New Lumia phones disappoint.
I don't really have a problem with Microsoft focusing on the lower ends of the markets with their phones. Especially as that is where the bulk of their sales have been. But, it is not at all surprising to me that their market share only started to slip once they stopped delivering flagship phones. It has been 11 months since the 930 was launched, and that was really just a delayed international version of the Icon so I would holistically say it has been even longer. Prior to that the 1020 was the last real flagship phone for Windows Phone.
Don't get me wrong, the Lumia 640 and 640XL look like nice phones. But they can't replace my Lumia 1020, and certainly not the 930. And THAT is a huge problem for the platform. The other problem is that while the 1020 and 930 may not be the leaders in sales for Windows Phone, flagship phones draw up buzz. This, I think, is a prime reason that market share is hurting right now for WP. Budget phones don't generate buzz. And you need buzz to sell phones. Basically, Microsoft needs a new flagship phone for their platform to help them sell cheaper phones.
And, right now at least, it seems like it needs to be Microsoft that releases those phones. Lumia phones DOMINATE Windows Phone sales. The HTC One M8 for Windows did nothing to trump up excitement and even Samsung porting their latest Galaxy phones over doesn't seem to build the same momentum for the platform. So, it falls to Microsoft to release a new flagship phone at least once a year to keep giving new people a reason to look at their offerings and to give those currently islanded on the 930 or 1020 a place to go that isn't Android or iOS.
I can't say I don't understand Microsoft's motivation. They own a phone OEM now AND they made the OS free to license. So, the only place they get lump sums of money is on their own device sales. So they stick where the volume is. If selling the OS was still a viable market it could make sense to take a risk on a flagship phone to help sell the platform in general.
The other problem with their current cadence of releasing flagship phones is international markets. Not all models make it to all regions. Here in Canada for instance, no one sold either the 930 or the Icon. Meaning the last flagship phone here is the 1020. And I simply can't justify going to an 830. The cheap SoC ruins it for me, along with the (by comparison) super low res camera. That means it is more like 2 years in many places since a flagship phone was seen. The 640 and the 640XL feels like MS is saying that they don't want people like me on their platform.
My opinion... if Microsoft is going to release new phones in pairs (which it seems like they like doing) they should be doing a flagship and a budget phone. I don't understand this whole thing where they release just two models into roughly the same price point. And then re-do the same thing, in the same price points a few months later.
Honestly, they could alternate between flagship and "affordable" flagship even, as long as there was some regular cadence to flagship phones. The 830 is an interesting device, and if I hadn't gotten a 1020 (or 930) after my ATIV S it probably would have been the next phone for me.
I don't need a top of the line phone. But, I'm also not willing to downgrade as far as an 830 when replacing a flagship phone. Despite having a CPU that is supposed to be roughly twice as fast... the 1020 has the higher clock speeds per core and better GPU and most real world tests put the 1020 as feeling faster. The 1020 has the better camera, and more RAM. Internal storage isn't really a concern for me, even with the huge size of the pics from the 1020, I've never once filled the 32GB internal storage, nor did I ever fill the 16GB on my ATIV S either, but again, it is a downgrade and another straw against the 830. The 1020 gets Glance screen which I've grown to love and better pixel density and better sunlight visibility.
Basically, out of context I see no reason why the 830 can't be called an affordable flagship phone. The problem is, in context, it is too much of a downgrade when compared to flagship phones on the same platform that are a year or even more old now.
And, because the 830 failed to be a replacement for even years old flagships (and the total lack of advertising) it did nothing to drum up excitement around Windows Phone. In fact, if Microsoft refuses to fix their advertising issues, they absolutely need another 1020; something which does something insanely better then everyone else.
[update]
Apparently they are holding out on releasing a new high end phone until after Windows 10 is released. Doesn't change much of what I said above. The time gap between flagship phones is too wide, especially given availability of Nokia/Microsoft handsets (on no other platform are flagship phones not released across the board, both globally and in terms of across carriers, so as indicate above even saying it has been 11 months since their last is effectively inaccurate depending on where you live and who your phone is with). Only time will tell just how much this move will hurt them.
[/update]
[update2]
For those wondering how a phone runs slower in practice than a phone that is supposedly only half as powerful in synthetic benchmarks... the reason is the clock speed per CPU. It was the same thing on desktops for gamers for a long time. The more cores you drop in a CPU while trying to maintain or even shrink size increases demand on cooling. As a result, more cores generally means slower speeds per core to keep things stable, and for the longest time gamer rigs always opted for super high clock speed dual cores rather than lower clock speed quad cores (until games like GTA4 came out which actually did prefer more than 2 cores).
The fact that just about everyone reports that the 1020 is actually faster than phones running the quad core 1.2GHZ Snapdragon chip would imply that the same is true in the mobile scene. Not a whole lot of actual multi-threading is happening. So a low end quad core, while it packs more potential power than a low end dual core, will actually gets its butt handed to it more often than not if the dual core has higher clock speeds. In this case 1.2GHZ vs 1.5GHZ. 300MHZ means that the Krait procs in the 1020 are more than 20% faster than procs in the Snapdragon chipset. And the 1020 can likely keep running at max speed longer as well before it gets throttled down thanks to fewer CPU's a similar space.
