Microsoft’s Terry Myerson, corporate vice president of Windows Phone, talks about the competition. “With iPhone, I sense that it’s running out of steam. With iOS, [Apple] just added a fifth row of icons. Android is… kind of a mess. Look at Samsung – there’s clearly mutiny going on. The only OEM making money off of Android is Samsung.” There’s truth to all these statements, which makes it all the more surprising that Microsoft appears to be unable to properly capitalise on them. Sure, WP appears to be doing well in a few select markets, but by no means the kind of success Microsoft and (Nokia) was banking on. Microsoft will pull through. Nokia on the other hand…
What he calls a mess is just a healthy diversity. It’s that diversity that keeps Android growing and developing. It’s why both iOS and Windows Phone DON’T grow or develop… unless they get scared by Android.
Its diversity for sure, but whether or not its healthy is arguable. Its unhealthy from the POV of maintaining Android as a brand, but Google has recently shown it cares very little about that. Its fine with fading into the background if they can keep standing in the middle between you and your data.
Care to elaborate on that?
Gizmodo makes a good case for it here: http://gizmodo.com/5986229/google-has-killed-android-the-brand
Seriously, can you even make sense (aha!) of that garbage?
His whole arguments is that people are stupid, they want a “Galaxy phone” not an “Android phone”. Even if that was true, the moment Samsung decides to sell a Bada phone (or whatever) as a Galaxy the consumers will become VERY aware that this is not an Android phone: non of Google services or any other apps they are used to will work on the new “Galaxy Bada” phone…
So you don’t think Google is purposely stepping out of the picture with the Android brand?
This has very little to do with Bada.
No, I don’t think they do.
Have they done anything that gives you that impression?
Yes. Google wants itself at the forefront of the thing, not necessarily Android.
An interesting trend I got from another site:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#cat=0-5&q=Android,+Ga…
Sorry, these random articles and data you throw in doesn’t really contribute to this discussion. In fact, none of your comments in this thread makes sense. You are just throwing in different ideas hoping one of them will stick.
Google loves Android and will continue develop and support it. Anyone claiming anything else is stupid or on some heavy drugs.
How? There is a real and present danger of other brands related to Android overtaking Android proper in terms of mindshare and visibility.
Android was kind of an accidental success for Google, in that I doubt they wanted Android to even be the consumer facing brand. The G1 from the start was marketed as a Google device, not an Android device.
You can extrapolate from a variety of sources, maybe you’re looking for a definitive statement from Google, no there isn’t that. But you can read into their actions quite a bit.
Its Google, Google Chrome, Google Plus, Google Play, etc. That’s quite obviously their consumer facing brand. Android is meaningless to them from that perspective.
You can disagree, and that’s fine, but you are on the other side of the fence when it comes to evidence.
Microsoft faces this same dilemma with the Windows Phone brand and the awareness of the Lumia brand. Nokia controls 80% of the Windows Phone market. Just like Samsung is a danger to Google, so is Nokia. In a sense.
You can see Microsoft’s recent moves which also mirror those of Google: The HTC 8X and 8S weren’t called just that, the actual full name is the Windows Phone HTC 8X. They want to reestablish the Windows Phone, primarily the Windows brand.
That’s exactly what Google is trying to do here with their sidelining of the Android moniker.
You don’t make any sense, you are just babbling, desparatly trying to convince everyone that the crazy idea in your head is real. Meanwhile: Motorola, Google Glass, 1,500,000 activation per day.
Have a nice day
– app developer and windows phone user
That’s nice.
Android as a brand is not dead. In fact, it’s very much thriving.
People do want to buy a Galaxy device,however h they are well aware of the green robot(for better or for worse).
If they weren’t, then Nokia’s brand would still overpower Samsung.(Considering 620 is an excellent cheap device)
‘Galaxy’ and ‘Nexus’ are brands. ‘Android’ has become less of a brand in itself and more of a feature of those other brands: just something you automatically expect a Galaxy or Nexus product to provide. Having Android as a feature means that buyers of these products can expect to get a honking huge app store and a [hopefully] familiar UI – that’s really all ‘Android’ means to them.
I don’t think that’s so much about Android vs Win8 as Elop’s rather unfortunate Osborning of Nokia the company, which has rather taken the sheen off the Nokia brand. He was absolutely right, of course, but he should not have said it out loud until the company its new product lines were ready to sell. You know reputations, lifetimes to build, seconds to destroy. Had it not been for that tarnish, I think people would still be buying Nokia phones purely because they were Nokias, regardless of the OS on them. Now though Nokia products will have to sell very much on their own merits rather on brand, at least until that brand confidence is fully rebuilt.
I agree about the 620 – top reviews and an absolute steal at the price – but Nokia really need to do more to grab shoppers’ attention and explain to them why they absolutely want a Nokia rather than any of those other brands. I noticed this presentation problem last month when buying a 620 myself: walk into the shop and it’s surrounded on the shelves by a dozen similarly priced Android devices with nothing to distinguish it as something special. Had I not already done my homework and known what I wanted, I’d most likely have picked up a product based on what looked like a safe, conservative choice – the middle-most me-too Android handset on the shelf, in other words.
You certainly don’t see Apple products presented like this, which is why the iPhone brand continues to hold its own even though its product line is both tiny and premium priced. Apple makes an art of being the odd one out: selling the ‘differentness’ of its product to customers as a feature rather than a risk.
