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  #1  
Old 08-13-2009, 05:30 PM
Pete Paxton
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Default Windows Mobile Loses 2.7% of Smartphone Market in Q2 09

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...arket-in-q2.ars

"Microsoft's mobile market share continues to drop year-on-year, according to data released by Gartner. Smartphone sales were up to 41.0 million in 2Q09, a 27 percent increase over 2Q08's 32.3 million. Windows Mobile, however, only managed to grab 3.81 million of those units in 2Q09, or about 9.3 percent. The number of units wasn't much of a drop from 2Q08, where they booked 3.87 million sales. But the segment was smaller then, and that was was good enough for 12 percent of the market in 2Q08; given the growth of smartphone sales, the drop has to be very disappointing."

I recently took a vacation from Portland to St. Louis and had to visit a few airports. I've noticed that airports are a great way of telling what people are using as a mobile device so I'm always scanning the crowds to see what people choose. I visited airports in Portland, Denver, St. Louis, and Albuquerque. You know which devices I saw the most? Blackberry Curves and Iphones. Of course there were others but these are the two I saw the most. When I traveled a few years back it was mostly Windows Mobile devices, so it wasn't exactly shocking when I read this article. With so many Android devices coming out and the rumor of Dell getting back in the game, it makes me wonder where Microsoft will fit in. What's it going to take to get Windows Mobile devices back in the thick of it? Will Windows Mobile 6.5 or perhaps 7.0 do it or will they just continue to slip? When you're out and about, do you see many Windows Mobile devices? If not, what are you seeing most?

 

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  #2  
Old 08-13-2009, 05:43 PM
badersk
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I often get asked what kind of phone I have (It's a tilt) when I reply that it is windows mobile I often get "why don't you get an iPhone, it can do everything". Microsoft has done a poor job of marketing windows mobile and a worse job of improving it. Not that I think it is bad but they were unprepared for the iphone and android and they are not spending much energy improving it. I am not a programer so I don't fully understand what is involved but they should have focused on wm7 bring up to or past current systems and not spent so much time on 6.5.
 
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Old 08-13-2009, 06:04 PM
kerrins
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Default Tilt too

I also have a tilt and it's funny to me when iPhone people say, "mine does this" and I have to smile and say, "yes, mine has done that for a while." The iPhone is easily better looking than a tilt, but functionally there isn't a significant difference. I do wish MS would focus more on their mobile applications and mobile OS. It would be difficult to find anyone without a mobile device now. I wish MS would stop treating mobile OS like a fad. It's here to stay, make a good one.
As for the polling. Mostly blackberries and iPhones in the airport (SJC, DEN, PHL, LAX).
 
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Old 08-13-2009, 06:42 PM
virain
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I use G1. Most devices I see on streets of New York are either Blackberry or iPhone. I think one of the biggest problem for WM is a poor marketing. When I talk to iPhone users, they are quiet aware that WM functionality is more superior to iPhone. Yet you have to respect conventional wisdom. One of the WM problems in loosing the ground I see is highly unresonable pricing. Even if you look at the release of TP2 by T-Mobile USA. $350 compare to sub $200 for Android devices. It does seems like a price fixing to give unfair advantage over WM to Android which T-Mo, btw, promotes very agressive.
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Old 08-13-2009, 07:52 PM
Sven Johannsen
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Not sure I could tell many devices apart without getting up close and personal. Sure the iPhone is pretty distinctive, but from a little distance it is prety tough to distinquish a BlackJack or Epix from a host of Blackberries. With HTC using very similar outward designs for their WM and Android models that gets tougher too. Even looking at the home screen, with all the customized UIs out their, it is getting harder to tell if it is a WinMo phone.

Couldn't agree more on the marketing, but I guess it is hard to market an underlaying OS with so many diverse form factors, software complements and customization that is the result of the sell to OEM and let them run wild business model.

I have been using an iPhone for a bit now, a hand-me down, and not a day goes by that I don't get to say "why the heck can't I...[fill in the blank]". Still the user experience, for what it does do, is pretty smooth. If MS needs to take anything from Apple...it's their marketing team.
 
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  #6  
Old 08-13-2009, 08:20 PM
Gerard
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While I don't visit airports often, I do see a lot of musicians in my business (repairing instruments), most of whom use cellular phones. The iPhone is far and away #1 with these people. I don't see any Blackberries among my clients - my little brother is a film director and he uses one of those, as do most around him. Many musicians also use Mac computers, and one seems to follow the other, though the penetration of the iPhone in this sector seems to have outpaced the Mac by quite a large percentage - many of my clients use a Mac, but lots of others use a PC.

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.

Microsoft's $#!T poor marketing has been a perennial topic as far back as I can remember in PPC forums. Seems we were ranting about that back in 2000, when the subject was 'how can Microsoft take some of Palm's market share?' Palm gradually, inevitably failed, through their own lack of foresight in terms of feature upgrades and a stale OS. No lack of out and out marketing there, just device interest failure. Microsoft had virtually nothing to do with it. Just lucky.

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.

Then there's that enduring charm of Apple simplicity. Whether it translates into depth of utility for the power user is irrelevant. Power users are not the market being sought. Oh sure, Apple is happy to sell to corporations, and in some businesses they are doing just fine at that job. Other businesses won't be interested because Windows Mobile devices are the only things capable of performing certain tasks. Apple need not shed any tears here, as they're covering the rest of the world's population nicely, from householders wanting a convenient recipe book in their pocket (which happens to let them update their Twitter account while baking muffins!) to school kids wanting to be just as cool as other school kids to commuters who want to watch music videos on the subway to just about anyone else you can think of.

