US is probably the big market anyway but yes, I had to go to eBay to get an LG phone here in Canada, then unlock it. Bell and Telus seem to have accepted the Smartphone revolution as the future and plunged in, Rogers seems to be still dipping their feet in the water since they have only one high-end smartphone (the Samsung Focus). Even their Android offering (the X10) is now dying with a 2.1 version as the last upgrade.

[Paragon]

I think LG has a point. Inexpensive has a solid place in the WP7 market. Microsoft have made it very clear that they are after the large group of people who are switching from feature phones to smartphones. These people have always bought the cheapest, or free phones, available from their carrier, coupled with inexpensive monthly plans.

I can't believe how many people from the "text-generation" I see using Blackberrys. I think if WP7 put out a device with a small screen, and front facing keyboard, with low memory and a memory card slot so they could choose the memory they want at the price they want to pay, at a very low price it would do very well.

I think the key is in keeping the cost low, so that the cost to the carrier of subsidizing would be much lower. This way they could offer very low end monthly plans and not have the burden of clawing back more money with higher rate plans. With higher subsidies and higher rate plans the money really ends up in the hands of the OEMs. The OEMs would be looking at less profit per device, but they could then easily be looking at 10s of millions of devices, not millions.

I think it is very unrealistic to expect the folks still hanging onto feature phones to pay anything for a phone, as well as pay $50-$75 a month on a phone bill. (KIN)

This still leaves a place for the mid to high end range devices WP7 has now and room for more higher end devices as well.

Dave

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

After using a pirated WP7 ROM on a HTC HD2, I cannot see how WP7 will work with lowered requirements. To change the hardware formula to a lesser one would be bad news.

Funnily enough, the Optimus 7 is one of the cheaper phones here. Not that it is any worse, and Microsoft has been advertising plenty here. Maybe LG should step up on their own promotion? They've constantly lagged behind Samsung and HTC (yes, HTC, the once ODM) in their own marketing.

[Fritzly]

I do not know what is the "inside" message in the LG Executive statement but......
Go to Ebay and search for the HTC HD7: there are some new, and unlocked, for $350/400

Now search for the iPhone 4: the 32GB model, unlocked, goes for $800/1000

So far does not look too good......

A t first sight WP7 has a huge "Wow" effect but personally, after using a HD7 for two months, I am getting more and more frustrated both with minor and major shortcomings.

MS really needs to deliver updates as fast as possible.

And do not forget that Intel has already said that they will Windows 8 on Smartphones and this is a move that could kill both WP7 and Android in one shot.

[Sven Johannsen]

There isn't a single model of Windows Phone 7 I can't find for free on a US carrier. Don't know how you can get cheaper than that. Maybe the non-contract prices can turn you off, but that is true of any 'smartphone' unless you are looking for cheap. I didn't say inexpensive either, I said cheap. This phone isn't really targetted at the segment that will actually pay full price for a non-contract phone, or be gaga enough to pay that out of cycle and with an ETF. Yea that limits you to 'normal' folks whose contracts are up, are looking at smarter phones than they have, or can hand one down in a family plan. OK, that's life. Each of the US launch partners picked a feature to differentiate themselves. Maybe LG overestimated the desire for a hardware keyboard, which generally makes the device more bulky. Maybe LG isn't as well known for phones as Samsung and HTC. Personally when you say LG to me I think refrigerator. Maybe they would have done better on T-Mobile only competing with one other model instead of two. Who knows, but I don't think it is systemically a Windows Phone 7 issue.

BTW, free isn't really a good thing either. Just makes the detractors say, they can't sell them, so they are giving them away.

[Paragon]

There isn't a single model of Windows Phone 7 I can't find for free on a US carrier. Don't know how you can get cheaper than that.



"I think the key is in keeping the cost low, so that the cost to the carrier of subsidizing would be much lower. This way they could offer very low end monthly plans and not have the burden of clawing back more money with higher rate plans. With higher subsidies and higher rate plans the money really ends up in the hands of the OEMs. The OEMs would be looking at less profit per device, but they could then easily be looking at 10s of millions of devices, not millions"

[Jason Dunn]

And do not forget that Intel has already said that they will Windows 8 on Smartphones and this is a move that could kill both WP7 and Android in one shot.