Nokia really need to take the same bold approach: supply their own display stands or buy dedicated shelf space so they can pull their entire product range into one stand-out position, rather than being spread across the store according to price point. That way the entire Nokia lineup could really make a powerful, coherent impact as a premium marque at incredible prices, rather than each handset looking like the odd kid in a large crowd.
Exactly this. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only 3 Android devices currently on the market – Nexus 4, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10. Why? Because nobody has yet convinced me why I should put up with locked bootloaders, and/or having to wait 6-8 months for major OS releases.
I’d say that it points to the opposite, that the android approach is rather healthy. Given the fact that google can target both; the minuscule market of tech obsessed people, with the nexus line. As well as orders of magnitude more average customers who don’t give a single shit about what you just mentioned, and who have a different relationship with their smart phones.
Actually, they’re not doing a really good job of targeting the former. The Nexus line is kind of underwhelming; targeted at the lowest price possible without completely sucking ass, and the latest Nexus phone isn’t even available on 2 out of the 4 major carriers in the US. Want a Nexus 7″ tablet with a 4:3 display and an HDMI port? Tough shit. Don’t even get me started on LTE
All this supposed choice, and those of us looking for a genuine Android device only have 3 devices to choose from.
Edited 2013-04-17 06:38 UTC
Maybe that has to do with the draconian policies that these 2 carriers have on activating a CDMA2000 based device on their network? (Look at the concessions Google had to make for Galaxy Nexus to be on Verizon)
Yeah, and while Google is bitching and whining about how hard that is, Apple somehow manages to get a stock phone on both of those carriers every year.
Well, switch to an iPhone then. Problem solved.
It’s a mess in the same way that Windows 98 was a mess (but with fewer security and stability problems). Microsoft just forgot what made them successful.
” The only OEM making money off of Android is Samsung.”
So, if you don’t make billions, you don’t make money. Making just 1 billion or a hundred million, clearly doesn’t matter.
There are lots and lots of smaller Android vendors. LG, Sony, HTC, Motorola might not make as much as Samsung but they are making some money. Chinese companies like Lenovo, Huawei, Zte, Xiaomi, Star, Jiayu which sell tens of millions of Android devices make even less money.
Not anybody is so greedy, not all vendors are cashing in like Apple and Samsung but Android is in hundreds millions of devices and that is what matters.
Like it or not, Android is the dominant mobile platform.
Saying that you don’t make money selling Android devices, won’t help MS sell more Windows Phones or tablets.
Very, very true.
After all, if you can’t make money with Android, how are you going to make money with WP?
For WP, not only do you have to still write and debug the drivers (like with WinCE, there’s too much hardware diversification for drivers to spread like with Windows on Intel), but you also have to pay the licensing fees, which are at least what Microsoft is trying to extort from vendors for their patents for Android. (Not saying those patents are valid, just pointing out what they are doing.)
You write a small amount of driver code compared to other platforms because Microsoft has a rather short list of hardware configurations that you must adhere to.
The SoC (including cellular radios and WiFi) and GPU are pretty much set in stone. You can differentiate on camera technology and other small things, but its no major haul.
Also, Microsoft works pretty closely with its OEMs. Not always the case on other platforms.
That being said, moving to the NT Kernel enables a familiar driver model to OEMs, plus most Android devices use these same chipsets and components anyway.
Plus likely a little more, since you’re only paying Microsoft off to use Android. Then there’s Apple, Nokia, and others who will soon come knocking.
But now you’re very limited in your selections, vendors, etc. Or you can use Android and use whatever you want, and probably get very good support from the Linux kernel already, or be able to work very closely with the vendor to develop what you need – and you don’t have to work with Microsoft to do it, so you can also shop around to find the best vendor and price for the work.
If they don’t come knocking at your door for using Windows Phone and other stuff too, then there is cause for legal action. So you have to pay them all off no matter what if you pay any of them off.
IOTW, using Windows Phone isn’t going to save you money from the extortionists, but it will cost you more money in licensing fees for the base OS itself.
Name one Windows Phone OEM sued for a Windows Phone device.
Name the final judgement or settlement terms for any Android OEM?
Hint: They’re are zero final judgements, and all settlements are sealed. There’s zero evidence that anyone is actually paying Microsoft anything for using Android despite settling with them, only what Microsoft claims as the other side tends not say anything.
Hint: It’s no different for Nokia or Apple.
This is misleading. Microsoft makes bank off of almost every Android device manufactured by a major OEM and now recently even another ODM with Foxconn.
Nokia is looking to severely unload on Android with VP8 patents, the really hard to design around, non FRAND, very powerful types.
Its again, misleading to suggest that because the extremely lengthy legal process has not been completely exhausted, that the judgements up to this point in time are invalid on those merits alone.
Samsung has been found to infringe on Apple’s patents. The case is on appeal, but they have been found to infringe. You don’t call a convicted murderer innocent because he hasnt exhausted the decades of appeals he’s entitled to.
Hint: The legal system is painfully slow.
What you should instead consider are the relatives strengths and weaknesses of the cases at hand. That to me is a much more accurate representation of Android’s situation.
When looked at from this point of view, its easy to find various instances of dangerous situations for Android. Apple still has pending litigation in multiple countries that are all still very dangerous.
Oracle likely has a stronger case still than people consider. The Judge’s ruling in its case really was odd and unprecedented if you look at past case law, and Android could still be found to be in the wrong there.
I mentioned Nokia with their VP8 patents, but there’s also HTC who routinely gets smacked around for various patents by various individuals.