The iPhone 'gets it' in a way the Pocket PC/Windows Mobile Smartphone does not, in terms of the everyman. We can sit around resenting that, or try to ignore it, but I've also watched as one by one, WM device users around me have become iPhone users, and have seen how they smile, how they positively glow, showing off the gee whiz tricks their big beautiful screens can display. And the tricks the microphone brings into the fray make it a whole lot more fun. Simplicity is not to be discounted too lightly. The iPhone makes loads of user-desired functions, whether social network related or just personal, a breeze to implement.

So far I remain un-tempted. There are just too many things a Windows Mobile device can do for me, too many programs I've long since become addicted to using and for which there are no Apple analogues. But for many this is not the case. Jumping ship seems so, so easy for them. The guy I bought my current HTC Elfin from was positively glowing at the ease of use his shiny new iPhone offered, after years of struggling with lockups and glitches with WM phones. He is far from alone in this. Microsoft needs to wake up, stop being stubborn about listening to users, and get with the program. Or lose this war. It's that simple.
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  #7  
Old 08-13-2009, 09:56 PM
Fritzly
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I see mostly iPhone and Blackberry too; I am also beginning to see some Android.
If MS will loose the battle .... it was fully deserved: after Palm committed "suicide" MS became the winner and it did not have to fight for it. Maybe this was its curse or maybe the company was just shortsighted and arrogant; anyway they slowed down the OS development, focused solely on the Enterprise forgetting that a phone is not "Office" and the amount of personal users is exponentially bigger than the corporate ones.
How is it possible that a simple, incremental update like 6.5 is taking so long? and WM7? Its development is taking longer than the one for Longhorn, and we all know as Longhorn ended........
Bottom line: has MS lost the battle? Not yet but I am sure that in London bookmakers are offering a high quote for MS victory.
 
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  #8  
Old 08-14-2009, 03:20 AM
palur
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MS had no serious competitor in touch screen based cell phones till recently. Apple has great marketing strategies and create lot of hype.
1) They create some cool programs such as "Bump", "Mover" and multitouch screens and try to mesmerize the public and the media alike. Functionalty wise, Iphone was no superior to WM initially. Now, it is the cool factor based on many useless (tell my age, play flute etc) as well as some useful apps. MS never bothered to highlight from the beginning that such cool applications were possible on WM phones.
2) AT&T store is an extension of Apple store. You will see reps spending time to explain each and every feature on Iphone either on a huge Iphone model or on an actual device.
3) MS made no effort to market WM aggressively.
4) WM has lots of free applications including several cool ones, but never made it known to everyone and never had an app store like apple does. I had to explain and point to several free applications to the WM users in the past, whereas, Iphone has everything on APP store.

Though I have an Iphone now, I miss my HTC Touch HD screen and functionalty and just waiting for Touch pro2 or Omnia2 with US 3g bands.
 
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  #9  
Old 08-14-2009, 02:20 PM
Fritzly
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[QUOTE=palur;711166]MS had no serious competitor in touch screen based cell phones till recently. Apple has great marketing strategies and create lot of hype.
QUOTE]

Well MS touch screen worked decently using a stylo not fingers; Apple introduces, in the cellular phones arena, Touch" using fingers. Nothing new of course: restaurants and bar have had it for years but the iPhone applied the paradigm to phones.
I would not characterize this as just "marketing".
I still believe that MS and its inferiority complex toward big Enterprises made them loose focus and concentrate only on the business side forgetting that nowadays everybody carries a cellular phone.

Last edited by Fritzly; 08-14-2009 at 02:23 PM..
 
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  #10  
Old 08-14-2009, 02:54 PM
Craig Horlacher
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Default Not suprising

I also see almost all iPhones and BlackBerry's. I have a Curve for work. It's ok. The battery life is amazing - I only need to charge it once or twice a week. I should mention that I only use the BB for email, rarly phone calls. Still, the battery life is impressive.

I think Microsoft has just sat around and done nothing significant with the Pocket PC since they changed it from using ram for "drive c:" (you know what I mean, main storage memory) to using flash for storage in WinMo 5 - if you want to call that significant. They still have not fixed (so it is fixed for all devices, all oems) the problem that causes programs to crash if the app or the apps open file is stored on a storage card. If it's fixed on your device, thank your OEM. Imate has not fixed it and I'm using WinMo 6.1. That's been an issues since at least 2003se. I was not happy when I got my $800 WinMo and it still had that issue. Also, mine only supports MicroSD, not even MicroSDHC!!! What a joke!

I'd switch to a different platform but I love the apps, non-Microsoft apps mostly, for the Pocket PC. Once there are good replacements for a different device, I'll probably switch. So far, the iPhone isn't close nor is the BlackBerry from what I've seen. Yeah, I think the iPhone has more apps but not as good, not as full featured, or maybe just not what I'm looking for.

I'm surprised microsoft is wasting more time and money on the Zune. Most stores figured out a few years ago that nobody wanted the thing. The Zune HD looks very impressive but I think they're going to have a hard time selling it in an iPod world. MS really needs to kill the Zune, which never seemed to have any market share, and put resources in to WinMo, or maybe kill WinMo too and just put resources into Windows 7. That may be the only area they have some chance. I like Bing but I think they need a lot more than that to make a dent in Google. If they can really make Win7 as good as it seems and support it very well maybe they can start getting some Mac people back on PC's.
 
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