[/update2]
Don't get me wrong, the Lumia 640 and 640XL look like nice phones. But they can't replace my Lumia 1020, and certainly not the 930. And THAT is a huge problem for the platform. The other problem is that while the 1020 and 930 may not be the leaders in sales for Windows Phone, flagship phones draw up buzz. This, I think, is a prime reason that market share is hurting right now for WP. Budget phones don't generate buzz. And you need buzz to sell phones. Basically, Microsoft needs a new flagship phone for their platform to help them sell cheaper phones.
And, right now at least, it seems like it needs to be Microsoft that releases those phones. Lumia phones DOMINATE Windows Phone sales. The HTC One M8 for Windows did nothing to trump up excitement and even Samsung porting their latest Galaxy phones over doesn't seem to build the same momentum for the platform. So, it falls to Microsoft to release a new flagship phone at least once a year to keep giving new people a reason to look at their offerings and to give those currently islanded on the 930 or 1020 a place to go that isn't Android or iOS.
I can't say I don't understand Microsoft's motivation. They own a phone OEM now AND they made the OS free to license. So, the only place they get lump sums of money is on their own device sales. So they stick where the volume is. If selling the OS was still a viable market it could make sense to take a risk on a flagship phone to help sell the platform in general.
The other problem with their current cadence of releasing flagship phones is international markets. Not all models make it to all regions. Here in Canada for instance, no one sold either the 930 or the Icon. Meaning the last flagship phone here is the 1020. And I simply can't justify going to an 830. The cheap SoC ruins it for me, along with the (by comparison) super low res camera. That means it is more like 2 years in many places since a flagship phone was seen. The 640 and the 640XL feels like MS is saying that they don't want people like me on their platform.
My opinion... if Microsoft is going to release new phones in pairs (which it seems like they like doing) they should be doing a flagship and a budget phone. I don't understand this whole thing where they release just two models into roughly the same price point. And then re-do the same thing, in the same price points a few months later.
Honestly, they could alternate between flagship and "affordable" flagship even, as long as there was some regular cadence to flagship phones. The 830 is an interesting device, and if I hadn't gotten a 1020 (or 930) after my ATIV S it probably would have been the next phone for me.
I don't need a top of the line phone. But, I'm also not willing to downgrade as far as an 830 when replacing a flagship phone. Despite having a CPU that is supposed to be roughly twice as fast... the 1020 has the higher clock speeds per core and better GPU and most real world tests put the 1020 as feeling faster. The 1020 has the better camera, and more RAM. Internal storage isn't really a concern for me, even with the huge size of the pics from the 1020, I've never once filled the 32GB internal storage, nor did I ever fill the 16GB on my ATIV S either, but again, it is a downgrade and another straw against the 830. The 1020 gets Glance screen which I've grown to love and better pixel density and better sunlight visibility.
Basically, out of context I see no reason why the 830 can't be called an affordable flagship phone. The problem is, in context, it is too much of a downgrade when compared to flagship phones on the same platform that are a year or even more old now.
And, because the 830 failed to be a replacement for even years old flagships (and the total lack of advertising) it did nothing to drum up excitement around Windows Phone. In fact, if Microsoft refuses to fix their advertising issues, they absolutely need another 1020; something which does something insanely better then everyone else.
[update]
Apparently they are holding out on releasing a new high end phone until after Windows 10 is released. Doesn't change much of what I said above. The time gap between flagship phones is too wide, especially given availability of Nokia/Microsoft handsets (on no other platform are flagship phones not released across the board, both globally and in terms of across carriers, so as indicate above even saying it has been 11 months since their last is effectively inaccurate depending on where you live and who your phone is with). Only time will tell just how much this move will hurt them.
[/update]
[update2]
For those wondering how a phone runs slower in practice than a phone that is supposedly only half as powerful in synthetic benchmarks... the reason is the clock speed per CPU. It was the same thing on desktops for gamers for a long time. The more cores you drop in a CPU while trying to maintain or even shrink size increases demand on cooling. As a result, more cores generally means slower speeds per core to keep things stable, and for the longest time gamer rigs always opted for super high clock speed dual cores rather than lower clock speed quad cores (until games like GTA4 came out which actually did prefer more than 2 cores).
The fact that just about everyone reports that the 1020 is actually faster than phones running the quad core 1.2GHZ Snapdragon chip would imply that the same is true in the mobile scene. Not a whole lot of actual multi-threading is happening. So a low end quad core, while it packs more potential power than a low end dual core, will actually gets its butt handed to it more often than not if the dual core has higher clock speeds. In this case 1.2GHZ vs 1.5GHZ. 300MHZ means that the Krait procs in the 1020 are more than 20% faster than procs in the Snapdragon chipset. And the 1020 can likely keep running at max speed longer as well before it gets throttled down thanks to fewer CPU's a similar space.
[/update2]
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