Microsoft has again signed up a large majority of these OEMs for a reason. The likes of Samsung doesn’t go into a contract with Microsoft lightly, considering they didn’t take a license for Apple on what are probably more favorable terms, the fact that they took one from Microsoft is telling.
There is an incredible amount of legal uncertainty surrounding Android, and trying to equate it with a platform like Windows Phone, where OEMs are idemnified is wrong.
Edited 2013-04-17 04:33 UTC
A) There are two patents that vanilla Android was found to infringe
B) Android 4.0 does not include the bounceback patent infringing feature
C) Android 4.2 does not include the other one
IP infringement is not same a a murder. You can stop being an infringer, once you killed one person you are a murderer for life.
After a case was willfully wittled down for brevity, this only means the patent holder will be back later for more if he can get some.
You’re not capped at two or anything, it could still increase. Plus most OEMs don’t roll vanilla Android, and if the ability for them to differentiate is essentially neutered by patent litigation, then it would have an effect on Android.
Microsoft doesn’t sign up something like 17 OEMs/ODMs, including Samsung which has billions of bank, on bluster alone.
While that has been stated, please quote how much each pays. Show the money trail.
The problem is, the numbers are not public. For all we know MS could be paying out more than they are receiving back. So please, stop quoting Microsoft’s press information and quote real, hard numbers for individual OEMs.
Again, don’t look at accusations. Look at the real numbers. VP8 has not yet been found to necessarily contain any patents, let alone any enforceable patents.
Until you have a final judgement, then it is only speculation as to what will happen in the end.
Look at The SCO Group. They predicated a win all along, but not only did they lose (even after having the trial tilted in their favor), but they are out of business. Sure Microsoft, Apple, Nokia may remain in business, but litigations in court are hard to predict, especially as one party may decide to settle before too much gets out to the public.
That is why I asked for final judgements and settlement information. Nothing else can be relied on as it can all be appealed. Patents can be revoked or found to be non-infringed during the process; and products can be modified to remove infringement.
FYI – Samsung was found to infringe by a jury that didn’t consider any evidence of prior art; even as the USPTO found among the same evidence prior art. So it’s hard to say the jury got it right, especially as appeals proceed. Again, that’s why I asked for final judgements and settlements, to try to keep it simple for the conversation.
Yes it is. And with respect to patents and copyrights you have to wait until it is done to determine the actual result.
And you are qualified to make such determinations? That’s why we have the courts, to settle things people can’t agree on using defined processes and procedures. If it was simple enough that a layman could make a determination then we wouldn’t need the courts.
Again, neither you nor I are qualified to make such determinations.
There’s multiple factors involved.
For instance, some decided it was easier and cheaper just to pay off a racketeer than to go to court to fight it out.
So unless you know the motives of the individual companies involved, you don’t know why they did it. It may have had nothing to do with any actual patents, but merely the threat.
Stop spreading the FUD line. You are not getting yourself anywhere with it.
You certainly don’t seem to understand how court proceedings work, or why one can only really count final judgements. And the OEMs for Android that have taken it to court seem to have generally done very well in tossing patents, etc.
I just think we have a fundamental disagreement. You can tell a lot from how a case is proceeding and how a Judge is ruling. You can also infer a lot from established legal precedent and objective analysis.
There’s a reason why essentially the only people who thought Samsung would prevail over Apple were people on Groklaw and OSNews. Everyone else understood that Samsung was in for a bruising.
Yes, these cases can be appealed, and the process is long, but would it yield a different result? What are the odds that the verdict will be overturned?
I don’t really buy the notion that you can’t put forth your own analysis, you can qualify it by saying you’re not a professional, but I think not doing so is a bit of a cop out.
Not really. There were a lot of people calling things both ways.
However, Groklaw also has a pretty good track record of calling cases. And for Samsung and Apple, its not over.
For Samsung it’s actually pretty good. They’re debating over how to handle and what will be in a second trial right now. Apple wants one thing, which would be very limited, and Samsung is raising issues of doing just that limited thing, saying the whole thing needs to get redone. We’ve yet to see how the judge will rule on that; and we’ve yet to see how the appeals will go.
But given what we know – the documented misconduct by the jury foreman, the ignoring of the court orders by the jury, etc – we know that we need to wait until all is settled to really understand it as layman.
Sure, you can do your own analysis. But without the right training you have nothing to rely on to ensure that you are coming to the correct analysis. And being a professional you need to do just that.
It does not help a company for one of the engineers give a legal analysis of the company’s standing. It doesn’t help for a lawyer to do so without consulting an engineer either; but the lawyer is trained in how do those things, how to get from the engineer what they need, and how to read the courts (past and present) to give the best advice.
As a layman and someone not with that training you have at best a 50/50 chance of getting right, but more likely you’ll get it wrong.
Groklaw has a good history of making the right call by applying the training they received (PJ’s a paralegal, and Mark Webbink is a lawyer) to properly interpret the law, and read the courts, and explain what is going on and how it is progressing.
So, no – it’s not a cop-out to say we need to only look at the final judgements and settlements. It’s too premature to look at anything else for the question that was asked as they cannot be reliable enough for the answer; unless of course you have some inside access and can read all the sealed materials, etc that is only available to the parties and the judge.
WP certified SoC’s are generally much more expensive than the lowest that Android can support. Writing drivers has little to do with this.
Do you remember the presentation that Apple gave to Samsung about licensing? WP devices were on the list of devices to be licensed. It’s not all about software, you know.
