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Pupil
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 25
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Microsoft should have CTRL ALT DEL'd their WM Marketing Dept.
Interesting article. Classic WM, like all platforms, needed some code tuning, and user friendliness added, but maybe (one of) the main reason they got their butt kicked by the iPhone, and Droid was both those devices were extensively advertised in the mainstream media vs. zero to little advertising for the platform whose butt was kicked. It was hard to go a night of network TV without seeing several iPhone / Droid ads. Add in the multiple lighted kiosks ads for iPhone downtown, the movie commercials for Droid at the cinema, and all the free mentions Apple gets in the mainstream press when a new product is introduced, and you have a marketing juggernaut. At the same time, the non-tech consumer saw - lets see - zero mainstream ads for Windows Mobile. After seeing multiple ads about the iPhone / Droid doing some nice things in the commercials, shock of all shocks, the non-tech consumer who never saw a WM ad, bought the iPhone, or Droid when they decided to upgrade from their dumb phone, or feature phone. Harvard MBA's please take note that several heavily mainstream advertised products massively outsold a competing product with little to no mainstream advertising. What a new phenomenon, first time that has happened. Apple followed the same heavy mainstream advertising strategy with the iPod, and now with the iPad. Meanwhile, the competition did no to little mainstream advertising while getting their butt kicked by the product being heavily advertised.
Owned about a dozen Classic WM devices over a 10 year period. All of them were very reliable, stable, and since I favored the larger screen devices, 95% of the time I used finger navigation. Don't doubt the horror stories I have seen on the web about WM, but for me, Classic WM is still the most stable of the mobile OS's I use, and still out of the box does more of the things I use than competing platforms. Fortunately, you can find apps for Android to add in many of the features, but not for iOS due to Apple's restrictions. I reset my iPhone 4, various gen touches, Android, and even WP 7 more often than any Classic WM device I own. In the interest of full disclosure, I usually purchased the top of the line WM device not the inexpensive devices with inadequate processor, and memory. In the two months I have owned the HD7, I have needed to take out the battery twice to reset a frozen device. In 10 years with a dozen Classic WM devices, I had to remove the battery about the same number of times. Twice with one WP7 in two months vs twice in 10 years with a dozen Classic WM devices.
Although I tried various shells with WM, I usually ended up with the Today screen customized to my liking with Pocket Plus. Microsoft should have constantly tuned the code, and added the slick UI / user friendliness the new smartphone users demand while keeping the customizability / feature richness vs. throwing out the old, and starting from scratch. Their marketing dept for Classic WM (if they had one) should have been CTRL ALT DEL'd, not the product.
In addition to the purchased HD7, I just won a LQ Quantum. The Metro UI is nice, but frankly I don't see it being the massive improvement in mobile UI that Microsoft was aiming at. It's slick, and smooth, but so are the competition. Again, in the interest of full disclosure, I am not a big gamer, or social network user, two of the target audiences for WP7. In its current rendition, WP7 is missing too many features I use to be my daily driver. Even if they added in the features, and the essential 3rd party apps were developed, I don't see any compelling killer app or feature that would cause me to go back to Microsoft from my newly adopted Android platform after Microsoft CTRL ALT Del'd their loyal Classic WM users for the new slick, smooth, but feature limited WP7.
Last edited by jimtravis; 01-07-2011 at 06:22 PM..
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