Comment by mgkimsal
8 years ago
> For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc
I remember some of this vaguely. A friend of mine deep in the MS world was showing me some of what was going on, but this "ran promotions" - I dunno. I don't think I'm way out in "non-MS" land - I keep my finger on the pulse of a lot of tech communities. I didn't hear much about this except from a few friends deeply entrenched in MS. Perhaps there wasn't enough of an outreach program?
> Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time.
Given that I've registered multiple times with them to download various SDKs in the past, perhaps... emailing me about what they were doing, because I might have had an interest in being part of that app development push?
Maybe some actual ads on non-MS tech-related websites, or outreach to local non-MS user groups might have helped? As someone who's run multiple local tech groups, and frequented many for years, this "big focus of microsoft" was never a blip on anyone's radar (AFAICR).
> giving away free phones
That's sort of the bare minimum you'd need to do.
I'm reminded a bit about the HP tablets with webOS. They charged $499 (because, IIRC, "that's the price for tablets" - because of iPads), sold for a few weeks, then discontinued. Loads of people picked them up at $150-$200, even with no apps. "Well, we can't win, let's close it all down", after spending $1B+ on acquiring the stuff they're giving up on in the first place.
That move was likely political. Half the leaders internally wanted to let it die but to shift blame they let "the other team" launch it anyways to let it fail and say "told you so".
I remember that story for tablets. Same was with Amazon Fire Phone.
But i don't know how you can write off $1B... because honestly even iPod or iPhone wasn't successfully from the beginning. So they invest years for that status.
Competitors make clones, release them and after two months declaring abandoning market. Totally non-sence for me!
What's so weird about... well. not weird - just stupid(?). The HP thing - the guy in charge who made those decisions left soon after, IIRC (maybe was forced out, but didn't sound like it).
You spend $1B acquiring palm for webOS, but don't want to invest any more in actually trying to market or develop developers?
They flew off the shelves at $150/bucks, even with knowing there's no support, etc. Hobbyists wanted them. Some of my friends and family wanted one. I couldn't justify $500, but could $200 (but couldn't get any at that price).
Let's say they'd sold them at a loss - let's say $149, and they were losing $50 on each one. Getting 2 million of those in people's hands in a year would have 'cost' $100m, but ... the ecosystem would have had a reason to grow, because there would have been a market to serve. Had discussions with folks who claimed "you can't do that" (for some reason, bringing "dumping" and "illegality" in to the argument). So... selling them at $150 while "going out of business" is AOK, but selling that at $150, taking a loss while trying to grow a market (and creating more long term value for the people buying them) "makes no sense" (that was one of the arguments I got from folks).
Of course, it's all academic, and I'm just armchair quarterbacking the whole thing, but few companies even have the option of strategic long term losses to seed/grow a market. I'd think the rewards would be substantial if you can pull it off, but we don't seem to have many who want to try anymore, and that lack of trying really cements the two-party system we have in mobile.
I think the closest real analogy to what your thinking is Amazon, where they sell things like the Kindle line of items, close to price. In the hope that you buy more stuff from them.
Look at the fire tablets, you have a 7" for $50, there is no way there is any profit in that price.
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