The SoCs used by Windows Phone 8 are the same SoCs used by Android manufacturers in high end phones. This was done on purpose. I don’t understand how one would be more expensive than the other.
The WP licensing thing was iirc surrounding hardware, which has nothing to do with Windows Phone and everything to do with Samsung lacking a creative direction.
You’ll also notice that the Nokia Lumia was held up by Apple as a device that was unique and non infringing. Why can’t Samsung do the same?
Edited 2013-04-17 14:48 UTC
But Microsoft is making money from Android!
Thru patents royalties they enforce on android devices makers.
I guess he still call it a mess only because these royalties don’t compensate for the loss from WP and W8 sales…
As I’ve asked elsewhere, show how much money?
Yes, we all hear in the media from some Microsoft PR agent that they are making money from Android. Yet no numbers are provided. All settlements with OEMs are sealed (though some are getting unsealed due to the cases with Samsung). And no final judgements have been entered. So how much money?
Or is reality that Microsoft is paying out more than the other party in the settlements are paying them?
Without numbers, we don’t know. And I doubt they broke down the SEC filings enough to say from them.
I expected as much with regards to the unsubsidized countries. These are countries where the influence of the carriers or sales channel apparatus is less prominent, so users are actually enabled to make an informed choice.
I can’t count the times I haven’t had some pimple faced sales rep at a carrier try to shove an iPhone down my throat. This isn’t consumer choice, it’s a very perverse pay to play system where only the OEMs and OS vendors who submit to the will of the carriers is actively pushed.
Despite that, Windows Phone is showing off shoots of hope. Its starting to grow in volume and mindshare and having some appreciable impact in some regions.
While it might seem small and insignificant to some, all you need is a small spark to become self sustaining. Just enough to get over the chicken + egg scenario that mobile ecosystems find themselves in. If they can over the next 2-3 years keep building on this momentum, then I’m confident it’ll catch on eventually.
Nokia is set to grow their volumes sequentially again, which should help them stay in the game for longer. That, and other divisions within Nokia are helping with Nokia’s financial position.
I’m not sure why there is still concern trolling over Nokia’s financial position, as they’ve been out of the danger zone for a little while now.
Nokia’s Asha line up has been met with a positive response and they’ve either staved off or reversed a decline in many regions with regards to S40 competitiveness.
Basically, if Asha grows enough — it can help curb some off the transitional losses in its smartphone business.
Nokia Siemens Network has also had a remarkable turn around over the past few quarters which contributed greatly to easing some of the cash burden they had been saddled with. Same thing as Asha here. The more this grows the healthier Nokia becomes.
As for Nokia’s smart phone business:
Nokia has fully fleshed out its smartphone Lumia line up. The recently announced Lumia 520 running WP8 is available unsubsidized for about $180. That’s incredible. They need to keep pushing downwards, but it becomes in my opinion, increasingly hard to remain bearish on Nokia in light of how far they’ve pushed WP8 down in price.
Combine this with the alleviation of its supply constrained Q42012 situation and its very, very hard to say that Nokia will have a terrible 2013.
If Nokia sells more phones this quarter than last quarter, it will go some ways towards showing that Lumia’s were limited by supply constraints rather than tepid consumer demand.
Aside from wishful thinking, what evidence? See any of the communitiesdominatebrands blog posts.
Nokia had over 50% of the market.
They had the N9 and N950 which were rated better than the iPhone.
They had the Ovi store across the world and was a huge ecosystem for Symbian alone.
Then Elop burned the platform. The one the company was standing on. And said they would go Windows Phone.
So the old Lumias can’t run Win 8, so are a dead end.
The new ones have a negative desirability, that is anyone owning one will never get another.
I don’t like this situation, but it is the truth. Look at Blackberry – it was supposed to be dead, but has a QNX based phone, their browser is so much better than anything on iOS or Android, and it works as a phone (not a computer pretending to be a phone). If Microsoft did that they might be better off now.
Microsoft needs to stop asking “How can this leverage our existing monopolies?”. Even the iPhone – Jobs asked how can they build the best Phone – as a phone. The iPod touch came later! Maybe Microsoft can get better, but it will only happen when they make a better phone as phone instead of trying to push. The other phone manufacturers have abandoned this loser. Bill Gates has even noted how bad it is.
WinPhone is great if you have a Zune pass and XBox gaming credentials. Just like if you have lots of iTunes stuff, an iPhone is best. But not everyone does or needs it.
Microsoft is even stupid today. Google announced that Google Reader is going away. Would I switch to Bing Reader? As soon as there was a working link. I won’t hold my breath. (Nor Yahoo, the other search-engines or providers, I won’t even believe there would be an Apple Reader – and they came out with their own Maps app).
How can you continuously cite someone who’s been consistently WRONG about EVERYTHING?
Are you inebriated? Symbian was in FREE FALL BEFORE Elop took over. Its part of the reason WHY Elop was brought to Nokia. Wtf.
Windows Phone 8 devices are quickly beginning to outnumber Windows Phone 7 devices and in many regions are more dominant than WP7 devices.
That said, maintaining parity between WP7 and WP8 apps is not hard. The people who got their WP7 devices which you begrudge are actually very happy, because it reviews quite well.
That is, in actual reviews. Done by people. Sourced from Amazon, carrier websites, and other places. Windows Phones, every version, reviews really well.
Says who? You? Tomi consulting? He NEVER cites any credible figures tied to this stupid claim.