That would be such a hugely stupid move, I can't even put it into words. The *last* thing anyone wants to be doing with their phone is running Windows Update and waiting for their phone to reboot. :D

Seriously, a desktop OS on a tablet is bad enough. On a PHONE? Unmitigated disaster. :rolleyes:

[Jason Dunn]

This way they could offer very low end monthly plans and not have the burden of clawing back more money with higher rate plans.

Have you seen any carrier offer a low data rate plan lately? The costs are going one way: up. Even if they sold cheaper devices, I don't see them reversing the course. :(

[Fritzly]

That would be such a hugely stupid move, I can't even put it into words. The *last* thing anyone wants to be doing with their phone is running Windows Update and waiting for their phone to reboot. :D

Seriously, a desktop OS on a tablet is bad enough. On a PHONE? Unmitigated disaster. :rolleyes:

Maybe you prefer to wait for OEM and Carriers to deliver your updates; I would rather prefer to use "Microsoft update".

As for the second part of your post I was around when people where saying the same thing about calendars, emails etc. on a phone and the general consensus was that having two separate devices was better. And about the "Desktop OS on a Tablet" I wonder what do you consider a "Tablet": I replaced my laptop with a Tablet in 2001 and never missed the former. All these so called "Tablet" like the iPad and Samsung clones are not real computers and cannot do what my Tablet does. The marketing department is free to call them as they like but they are nothing else than "Smart Display" updated to 2010 technology.

Time will tell if you or Paul Otellini are right but being someone who has been using a "Primordial" PDA since 1982 I am used to hear people making these kind of comments about future scenarios.

[Jason Dunn]

Maybe you prefer to wait for OEM and Carriers to deliver your updates; I would rather prefer to use "Microsoft update".

I look forward to the day, very soon now, when all Windows Phone 7 owners get an OTA notification that there's a new update for their phones, they'll dock them, and get an updated version of Windows Phone 7 as easy as they updated their Zune. You seem to be stuck in the past, or are purposefully misunderstanding how the Windows Phone 7 update model works.

As for the second part of your post I was around when people where saying the same thing about calendars, emails etc. on a phone and the general consensus was that having two separate devices was better. And about the "Desktop OS on a Tablet" I wonder what do you consider a "Tablet": I replaced my laptop with a Tablet in 2001 and never missed the former. All these so called "Tablet" like the iPad and Samsung clones are not real computers and cannot do what my Tablet does.

While it's true that iOS/Android-based tablets can't do what a Windows tablet can do in terms of sheer breadth of applications and services, what they CAN do is offer most people what they need/want, and do it at a price point, size, weight, and level of battery life that no Windows tablet can hope to match.

You can believe whatever you like, but I think the market is telling the tale - Apple sold 7.3 million iPads in the last quarter. Do you think 7.3 million tablet PCs were sold in the past five years combined? I seriously doubt it.

Microsoft's vision for tablet computing has been based on the faulty premise that Moore's Law would catch up to where it needed to be - unfortunately for them, battery technology doesn't ramp up at the same rate. Microsoft's tablet strategy is a disaster - other than the Acer tablet I saw at CES, it was ALL Android. And the iPad 2 will be out before Microsoft does much of anything, yet again.

The Windows ported to ARM announcement is interesting, but even if they can get the battery life and performance issues under control, there's the issue of UI. The Windows UI is workable on a 23" monitor...it's a disaster on a 7" screen.

I'm glad that you're happy with your tablet PC and it running a full Windows desktop OS - but I'm amazed that you don't see the limitations of it.

[Fritzly]

I look forward to the day, very soon now, when all Windows Phone 7 owners get an OTA notification that there's a new update for their phones, they'll dock them, and get an updated version of Windows Phone 7 as easy as they updated their Zune. You seem to be stuck in the past, or are purposefully misunderstanding how the Windows Phone 7 update model works.


Actually my statements are based on what Joe Belfiore explained about the latest "MS update strategy".
I assume that running a site about Windows phones you have read it too. Or are you stating that OEM and Carriers are out of the decisional process of approving updates? If so I am afraid that you are, using your words, "stuck in the past" because a direct update from MS to the users was the initial plan for WP7. As often happen MS had to bend and allows both OEM and Carriers in the process.

As for the rest of your comments I would say that have always been quite ahead, again I was using a PDA in 1982 and surely not "purposefully misunderstanding" anything: I am not a beneficiary of Apple, Android or MS funding.......

