Comment by joenathanone
8 years ago
You don't know how untrue this is, couple of things. First lets start with this qoute
"According to Kantar's October 2013 report, Windows Phone accounted for 10.2% of all smartphone sales in Europe and 4.8% of all sales in the United States."
and then this one
"Microsoft announced new data from IDC indicating that Windows Phone is the second-most-used mobile platform in Latin America."
Lastly, do you not remember the launch of the iPhone? Not only was it only available in the US, you could only get it on AT&T.
There can be many reasons Windows Phone failed, but what you've mentioned isn't one of them.
But you're not competing with the iPhone of ten years ago. You're competing with the iPhone of today. It's difficult but in the end just excuses.
Windows phones were never a serious competitor. It just wasn't that important to the life and death of Microsoft and the result, from a business organizational perspective, is very much expected.
Consider that his perception might explain why those numbers are so awful. It's perfectly possible for the phones to be accessible to those kind of numbers of users and still be totally unavailable in the outlets a huge proportion of potential customers would look for them.
E.g. I live in the UK, and I can't remember ever having seen a Windows phone in the stores. I'm sure they're available, because I've seen people use them now and again. But if they were available in the stores I've been in, they were hidden away.
You seem to be implying they were much more readily available in the United States, which seems like a stretch.
I didn't imply anything about actual availability at all, but about how perceived availability matters.
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yeah iphone was launched in 2007. We are in 2017 and if you want to take marketshare from your competitors then you need to be releasing your products in all major markets. Not a couple of them.
Windows phone was quite popular in Asia yet it died due to lack of devices.
My mum still rocks an HTC HD7 tho.
I remember the HD7, I was eyeing it off for a while, I could buy one, I just couldn't find a phone store near me that would let me try one. I moved to Android and the HTC Desire HD.
I had been a Windows Mobile 6.1 user.
I really would like to know why they abandoned Windows Mobile / CE at that time. It was quite strong foundation. Metro could be built on top of it easily.
Mystery.
You're being very disingenuous with the numbers. That 10% marketshare, in a few European countries, was mostly composed of cheap subsidized phones. That business model was not sustainable and subsequently collapsed.