Wtf? Blackberry is in a terrible position right now. Microsoft should follow them where? Off of a cliff?
The Windows Phone strategy is working, as I’ve outlined in my original comment.
Sure, but its part of Microsoft’s goal as a software and services devices. If you don’t want to play in Microsoft’s sandbox, you are by no means required to.
Windows Phone has Nokia Music, Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Last.fm, basically every streaming service under the sun. There is a wealth of choice on Windows Phone.
Others have already stepped up to do this, including ones which were already competitors to Google Reader. Microsoft doesnt have to compete in every segment, certainly not ones which you deem necessary.
Well, I don’t know which blog he’s referring to, but you’re the OP is still very wishful in his thinking.
Symbian was in free fall in the US market only.
It was still the predominate platform in the rest of the world – especially the emerging markets: India, China, etc.
There’s a reason that one of the other partner companies in Symbian stood up and said “we’re taking over” to service those markets – where its still tremendously successful.
Meanwhile, Nokia went from having well over 80% global market share in the entire cell phone industry to having well under 10% within 2 years of Elop taking the helm.
When people are paid to review them. And yet, WP8 devices are quickly finding themselves out of support too…good luck with that.
Windows Phone strategy is not working.
Since its release Microsoft has LOST market share in its segments, no gains to date. That’s hardly working.
Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Last.FM…they’re all on Android and iOS as well. And from what people have been saying, the experience using them on WP8 is horrendous.
Fortunately for me, my wishes and comments around Nokia have been pretty much on the mark for many quarters. Meanwhile the same people who said Nokia was going to die a year ago, are still saying Nokia is going to die any day now.
Same with the Microsoft haters, just its like 15 years of concern trolling instead of a year.
No. If you look at Nokia’s financial reports from 2010 this is provably false. Symbian sales fell off of a cliff. Symbian has never done well in the US, so this is pure fantasy on your part.
Again, this was a process that was in motion for a while before Elop took over. Only people who did not closely watch the Elop talent aquisition are ignorant of this.
Elop was brought in to provide a change of direction precisely because Nokia was in dire straits.
What? Source.
On a global scale, arguably, and pretty much do to sunsetting Windows Mobile. On a region by region basis Windows Phone is doing quite well. Exactly as this article claims.
So? Their availability on other platforms is besides the point. See, this is what happens when you interject in a discussion between two people, and take things out of context.
The quality of these apps on WP8 is not bad. Especially not Pandora. I quite like it.
Companies are like the Titanic. You want the damn thing to just sink and get it over with already, but you end up having to wait like two hours for the painfully obvious grand finale, and by the time it arrives it’s boring as hell and doesn’t go out with any kind of “bang” at all. Similarly, companies don’t just die instantly in most cases… it usually takes time. Unfortunately, in this case, “time” is usually measured in years or even decades rather than a few hours. This makes the three hours wasted watching Titanic and waiting for the excitement to build seem like nothing.
And even the worst of them typically refuse to get the hell out of existence once and for all, either choosing to downsize themselves into complete irrelevancy or having their various assets (name, brands, etc.) pawned off to the highest bidder, ensuring that their ghost will forever be around and remain as a pestilence to haunt us all.
Edited 2013-04-17 00:55 UTC
That’s fine, but really, how long can this be used as an excuse for? Surely if Nokia were dying, they wouldn’t have posted a profit last phone, or sold more phones sequentially, or be poised to sell even more phones this quarter.
This is a little ridiculous. Nokia was in the black last quarter with an increase QoQ and YoY Windows Phone sales while being supply strapped the entire quarter. Some people still managed to find something negative to say about Nokia in that thread.
I understand some companies take a while to die, but you’d see signs of that. Nokia doesn’t really show signs of death, and in fact, multiple parts of Nokia are beginning to make significant inroads towards increasing Nokia’s bottom line. The performance of NSN over the past few quarters have surprised everyone.
I just wonder what people expect from Nokia so soon. Lumia as a brand launched a little over a year ago. Since then they’ve seen a quarter over quarter increase in sales for every quarter except Q2.
They’ve launched something like 10 phones across 13 models in a year and sold 13 million phones in 2012. How the hell is this company dying?
For as long as “The Year of Linux on the Desktop”.
But seriously though, I don’t even care any more, because to me, Nokia already is dead.
As a rookie CEO, Elop made one of the great classic mistakes in business: announcing a new product to replace its existing product way before the new product was actually ready to ship, aka the Osborne Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect).
He was absolutely right that Symbian was nearing the end of its useful life while the competition was accelerating ahead buoyed by Android and iOS. But this is not something you want to shout out loud so you panic the shareholders and lose customer confidence.
Switching to Windows Phone wasn’t the problem, nor was burning Symbian; both were solid business decisions and (IMO) the best choices under the circumstances. The mistake was doing them in totally the wrong order: Elop should’ve waited till the Nokia+WP platform was hitting the shelves, then set fire to the dreary old Symbian platform to get all the existing Nokia customers to jump to its exciting new WP platform, instantly bootstrapping the whole show. But without that new platform to jump to, existing Nokia customers naturally bailed for the next nearest option: its competitors products instead.
Like I say, a noobie error. Elop’s really quite lucky to have kept his job, but I guess all the damage was done so Nokia didn’t have much alternative than to tough it through and hope that his long-term vision would make up for his short-term strategy blunder. And it’s certainly possible to bring a company back from much worse: look at the remarkable Jobs Mk2 turnaround of Apple, for example. Now that Nokia’s new WP products are out, they certainly deliver on their original promise in technical terms, e.g. the 620 gets top reviews and is an absolute steal at the price. But as I said in an earlier post, the real challenge now for Nokia is convincing customers exactly why they want a Nokia phone instead of one of the ‘safer’ (i.e. Android-based) options.