[Sven Johannsen]

While it's true that iOS/Android-based tablets can't do what a Windows tablet can do in terms of sheer breadth of applications and services, what they CAN do is offer most people what they need/want, and do it at a price point, size, weight, and level of battery life that no Windows tablet can hope to match.

Getting off topic for whether WP7 launch was lack luster, but I think Windows Tablets can still hope. The HP Slate, assuming it ever really ships in quantity, is not that far off in price point, size, weight. You really need to compare the $800 Slate, 64G, 9.21 x 0.58 x 5.91, 1.5 lb to the $700 iPad, 64G, 9.56 x 0.5 x 7.47, 1.5 lbs, and remember the slate comes with dock and case and hdmi out (on dock) and USB, front and rear cameras, full BT implementation, etc. Not really fair to pit the Slate against the entry level iPad. So price, size and weight aren't substantially different. Grant you battery life is still an issue, but for that I get all my Windows programs, decent HWR, a dual (touch and pen) screen, and those other things I mentioned. I don't think technology is inherently unable to generate a viable Windows Tablet, just that no-one seems to want to really try. HP can't even seem to figure out if they want to be in the game, and they have a contender, IMHO.

[Fritzly]

Sven, let us compare apple with apple: a "Real" Tablet allows you to do things that an iPad and clones cannot do therefore there is a price to pay: shorter battery life.

Said that you do not, or at least should not, buy a Porsche expecting to have the same gas comsumption of a Prius.

[Jason Dunn]

Said that you do not, or at least should not, buy a Porsche expecting to have the same gas comsumption of a Prius.

A Porsche? No Windows tablet that has any HOPE of anything other than pathetic battery life has to use a modest CPU/GPU. The better comparison would be a delivery truck - slow and big, doesn't go far on gas, but can carry a big load. I will say that the Asus Windows 7 tablet I saw at CES looked zippy, so maybe there's some hope on the performance front after all...

I think it's great that you and Sven enjoy the concept of a Windows tablet so much, but I don't see how you can both believe there's any hope for them in the mass market sense. Companies have been trying and trying to deliver a Windows-based tablet for years, and they've all failed to achieve anything resembling mass-market success. They do great in vertical markets - medical, warehouse, etc. - but consumers have rejected them resoundingly.

[Fritzly]

A Porsche? No Windows tablet that has any HOPE of anything other than pathetic battery life has to use a modest CPU/GPU. The better comparison would be a delivery truck - slow and big, doesn't go far on gas, but can carry a big load. I will say that the Asus Windows 7 tablet I saw at CES looked zippy, so maybe there's some hope on the performance front after all...

I think it's great that you and Sven enjoy the concept of a Windows tablet so much, but I don't see how you can both believe there's any hope for them in the mass market sense. Companies have been trying and trying to deliver a Windows-based tablet for years, and they've all failed to achieve anything resembling mass-market success. They do great in vertical markets - medical, warehouse, etc. - but consumers have rejected them resoundingly.

My old Toshiba M400 is very fast and, without using WiFi, and running W7 battery last over three hours. If I am in office I can plug it in and recharge it when needed, same in airports and airplanes.

It is true that the vast majority of potential users rejected the "Tablet" and, at least at the beginning there were serious and valid reasons to do so:

Underpowered
Overpriced
XP Tablet version was not the best

I travel a lot and I would never carry a 14/16 inches laptop in my briefcase but at the same time I need something with a lot of power. Why should I buy a laptop when I can enjoy the added functionalities of a Tablet with a small price difference?

And yes I do believe that there is hope for Tablets; who would have thought that after ten years from the initial rejection by the public "Smart view" devices aka iPad and clones would have reappeared and becomes such a success?

[Jason Dunn]

My old Toshiba M400 is very fast and, without using WiFi, and running W7 battery last over three hours. If I am in office I can plug it in and recharge it when needed, same in airports and airplanes.

But what did you pay for that M400? I took a look and it looks like prices were around $1699 when it came out in 2006. Today, that dual-core CPU would still out-perform the Atom CPUs we see in low-end Windows tablets. I'd hardly call that a fair comparison. At the price of tablets - and let's be honest, $500 is rapidly becoming an "expensive tablet" with the rise of all sorts of Android tablets for $300 to $400 - you simply will not get the performance Windows needs. And Flash storage? Windows 7 is still quite large on a hard drive - at least 15 GB I'd say. And there's the Windows licensing fee, which bumps the cost up even more! All those things are working against the Windows tablet concept.

