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
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
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.