Comment by nathantotten
8 years ago
You have to consider this in the context at the time. Yes it would have been expensive, but Microsoft was investing BILLIONS into Windows Phone. Microsoft and partners spent something like $700 million dollars just on marketing for the launch of Windows Phone 7[1,2].
To spend that kind of money on marketing and then not dedicate resources to the actual product seems foolish. And I am not saying they should have done this for only one app. I am saying they should have done this for many apps. If they had created quality versions of, say, the top 25 apps for mobile at the time they would have been in a much better position. I believe they could have made significant traction with business users. Remember, at the time Office wasn't available on other platforms and was (is) a huge draw for many people.
If they had been successful with the strategy and gained market share the partners would have wanted to take over their own apps anyway to enable monetization. But they needed users for that and to get users they needed apps. You have to jump start it somehow.
Now, would it have made any difference? Who knows. But IMO, you either need to not do it or you need to do all parts of it right. You can't go half way on the ecosystem and expect to succeed in an already challenging market.
1: https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dol... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/microsoft-oems-pledging-20...
Sounds like a Hollywood strategy to me. Overadvertise a stinker to try to recoup your investment.
That works for movies because they're trying to maximize the number of people who are interested enough to go see it once, more or less. A successful phone ecosystem requires building something that people want to use over the medium term.
And the expense and commitment of buying a phone is much greater than the cost of taking a chance on the Bearded Lady.
but marketing was always a core M$ strength. it's been a standard criticism of the company for a very long time.
They were great at getting their OS preinstalled on nearly every PC. They were really good at backwards compatibility, and they were absolutely ruthless against their competition. But they always, always sucked at marketing.
2 replies →
They did manage to get many of the top 50 apps to their platform, however, top 50 isn't enough. When all your friends have the latest and greatest on their iOS and Android and you have to wait a year or two for a WP port you get tired of that. Plus there are many industry-specific and workplace apps that never made it to WP. You can only face so many let downs in the app store before you give up on a platform. Nokia did make some damn good hardware though.
> the top 25 apps for mobile at the time
This list keeps changing every month. Remember Pokemon Go?
6 million daily active users remember Pokémon Go and spent $1B on it in 2016.