As good as I personally think Windows Phone 7.5 is, there’s no denying it has a bit of an application problem. Sure, there’s enough applications when looking at quantity, but when looking at quality and having the applications people want, it’s a different story. ZDNet managed to get its hands on Microsoft’s plan to attract the developers of top mobile applications to Windows Phone.
Windows Phone has over 70000 applications, which seems like enough – the problem, however, is not quantity, but quality, and having the applications people want. Microsoft, Google, and Apple often boast about how many applications they have, but we all know virtually all but a very small group are absolute crap. It’s those top, say, 1000-2000 applications that matter. The rest is just there for marketing purposes.
And this is exactly where Windows Phone 7 falls on its face, according to Microsoft, and as such, the company has formulated an internal plan to address this issue. First, the company is setting aside $10 million to ‘ring-fence’ companies like Pandora and Instagram who currently aren’t building WP7 applications. Ring-fencing means promoting competitors to these services. Second, Microsoft wants to promote quality over quantity, especially compared to Android. Third, and perhaps most controversially, they want to tie exclusive applications to specific devices.
I’m not entirely sure this will actually solve the issue. Developers aren’t warming up to Windows Phone 7 because the returns are simply way too low, especially compared to Android and iOS. Nobody buys Windows Phone devices, so there are no people to buy applications. A bit oversimplified, perhaps, but not far from the truth.
I think Microsoft’s saving grace will come not from this plan, but from the future. Windows Phone currently lacks support for native code, which the next release will supposedly bring. The next release will also be tied more closely to Windows on the desktop, which greatly expands the potential market for developers. Every regular PC will ship with Windows 8 come late 2012, and if Windows 8 application code can easily be made to run on Windows Phone, developers will be more enthusiastic about it.
Windows Phone 7.5 still has a long way to in more ways than just the application thing, but as is common for Microsoft, the company’s in it for the long run. They’ve got enough money to throw at it, in any case.
Attracting developers will fail if Microsoft won’t release their NDK (with C/C++ compiler) for Windows Phone without restrictions. Strangely they still didn’t realize it.
Edited 2012-03-26 18:59 UTC
If all else fails, they could always just bribe developers with large amounts of money, as they did with Nokia.
Or small amounts, as it were.
remember when MSFT said they’d send a free wp7 to every webOS developer when HP axed webOS?
It was paperwork hell, and they never sent me one. I just stopped asking for it after a while.
I don’t think attracting competitors to services like Pandora is going to be effective. As we’ve already seen in the f/oss world and to a lesser extent on OS X, people don’t really want alternatives. They want what everybody else is using at the moment and they want it now, even if the alternatives are better (which they sometimes are). I’m surprised Microsoft, who are experts at lock-in and actively hindering alternatives to their own software, are unaware of this. One would think they, of all companies, would be experts in this area.
They are playing Poker. They want Pandora and Instagram to develop a fear of being left behind, and support WP7 just in case.
Doubt Pandora is worry about that given the bind that the RIAA’s collection agency has them in. They’d just point out the competitor to the collection agency and the competitor would likely die as Pandora nearly did themselves. So nothing really to worry about there.
Now if the RIAA actually understood Internet Radio and such, then there would be more for Pandora to fear. Until then…
Oh, they get it. Don’t worry. The problem is what to do about it.
What they rightly understand is that many companies have zero interest in developing for Windows Phone. This is an acknowledgment of that. Another thing they understand is that you can steal somebody else’s idea and take the market from them if you have the resources. So, what they are hoping to do is to artificially inflate the resources of competitors to highly visible apps that will not move to Windows Phone. Basically, they are hoping that the companies that do support Windows Phone will be what “everybody else is using right now” and are willing to pay in order to up the odds.
I would say that their ‘expertise’ in hindering the competition is exactly what they are trying to apply here. I am not saying it will work. That said, ‘hinderance’ is a decent tactic when playing catch-up and, as you say, they have some experience at that.
Microsoft is in a tough spot. The exact same kinds of ‘network effects’ that keep Windows top dog are working against them in mobile. They let not one but two strong competitors dominate the market before they fielded a competitive entry. To win, they have to provide something truly extraordinary to offset the ‘what everybody else is using’ inertia and they have not really stumbled upon that yet.
That’s karma, man…
What they need to do is port Metro and WinRT over to Windows phone, and then you can write one application which will run on desktop, tablet, phone, and maybe even the next Xbox as well. That way, any app that’s written for Metro on the desktop/tablet should be able to run on WP phones with little to no modifications required.
This seems so obvious that I’d be surprised if they DIDN’T do it. If they do, I think Windows Phone will end up being a force to be reckoned with. Being able to use the exact same apps on desktop, tablet, and phone, and being able to sync between the two? Yes please!!
ummm….
Metro is on Windows Phone…..and WinRT is going to allow app developers to create an application that can compile for the desktop and tablet then use that code base to build a windows phone version.
Typical Microsoft “not getting it”. They are not as relevant as to get developers to make stuff exclusively for their platform, so they should instead be looking for developers to port existing games to WP7.
And without both C++/OpenGL support this is never happening. 7.5 is supposed to support C++ I think, but no one will rewrite all the OpenGL code in their crappy mobile version of D3D.
Because that is what you have with Android and iOS…oh wait… it isn’t
Actually, both Android and iOS support building code in C++ and using OpenGL… What mostly differs is the gui libraries, a not insurmountable obstacle given that both android and ios are major platforms.
Windows phone is a niche platform, and its totally incompatible with the others meaning not a lot of code can be shared and therefore has to be rewritten… Why would anyone go to that effort for a niche platform?
As another example, *BSD are pretty niche, but they benefit from sharing APIs with linux, so a lot of code written for linux can be used on bsd.
