
"Microsoft's phone chief hates to call the new Nokia Lumia 521 cheap, but the lower-priced smartphone launching in the United States is
the company's boldest move yet to win mass market share from leaders Apple and Samsung. The world's largest software company has so far focused on putting its Windows Phone software into expensive, high-end devices - chiefly from Nokia and HTC. But the new model will go on sale at Walmart later this month at an unsubsidized price under $150, relatively cheap for a new phone running up-to-date software without a long-term contract." Windows Phone is racing to the bottom just as fast as Android - with the difference being that expensive Android devices do
not fail to sell.
Member since:
2005-11-29
The .NET is not a clone of the JVM, and in fact deviates from it in ways that the JVM is only now starting to catch up.
The .NET Framework has seen numerous releases, with the most recent release this past Fall. Visual Studio 2012 is written in a combination of C#, C++, and WPF using mixed mode technologies pioneered in .NET .
The Windows Phone app store with 150,000 applications are apps written in .NET, the Windows Store with 60,000 applications is almost completely filled with apps written in .NET .
Silverlight, an Adobe Flash clone
Silverlight started off as WPF/E, or WPF Everywhere. It is a browser based implementation of their WPF framework which works across Windows, Linux, OSX, and Windows Phone.
The technologies pioneered in WPF and Silverlight form the core of Windows today. Windows 8 and its app model are based entirely on technologies pioneered in .NET .
The metadata format for WinRT is .NET metadata, the entire API surface is inspired by things in .NET and C# like async/await, Generics, and attribute based programming. C++/CX? Inspired by C# .
Windows Azure, Microsoft's newest $1 Billion dollar business uses primarily .NET for its PaaS offerings.
The .NET Framework has spawned a vibrant community (Codeplex, Nuget, various hubs around the internet) which is basically Microsoft's personal developer army.
According to Microsofties, there were around 8 MILLION .NET developers a year ago.
How in hell is this even remotely considered a failure, especially when you take into account the fact that Silverlight is a portable version of .NET called CoreCLR. CoreCLR now forms the basis for the .NET framework in WinRT and on Windows Phone.
.NET has been one of Microsoft's unmistakable successes. It just defies logic that you'd claim otherwise. It was the best strategic move for the Developer Division in decades.
.NET was the moment when things started going bad, and Microsoft is looking at finally dropping it. Maybe there is hope.
This is why people who have no idea what .NET is shouldn't talk about .NET .
The Surface has made Microsoft a couple hundred MILLION dollars in less than a quarter with limited availability (The Surface Pro is available in the US, Canada, and very recently China). Even then, some reports had Windows 8 up to 7.5% of the market.
Surface Pro retails for $800 dollars. Microsoft's ASP on their tablet offerings are incredibly high, to the point where they can extract quite a bit of revenue from a modest amount of volume.