[skc]

Many years later and I'm still bitter that the tech press laughed Windows Phone out of the room straight to its demise. Yes it had very little developer support but at some point things were looking up. It was just the butt of too many jokes from influential people.

A third ecosystem right now would have been amazing

[The_President]

The Windows phone didn't make it due to Microsoft failing to compete, not the press.

Not many tech products exite me less than the concept of a Microsoft Windows 365 Copilot Cortana phone.

[michaelt]

> The Windows phone didn't make it due to Microsoft failing to compete

As I recall Microsoft threw quite a lot of resources into Windows Phone.

My then-employer had apps for Android and Apple, and Microsoft literally paid for us to port it to Windows Phone. Microsoft brought Nokia, who had dominated the industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

And Microsoft was early to the mobile party too - you could get an iPaq H3660 running Microsoft Pocket PC 2000, seven years before the first iPhone. Keyboardless Fujitsu and Compaq tablets ran Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in 2003, seven years before the iPad.

They weren't as good as what came later. Chunky, fragile devices, resistive touchscreens, stylus input with a tiny on-screen keyboard, worse batteries, worse wifi, barely any mobile data. And at the time, $500 seemed hugely expensive compared to a normal phone, even if these days there are plenty of $1000 smartphones.

But there's an alternate reality where Microsoft had a 'first mover advantage' and captured a big slice of the smartphone-and-tablet market.

[microtonal]

It was Microsofts fault. I had a Windows Phone just to play with it (besides an iPhone), Nokia Lumia. Just when Windows Phone 7 was getting some traction, Microsoft axed it and rebooted the ecosystem. None of the popular phones that ran Windows Phone 7 got the Windows Phone 8 update. To make it worse, Windows Phone 8 apps were not compatible with Windows Phone 7.

So Microsoft basically said: "as a thanks for being an early adopter, you know have to buy a completely new phone again". For reference, Windows Phone 7 was initially released in October 2010 and Windows Phone 8 in October 2012. After that many (technically-inclined) early adopters left.

Microsoft destroyed Windows Phone.

[ghaff]

Zune was also... not good. I was given one. It was defective. I think I got a warranty replacement and gave it to a friend who basically never used it as far as I know.

Nadella's Azure play basically saved Microsoft in my opinion. They totally blew mobile and desktop Windows and Office were declining markets and XBox was a sideshow.

[The_President]

I long for something like the first gen Zune that just worked. Great aesthetics and screen for the time. Replaced with an iPod Touch which was nice but entirely forgettable.

[SoftTalker]

Windows phones were great at the time, everyone I knew who had a Lumia loved it, but yeah imagining what it would be like today makes me shudder.

[_old_dude_]

Yes, and let's not forget Stephen Elop's 'Burning Platform' Memo

https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TEB-2031

[The_President]

Paywalled for me

[bookofjoe]

https://sriramk.com/memos/elop-burning-platforms.pdf

[The_President]

Think I'll look for it myself thanks. Hackernews.pdf - that is a pass.

[skeeter2020]

>> It was just the butt of too many jokes from influential people.

I loved my Windows phones (especially near the end when you were getting Pixel & Apple level hardware for pennies on the dollar), but is this really true? They had limited hardware partners (and the disaster with Nokia), lukewarm carrier deals, absolutely no apps, but who were these "influential people" who made fun of it? If anything it seemed more like no-one was even aware of it. I remember the little press they did get being quite positive on the devices & OS, while critical of the broader ecosystem, which seems fair.

[dessimus]

Given what Microsoft has done with the state of Windows with built-in telemetry, the attempts to add Recall, and now AI features they are adding to many customers dismay, you have them doing anything different with Windows Phone if it had gained traction than Apple and Google?

[Towaway69]

> A third ecosystem right now would have been amazing

Initially read this ending on … amazon

Please Universe, don’t give us the Amazon Phone as alternative.

[protimewaster]

I imagine it'll be a while before Amazon wants to build another phone, after what a spectacular failure the Fire Phone was.

I'm guessing they'll try again at some point, though.

[mmooss]

Why not Blackberry as the third ecosystem? They used QNX, a respected realtime OS, and had a history of making appealing, highly functional phones.

[MrMorden]

Lack of applications. They decided to fix that by adding an Android subsystem, and nobody wanted to publish their Android applications to the Amazon store even with Amazon throwing gobs of money at publishers and only some APIs having been moved into Google Play Services.

[mmooss]

Sure, but the same applies to Windows mobile. Why favor Windows over Blackberry mobile devices for a 3rd ecosystem?

[qiine]

Intel fumbling smartphone's cpu felt like this too.

[acheron]

Eh, Microsoft got bored of developing their own browser and just pushes Chromium on their users now. Probably they would have just turned Windows Phones into another Android too.

[chistev]

The phone was terrible.