And since they can no longer rely on customers to buy Nokia phones just because they’re Nokia (at least not until the brand itself is fully rebuilt), they are really going to have to work hard on their presentation and sales tactics. This is especially the case on third-party shop floors, where they seriously need to take a leaf out of Apple’s marketing manual, don a pair of brass ones, and loudly promote their handsets’ ‘differentness’ as a feature rather than a risk. Which means ponying up for dedicated displays to show their entire lineup as a strong, coherent identity, rather than leaving stores to spread their products across their shelves according to price point, leaving them swamped by a sea of me-too Android devices.
And I think this’ll be Elop’s real test, because if he can be half the sales tactician the post-wilderness Jobs was then I think both Nokia the company and Nokia the brand will eventually bounce back just fine. If not, eh, time will tell.
When you have to show signs for hope, you’re basically screwed. Its like a carrier asking for a co-signer on your contract : no one trusts you, not even a little bit.
Android at one point showed signs of hope. So did the XBox. Just saying.
Everyone starts from somewhere, and anyone who thought that out of the gate, or even one to two years later, that Microsoft would have taken the market by storm was severely mistaken and foolish.
These things take time to ramp up, especially in light of a multibillion dollar deal with another huge corporation. The gears take time to turn, developer agreements take time to foster and grow into a vibrant app ecosystem, and its really a lot of work to get your ecosystem to the point where it becomes self sustaining.
There’s a certain degree of pump priming that goes into these sort of things.
Android showed signs of hope of an alternative platform in a revolutionised market and it was early – massively different situation.
XBox was a total failure at first financially, but had an exclusive that made sense. The 360 bid on exclusives and PS3 to not be as good. Massively different situation.
WP is not in a new market. WP isn’t banking on something related to a generation switch. WP isn’t even offering a revolutionary experience.
There is a rule – if you don’t subvert the market, the established players will always win; even if it means that they need to close the gap.
If Microsoft wants WP to succeed, they need to come up with something more than just a new UI. Since the new UI has the same UX as the established players.
My point is that Android was at one point ridiculed as an impossible idea. I agree that Android pretty much fell into success, but its success wasn’t immediate.
Microsoft iterates on something until it gets some sort of significant presence. People were calling on them to abandon gaming after the initial XBox.
When they deem something crucial to the future of Windows, they work at it until its established. They have the financial resources and the know how to make it happen.
I think the latter point is your personal opinion, but WP is banking heavily on emerging markets and differentiating on the experience. For example, no camera provides a more compelling proposition than the Lumia 920 which routinely blows out even recent phones like the HTC One. This gap is only set to widen as Nokia’s PureView innovations extend to more phones in their lineup and becomes more compelling.
Windows Phone just needs to be pushed enough to break into a self sustaining success like Android did.
If Microsoft wants WP to succeed in my opinion it needs to do heavier investment in the OS. Windows 8 still gets the lionshare of the bank at Microsoft.
They need to do what they’re currently doing, just a lot faster.
I think that specific phraseology belies more than just the normal apprehension when a product is being launched to an uncertain market place. Rather, it conveys a more desperate situation where things are objectively not what was planned. Where a large marketing push and several revisions of the idea have failed to garner marketshare. Its looking for a break in the clouds, or a storm cellar while a menacing F5 tornado bears down on your position. That’s when you look for a sign of hope.
No, it will be because they finally introduced low-cost versions of their Lumia.
Lumia’s are already low cost. Unless you are referring to unlocked phones.
Some reasonable points that (could) have been made by anyone.
Doesn’t change the fact that Windows lost marketshare in the mobile space during 2012. With Windows 8 being such a hit, they should be very worried at Microsoft.
They just want to show us how poor the competition is doing and to think all is well @ Redmond.
I think Nokia spokespersons are still saying the company is doing pretty good…
Windows 8 is selling. Its already sold tens of millions of copies. Soon hundreds of millions. I can’t believe we still entertain this ridiculous notion that Windows 8 is somehow a dud.
When you are going to sell millions of copies no matter what, its hard to call it a dud. However, considering the feedback from a variety of sources, I wouldn’t call Windows 8 a raging success.
Sure, its had some mixed feedback and there’s been some missteps along the way. By and large though, I don’t think Redmond is losing much sleep over Windows 8 sales on PCs.
I think what troubles them more is seeing how tablets are selling, this is a sector they need to survive.
Also contrary to what most people on OSNews and most tech geeks desire, this includes beefing up the touch environment in Windows 8, not adding to the Desktop environment.
You’re right. Windows 8 is a big success like Vista was before it. And people love to have that tablet interface instead of their desktops.
Do you know how many copies of Windows Vista sold? Do you know the size of the PC market?
I don’t really think you have an appreciation for the scale of Windows. A “failure” like Vista, is more success than most companies ever see. Its not like it sold two copies.
This is what irritates me about this site; Vista wasn’t a stellar success like Windows 7, but it sold decently and all the kinks were worked out after SP1.
You also don’t seem to understand that capitalism is about growth, not stagnation. Which is why having a commanding lead in a stagnant market can be a bit of a pickle.