I personally believe that the root of Microsoft's failure in the tablet space was their greed at wanting to make $30 to $40 off every Windows license sold on a tablet instead of making $10 to $15 off a Windows Phone 7 license and making that OS suitable for tablets. Microsoft's greed will be their undoing in this space, mark my words.

[Fritzly]

But what did you pay for that M400? I took a look and it looks like prices were around $1699 when it came out in 2006. Today, that dual-core CPU would still out-perform the Atom CPUs we see in low-end Windows tablets. I'd hardly call that a fair comparison. At the price of tablets - and let's be honest, $500 is rapidly becoming an "expensive tablet" with the rise of all sorts of Android tablets for $300 to $400 - you simply will not get the performance Windows needs. And Flash storage? Windows 7 is still quite large on a hard drive - at least 15 GB I'd say. And there's the Windows licensing fee, which bumps the cost up even more! All those things are working against the Windows tablet concept.

I personally believe that the root of Microsoft's failure in the tablet space was their greed at wanting to make $30 to $40 off every Windows license sold on a tablet instead of making $10 to $15 off a Windows Phone 7 license and making that OS suitable for tablets. Microsoft's greed will be their undoing in this space, mark my words.

Yes I f I recall correctly I paid it around $1700 which, at the time was maybe $100/150 more than a comparable regular laptop; IMO a good deal.

And yes nowadays you can buy one of these so called Tablet for $500 but you get what you paid for. This is the same story of the Netbooks: cheap no questions, but you got a device that could not do a lot of things that a regular laptop could do. Granted if you need a device that browse the web, check pop3, IMAP or web email and play Angry Birds iPads and clones are perfect but if you need to run Office, remotely access your network etc. etc. you need something different..... and more expensive.

[Jason Dunn]

Granted if you need a device that browse the web, check pop3, IMAP or web email and play Angry Birds iPads and clones are perfect but if you need to run Office, remotely access your network etc. etc. you need something different..... and more expensive.

I think we finally agree on something. :D I'm certainly not arguing that a $500 tablet/slate device running iOS or Android can do all the things you want it to do; my point is more than for the vast majority of consumers out there, these new breed of tablets do "enough" for them to warrant buying. And that's what Microsoft is finding it hard to compete with - appliance computing is cheaper and less resource-heavy than running Windows.

[karen]

Beautiful? Runs smoothly? How would Jane or Joe user know that? I have not been able to see a live WP7 device in a store. A couple of fake dummy devices, sure. Apple requires that devices be live and connected.

I have played with a WP7 phone, but I had to borrow it from a MS employee during lunch.

Carrier stores don't have live demo devices, even behind the counter. Why would anyone sign a 3 year contract for a device they've never actually seen?

[Jason Dunn]

Beautiful? Runs smoothly? How would Jane or Joe user know that? I have not been able to see a live WP7 device in a store. A couple of fake dummy devices, sure. Apple requires that devices be live and connected.

Agreed! It's a huge problem that Microsoft didn't make this a requirement - at Rogers and Telus stores, there's no way to see a working Windows Phone 7 device unless you ask and they bring it out from the back. I did that at a Telus store last month and one device was completely dead, and other was nearly dead. It's ridiculous - as you say, how will a customer ever buy a phone like this if they can't see it in operation? Rogers stores seem to be especially pathetic in this regard - virtually no working phones at all. The Samsung Galaxy Tab was the only thing in the store that was working...totally insane!

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

That's an interesting point, because the only devices I usually see live here as well are the Galaxy Tab, the Galaxy S, and the iPhones. The only way I found out the sexiness of WP7 was via a pirated ROM. MS is really missing out!

[Fritzly]

Weird..... In Miami both T-Mobile and AT&T have actual phones running and people can interact with them.

[crimsonsky]

Agreed! It's a huge problem that Microsoft didn't make this a requirement - at Rogers and Telus stores, there's no way to see a working Windows Phone 7 device unless you ask and they bring it out from the back. I did that at a Telus store last month and one device was completely dead, and other was nearly dead. It's ridiculous - as you say, how will a customer ever buy a phone like this if they can't see it in operation? Rogers stores seem to be especially pathetic in this regard - virtually no working phones at all. The Samsung Galaxy Tab was the only thing in the store that was working...totally insane!

That must be a Canadian thing, seriously. In every carrier store here in the States (well, at least in my area), they always have live phones. Only the resellers like Best Buy & Office Max and the like use dummy units.