Microsoft are doing what they do on the desktop, a completely incompatible proprietary system… That works when people are already locked in, and helps keep them locked in… It doesn’t work when your trying to enter a new market.
Yes, they are too used to their lock in tactics, and not realizing that in this case they rather lock themselves out.
Microsoft still wants their cake and they want to eat it too. Yes they are playing poker to the extent that they really really want a monopoly position in the mobile market like in the PC market. They are afraid of giving up too much to get that market.
The biggest thing they absolutely want is for windows phone to take off with their proprietary APIs so they can be in the lead position forcing everyone else to play catch up to them. And of course there’s this problem that MS likely doesn’t even have the open api stuff implemented anyways requiring more investment they really don’t want to make.
I suspect MS will wait and see with windows 8 tablets. They’re probably betting they can grab a huge chunk of that market and push into mobile phones that way. Again, at what cost, with 3 generations of ipad and amazon already entrenched?
Things get very interesting if this fails. I wonder what the shareholders will do. Btw, I personally hope they don’t succeed.
Edited 2012-03-27 10:05 UTC
Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka said exactly this in explaining why the WinP7 version of Angry Birds Space would be so late. “We want to be on all screens, but we have to consider the cost of supplying the smaller platforms. With Windows Phone it’s a lot of work to technically support it.â€
I guess if Microsoft will write a $1B check to Nokia to manufacture Windows phones, they’ll write a nice check to Rovio to port Angry Birds to run on them. It would make me feel a little dirty to buy one, though.
Are you implying that iOS and Android don’t use OpenGL (ES)?
Edited 2012-03-26 22:22 UTC
It is.
I work as a product manager for a business application that has ~3million paid users. While it it mostly a web application, we have been releasing mobile apps the past few years.
Do we support windows mobile? Nope. Will we? Not anytime soon. Why? None of our customers have even asked for it. And by none, I mean zero requests ever. By contrast we were receiving about 50 requests a week for an iOS app before we released one, and about 30 requests a week for android. We have not yet released a Symbian or webos app, and both have seen much more request than wp7.
I do not have the resources or budget to support a platform our customers are not asking for. We simply do not have the time. No amount of dev tools and promotions from Microsoft will change our stance on supporting it (well I guess if they paid for creating the app that would work). The only thing that will change it them getting some users on the platform, and requesting an app from us.
That’s how it works normally. But if it was the only force no new platform could enter any new market ever. Everybody would still hang around on J2ME.
So there are anomalies:
– technological disruptions in one area that cause instant demand despite ommitions in others (Apple)
– fan developers that work against economics (the have forced ms to drop MSHTML and become standards compilant)
– standards bodies and govt. regulated clients (forced MS to support ODF)
– large infusions of cash and corp. bribery (MS + Nokia)
Edited 2012-03-27 12:03 UTC
After that look at Windows 8 (aka Metro)I will be staying where I am, dead horses don’t win races
Microsoft giving developers money, Google torturing developers by having them write their app two times (one for 2.x and one for ICS, assuming you want those new ICS APIs).
Maybe Microsoft “winning” the mobile wars is not as impossible as the Linux crowd wants to make it seem.
Edited 2012-03-27 08:47 UTC
Yep, Microsoft bought (and killed) the netbook market, and bought a modest share of the gaming console market; it could happen again with smartphones.
Of course, they tried to buy the teen phone market, the tablet market, the search market, the email market, the portal market, the cloud market, the… Well, let’s just say it’s not a slam dunk.
It’s about market share, not developers. Android is definitely critical mass so the developers will do the work. Maybe grumble, but will still do the work because they have a huge potential customer base.
Microsoft has put themselves in a bad position here. Funny, because they were in smartphones market long before apple and google and yet failed to create a market. Now they are very late to the game and still seem to be in a wait and see mode.
Edited 2012-03-27 10:13 UTC
True. I’m in the process of starting a company whose first couple products will be mobile apps, targeting Android and iOS. No qualms about it, and looking forward to the challenges of the new environments. I won’t touch Windows development, and am glad to be rid of that ball & chain.
Microsoft was always afraid that the mobile market would take over their desktop market and that they would then lose their dominance. I guess partly because mobile was a more regulated market that is harder for MS to dominate like they did with the Desktop market.
Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us), their lack of driving a platform in the mobile space years ago, is now their doom as a company as the world is moving to mobile regardless of what MS does, and in the process leaving MS behind – having mostly learned the lessons of MS’s dominance.
Despite what some may think, people and companies are not typically masochists or fans of BSDM.
Remind me of the saying: “if you aren’t willing to cannibalize your own market, someone else will do it for you” MS desparately wants to replicate their huge profits in the PC space and their reaction to netbooks, mobile, etc has been to try to hold back and/or destroy those markets instead of developing them. They killed the netbook market and are now almost irrelevant in the mobile one.
Edited 2012-03-27 18:02 UTC
this is be or not to be for Microsoft – if they fail to attract developers for WindowsPhone 7/Metro they will fail in long run.
in middle of 90s all major software from all others platforms were ported to Microsoft Windows 95 platform. All other platforms cease to exits in short time.
same will happen to Microsoft
A million years from now, nobody will give a damn.
The technology field moves at a quasi-exponential rate, so make it in 5 years nobody will give a damn. 😉
In the beginning, the best mouse trap makes the beaten path.
Then the beaten path is deemed to make the best mouse trap.
Soon, perceived goodness replaces actual goodness, and actual goodness itself no longer seems to matter.
Don’t bother us then with the facts.
We are quite content in the prevalent fantasy.
There are a lot of nuances involved in testing for a product’s functionality on a multitude of such smart devices.
Check out some useful information regarding mobile testing http://www.qainfotech.com/mobile_testing_services.html
Edited 2012-03-29 08:48 UTC