Although it may be true that some people don’t grasp the sheer size of the desktop/business market, some of you also don’t seem to grasp the explosive growth of the mobile market. Smartphones have already surpassed PC shipments a while back, and tablets are heading that way soon. Those are two markets that are eclipsing the PC and which Microsoft does not command.
What exactly does this have to do with Vista sales figures?
I don’t really care what happens in the mobile and tablet market. Microsoft will eventually be another IBM. Apple is the new Microsoft and Google is the new Apple.
Desktop aren’t going away, nor or laptops, they are just going to be in less demand as things like mainframes and mini-computers before them.
Also with many applications now either being webapps or being always online, the actual platform they run on is pretty much irrelevant.
Comments like the OP on OSNEWS are nothing more than than the lowest form of nasty comment because they really can’t think of anything intelligent to say, they just hate Microsoft.
I talked with some people that have this attitude and it is impossible to discuss the merits of a particular tech. I told one particular Java developer why I preferred C# and his response was pretty much “lol microsoft” and then I mentioned Mono.
I fed up of this Open vs Closed fanaticism. That Microsoft must fail and that they think they are sticking it to some evil man in an ivory tower somewhere. It is childish.
I use a huge amount of open source software for development. Bought OpenBSD releases for the last 6 years and use Linux on my laptop. Yet I am called a $hill and a fanatic because I correct people on things on the platform I know best.
Edited 2013-04-16 21:33 UTC
I was trying to point why even though Vista’s sales may have been “decent,” according to you, in the big scheme of things it can be considered to have been somewhat of a flop.
The fact is that it sold well and made Microsoft a lot of money. I am sure Microsoft are crying to the bank.
Trying to point out that something sold “pretty damn” well instead of “stellar success” like Windows XP/7 is just trying to make out something was a sales flop when it clearly wasn’t.
Edited 2013-04-17 07:35 UTC
… or you can continue missing the point to keep your cognitive dissonance when it comes to Microsoft intact, your choice I guess.
I understand you point, I just don’t think measuring the success of a desktop operating system compared to a mobile operating system is a fair and valid comparision.
Lets not forget Vista came out years before Smart Phones started becoming popular (I think the iPhone 1 came out afterwards).
But hey call it cognitive dissonance to make yourself sound big and clever.
While I agree that Microsoft might be on its way to become another IBM, I have no idea how you managed to mix the latter two. All trends show that Google might become the new Microsoft, only less evil, and Apple is the new Apple — staying in their well-known ‘hip’ and overpriced niche.
Its a good point, but it also is worth seeing what Microsoft is trying to do here. By unifying their Desktop and Mobile ecosystems, they can muscle themselves an ecosystem very quickly. Ecosystems are incredibly hard to bootstrap, which highlights the brilliance of this move.
So in this context, it does matter that Windows 8 sells a lot of PCs because it will directly fuel the Windows Store ecosystem and help Windows RT devices get over the chicken and egg scenario of apps.
With regards to Vista, the iPhone hardly had an impact of January 30th 2007 when Vista was GA’d.
And the ultramobile segment of PCs is set to explode over the next few years, if you believe some analysts.
That’s a lot of Surfaces and ASUS Transformers. People want tablets to work and play.
Vista sales were solid, like Windows 8 it was a transitional OS. Windows Vista now is basically Windows 7 with a more classic interface.
We have some developers using Vista at work, I don’t hear a lot of complaints. I rather use Vista than the ancient XP which I was forced to used at my last place of work.
Edited 2013-04-16 17:55 UTC
A transitional OS? What a lame excuse just like the “not enough touch devices on the market” which we heard last quarter and before that it was “wait for holidays sales” and before that it was “wait for public release”. Notice a pattern?
Is it really that hard to admit that Microsoft might have made a mistake with Windows 8? So far they would have made more money by staying with Windows 7. This whole disaster has cost them billions and the result is a lot of angry customers. If they would have listened to the critics from the beginning and not forced Metro or taken away Aero this disaster would not have happened. So far the critics have been right, that’s not debatable.
Waiting for public release is a given, so is holidays sales. This only lets you get a sense for what sales will look like in the aggregate.
Once you have that figure, you can start to reason why sales are good or bad. In this case, they came in below expectations to some, and the shortage and price of touch components is a legitimate issue cited by not just proponents of Windows 8, but by people actually involved in the supply chain.
Its a little hard to take you seriously when the entire premise of your argument is that Windows 8 has been a disaster because of a missing start menu and full screen apps.
That’s not the case. The PC segment overall shrunk and has been shrinking. Windows 7, Windows 8, or whatever, would face the same issue.
Windows 8 will sell by virtue of it being Windows. People don’t go elsewhere. Chrome OS has less marketshare than Windows RT. I mean give me a fucking break, people don’t go anywhere else for PCs.
Maybe it will take Windows 8 a little longer, or maybe it will end up being right in line historically, but it doesn’t matter. Eventually, it will catch on.
Microsoft is also aggressively updating Windows with Blue. Windows on a yearly release schedule is as nimble as Microsoft’s ever been. And guess what, they’re doubling down on Metro overall.
The entire control panel has been moved to Metro, multitasking has been improved with various snap states, more of the old UI has been moved over to the Metro side of things.
You might still be delusional about the sea of change as it washes you over, but your beloved Windows 7 is going to become the new Windows XP for a bunch of people that are frozen in time like you.
So while you run your Encarta ’97 on Windows 7 ten years from now when Windows has left you behind, you can find solace knowing that the KDE3 people and the GNOME2 people are right there with you.
