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by alaskamiller 927 days ago
Xbox, Surface. Holo didn't go far. May return back to mobile in some form soon.

Services, and their sales team, are still Microsoft's strong point.

Apple seeing its services grow and is leaning in on it now.

The question is whether Apple eats services faster than Microsoft eats into hardware.
3 comments
brandall10 927 days ago
Xbox and Surface have been around a long time as product categories. Xbox isn't even the premier device in its segment.

Highly doubt MS will ever be successful on mobile... their last OS was pretty great and they were willing to pay devs to develop, they just couldn't get it going. This is from someone who spent a ton of time developing on PocketPC and Windows Mobile back in the day.

Products are not the reason for their resurgence.

Apple makes a ton in services, but their R&D is heavily focused on product and platform synergy to that ecosystem extremely valuable.

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alaskamiller 927 days ago
Microsoft grinds constantly and consistently though, sprinkled with some monopolistic tendencies now and then to clinch a win.

I think the grind from Windows CE to Windows Phone is just a blip to them for now.

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ekianjo 927 days ago
MS products all suck. They only survive because they throw billions at them and dont care about profitability.

Microsoft is still the same old Microsoft

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ethbr1 927 days ago
Afaict, Windows Phone mostly failed because of timing. In the same way that XBox mostly succeeded because of timing. (In the sense that timing dominated the huge amount of excellent work that went into both)

Microsoft is a decent physical product company... they've usually just missed on the strategic timing part.

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Wazako 927 days ago
It's not a question of timing, but of Microsoft's brand image (Internet Explorer) and the fact that Android was already open source.
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brandall10 927 days ago
Timing was definitely an issue - first Windows Phone came 3 years after iOS and 2 after Android. AFA the product itself, I think the perception it needed to overcome was more PocketPC/Windows Mobile having an incredibly substandard image in the market after the iOS release which seemed light years ahead, esp. since MS had that market to themselves for so many years.

That said, it got great reviews and they threw $$ at devs to develop for it, just couldn't gain traction. IME it was timing more than anything and by the time it came to market felt more reactionary than truly innovative.

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ethbr1 927 days ago
"Open source" in the sense there was open source. Which you could use if you were willing to jettison Maps et al.

Given dog eat dog of early Android manufacturers, most couldn't afford to recreate Google services.

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Wazako 927 days ago
By this I mean that Microsoft had the positioning of an iPhone in a not-so-great version. Where as Android relied on the "Open source" and free side for manufacturers to adapt to their phones, even if Google's services remained proprietary.

Can we really talk about timing, when it's above all a problem of a product that didn't fit the market?

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