Update on Windows Phone predictions...
I said before that I felt that Microsoft was simply doing the barest minimum to keep Windows Phone alive on paper. And today's sales numbers show that they are down. Way down. In fact, down far enough that they dragged MS's hardware division down on the whole.
You'd be forgiven for immediately thinking that this is purely about popularity. And while being popular would surely help. I would argue it isn't really the case.
Let's start with the obvious; Microsoft simply isn't making ANYWHERE near as many phones as Nokia did. In fact, they laid off the vast majority of the people acquired largely so that they could scale down operations. So, it is worth noting that they don't even have the same capacity that they used to have.
They've also slimmed down their offerings. It felt like Nokia tried to have a phone priced at every $10 increment. Microsoft has vastly scaled this back as well.
Then there is carrier partnerships. Microsoft continues to baffle me extensively by continuing to engage in carrier exclusives and in some cases not making agreements at all. In Canada you still cannot get any new Lumia from any major carrier. That is where what? Something like 95% of phone sales come from? I made up a stat, but I fear it might actually be on the low end.
Oh, and availability doesn't help either. For months after the phones were announced they couldn't even be purchase (at least here in Canada). Low stock levels were apparently to blame. They targeted other countries first. But I didn't get the impression that stock levels were great even where they tried to sell them. In other words, their limited production lead to spreading initial stock too thin. And that is despite not even attacking the most common sales channels.
I'm not sure it is possible to have watched all of these moves and think to yourself "yeah, I think they are actually trying to succeed". This, of course, is a large part of the reason why I think they are planning to make a shift to Intel based phones or some other drastic shift in the "near enough" future. I don't believe that even the folks at Microsoft could have made ALL of these bad moves on purpose.
Then there is also Nadella. This man has been quick to axe numerous projects which didn't seem to be succeeding. There were even rumours floating around about killing Xbox. But not only has he not axed Windows Phone, he's never even given an inch to the notion that they might. And whatever else you can say about the man, he doesn't seem ignorant or stupid. It isn't likely that he is blissfully unaware that the platform is faltering and their reduced efforts are a large part of that equation.
Back to my original point. The way Microsoft is producing phones right, they can't even keep up with their current lack of popularity. They are spread so thin, that if there were an uptick in demand they would be unable to detect it and even more unable to deliver. It feels like they are doing damage control in both directions. On the one hand they don't want to kill the platform off prematurely and piss partners, devs, etc... off. But at the same time they don't want their market share to increase.
You'd be forgiven for immediately thinking that this is purely about popularity. And while being popular would surely help. I would argue it isn't really the case.
Let's start with the obvious; Microsoft simply isn't making ANYWHERE near as many phones as Nokia did. In fact, they laid off the vast majority of the people acquired largely so that they could scale down operations. So, it is worth noting that they don't even have the same capacity that they used to have.
They've also slimmed down their offerings. It felt like Nokia tried to have a phone priced at every $10 increment. Microsoft has vastly scaled this back as well.
Then there is carrier partnerships. Microsoft continues to baffle me extensively by continuing to engage in carrier exclusives and in some cases not making agreements at all. In Canada you still cannot get any new Lumia from any major carrier. That is where what? Something like 95% of phone sales come from? I made up a stat, but I fear it might actually be on the low end.
Oh, and availability doesn't help either. For months after the phones were announced they couldn't even be purchase (at least here in Canada). Low stock levels were apparently to blame. They targeted other countries first. But I didn't get the impression that stock levels were great even where they tried to sell them. In other words, their limited production lead to spreading initial stock too thin. And that is despite not even attacking the most common sales channels.
I'm not sure it is possible to have watched all of these moves and think to yourself "yeah, I think they are actually trying to succeed". This, of course, is a large part of the reason why I think they are planning to make a shift to Intel based phones or some other drastic shift in the "near enough" future. I don't believe that even the folks at Microsoft could have made ALL of these bad moves on purpose.
Then there is also Nadella. This man has been quick to axe numerous projects which didn't seem to be succeeding. There were even rumours floating around about killing Xbox. But not only has he not axed Windows Phone, he's never even given an inch to the notion that they might. And whatever else you can say about the man, he doesn't seem ignorant or stupid. It isn't likely that he is blissfully unaware that the platform is faltering and their reduced efforts are a large part of that equation.
Back to my original point. The way Microsoft is producing phones right, they can't even keep up with their current lack of popularity. They are spread so thin, that if there were an uptick in demand they would be unable to detect it and even more unable to deliver. It feels like they are doing damage control in both directions. On the one hand they don't want to kill the platform off prematurely and piss partners, devs, etc... off. But at the same time they don't want their market share to increase.
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