Nokia board chairman Risto Siilasmaa went on a Finnish television show, and stated that while he is confident in Windows Phone 8, the company does have a back-up plan if it doesn't work out. Speculation aplenty - what is this backup plan? The answer's pretty easy, if you ask me.
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Member since:2005-11-14
Yes, but so what? There's no shortage of developers. Consider that all iOS developers use Macs, which is a tiny, tiny platform compared to Windows. You don't need them to switch, as there are far more on the other side. No, WP8 will depend on Windows developers choosing to develop for WP8 as well. Since the developer tools are the same, they will look at them whether the platform is used or not.
Member since:2008-09-21
Most top-applications are not done by "hobby-developers" in the spare time (FLOSS excluded which does not apply to our WP scenario anyways). Most top-applications are done by professional software-developers or companies. It's a business for them. Write software, earn money, pay invoices.
Such developers are not developing software for the iphone cause they happen to use and like OSX. They develop software for the iphone cause that is what brings in the money. When iphone would not exist and Windows CE or Symbian would be where the money is those developers and companies would write CE or Symbian software. That is what they did some years ago before iphone and Android came along!
Now the situation is that WP is irrelevant. It is so tiny that it makes even more sense to develop Bada or BB applications before even looking at WP. Cause of the WinDesktop and WinARM differences I described below in another thread already, Windows8 is not going to change that. WP8 will stay an irrelevant market and hence stay unattractive for commercial developers. Compared to Android it also never was attractive for non-commercial developers.
What will happen is that Microsoft has to invest A DAMN LOT of money into the ecosystem to keep it alive. But even then they will have a hard time. The situation for Microsoft now the same it was the past 20 years for all not-Windows operating systems. I doubt Microsoft can master such a situation. I doubt Microsoft is hungry enough and I think Microsoft was to long monopolist to handle a situation where they are not. They are like Nokia that, once not the market-leader and even de facto monopolist any longer, can only fall down to earth. Usually even below till they got slim and hungry enough again.
Edited 2012-07-04 12:59 UTC
Member since:
2008-08-19
On the contrary - multiple ecosystems might be good for competition, but from a developer point of view, two target platforms is already one more than ideal.
The failure of WP7 isn't entirely because of bad tools - it's also because many developers can't be bothered even checking out what those tools might be like, because they've no interest in supporting a platform that nobody uses.