| The analysis of the players in the mobile market and their motivations is spot on, but the rest of the article rests on shaky grounds. First off, Windows Phone is not superior to Android. It may be ahead in some respects, but it certainly lags Android in others. And that is the current situation. Till the last update Windows Phone clearly lagged Android in features. It may be comparable now, but it is yet too early to expect this to make a big difference. The real question is if achieving feature parity with Android is enough to let it succeed? When Android arrived on the scene it didn't have to contend with another Android. Windows Phone does. The carriers and device manufacturers that may invest in Windows Phone are the same ones that are already invested in Android (except Nokia). I can't see that Windows Phone provides them with something that Android does not. Sure, they will hedge their bets and make Windows Phone devices, but the success or failure of Windows Phone devices does not (yet) have the same impact on their balance sheet as that of Android devices on which they currently depend. When they adopted Android the mobile ecosystem was very different and it was their lifeline against a seemingly unstoppable Apple-dominated world, and they had every motivation to make these devices a success. A final point - fragmentation - I don't see how Windows Phone can avoid fragmentation. The more successful it gets, the more fragmented it will get. Thanks to Android, users expect to be able to get hold of the exact big/small/cheap/expensive/with-without-keyboard smartphone variant they want. Windows Phone can only avoid this fragmentation at the expense of market share. "will end-user dissatisfaction with Android’s inconsistencies and fragmentation be strong enough to allow the better product to succeed." Most end users don't care about fragmentation. Developers do, and people who invest in their mobiles do, but a significant fraction of users - the ones who "don't know what they hate" - do not typically know or care about ICS, or know what additional features it provides, or if their phones will get upgraded to ICS. |