Yes it is. In fact, you haven’t been right. You’ve been wrong. You have no data points to support the ridiculous notion that Windows 8 is not selling ridiculous amount of copies. Maybe they’re slow by Windows 7 standards, but even that is gargantuan when you get the actual figure.
People are not picking up Windows 8 and putting it back on the shelf. People are just buying less PCs, and even less when they arent woo’d in by a touch screen.
Sarcasm aside, VistaSE (aka Windows “let’s use the marketing trick of lucky 7“) is quite universally adored. So we’ll see about Win 8.1…
Windows 7 would have sold tens of millions during the same period and they wouldn’t have had to waste billions of dollars.
Windows 8 has poor reviews compared to 7 and is selling worse than Vista did during the same release period. It’s a dud but if you want to play the denial game along with Ballmer then go ahead, you clearly have no shame when it comes to being a Microsoft apologist.
BTW I still haven’t met a single .NET developer that has anything positive to say about Windows 8. But I’m sure you will write that off in your mind as not mattering just as Sinofsky did when we pointed out all the negative pre-polls.
The only reason Ballmer still has a job is because he can point to the billions of dollars that come in even though a monkey could run that company thanks to the market lock that Gates created. Oh well you probably have defense work to do here, I shouldn’t take up your time.
And when PC sales declined like they did recently? What then? Windows 8 is a forward facing product. Windows 7 was the same formula they’ve always used.
Microsoft redefined the PC segment with Windows 8 to include touch devices and hybrids. Without Windows 8, Microsoft would be relegated to an ever decreasing market segment with no way out.
That’s only bad if you buy into the notion that Vista sales were bad, which isn’t the case. I’d be extremely happy if Windows 8 was adopted as much as Vista was.
You know that over 80% of the apps on the Windows Store are written in C# and .NET, right?
The whole “I speak for every .NET developer” bullshit that you keep spouting off about gets old fast. You’re an extremely niche kind of developer, becoming even more niche by the day. And that’s great for you, if you want to do that forever for an OS paradigm which further fades into irrelevancy, but it doesn’t really entitle you to speak much on current or future technology. Especially technology you have not spent a day using.
Edited 2013-04-17 05:01 UTC
Yeah, sure, as OEM pre-installed system on new hardware. Business as usual.
I know I’m one who have no choice but to pay indirectly for Windows 8 when I bought my latest laptop. Which I erase ~2 days after opening the box to replace it with a more poweruser friendly OS.
If I had a choice, no W8 sale.
I really don’t think a majority of people do what you did, so your anecdote is irrelevant.
My point was to counter the notion that Windows 8 isn’t selling. That’s wrong. It is.
Simple explanation. 10s of millions of copies for Windows is a failure. Not because the absolute number is small, but because it’s Windows. There are a shitload of articles comparing the uptake of Vista, 7 and 8. Most of them come to a conclusion that 8 has lower uptake than Vista, which was acknowledged to be a dud by Microsoft.
Its actually not so bad, I just didn’t want to straight up quote licensing figures because its not a 1:1 correlation to user installs.
I’m not aware of any figure for Vista during the same time period, which would give a much clearer picture of the difference.
However these things are dumb to obsess over, given the elongated upgrade cycles on PCs. There could be plenty of reasons why right now, sales are softer than historically, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will remain like that forever. I think the factors are fairly external to Microsoft.
No less than the very respectable Dr. Dobbs journal stated yesterday that “it’s now clear that Windows 8 is a fiascoâ€. Ouch.
http://www.drdobbs.com/windows/pulling-back-from-windows-8/24015304…
A few other quotes for you to explain away as “ridiculous”:
“PC shipments dropped by 14% in the first quarter of this year…As IDC pointed out, it was the single biggest year-over-year drop since the company began tracking PC sales in 1994.
“Hidden in IDC’s analysis was an unusual assertion; namely, that Windows 8 had not only not helped PC sales, but actually depressed them.
“When Win 8 came out, we bought a test machine with the new OS loaded on it, fairly confident that we’d need it for testing the inevitable batch of soon-to-arrive Metro apps. But these apps have not materialized… that Win8 test machine has been a long experiment in frustration. Microsoft’s design decisions, both at the UI level and below, serve to continually get in our way… We shall shortly strip off Win8 and replace it Windows 7.
“Win8-specific apps have been a non-starter.
“the question is how fast Microsoft can fix their bet.”
Pretty much matches my personal experience with the one Win 8 laptop we bought. Never again. Ug.
Do you think an OS that was more like Windows 7 would’ve change this? I really don’t.
Its useful to separate IDCs cold hard data from their conjecture. This becomes the gray area where I stop really taking what analysts say at face value. If you want to believe them, that’s fine with me. I won’t. I’ve been burned by analysts before.
Anyone not currently building a Windows Store app has a broken business model. It is a goldmine. Windows 8 is going to have a market penetration that is incredibly attractive to developers.
Being worried about this is just devoid of all reason. I can personally vouch for the attractive revenue that’s to be gained.
“More like Windows 7” wasn’t the phrase I would have used, rather “more like what the typical PC customer wanted”. Then, yes.
More importantly, the data strongly implies this is true. When introducing a new product causes an obvious knee toward accelerating the declining sales curve, it’s difficult to think otherwise. But I don’t think the data is really impacting your opinions at all. *shrugs*
I’ve heard rumors Stephen Elop is coming at Google to serve as President of Mobile and Digital Content and to oversee further development of the Android platform.
Based on this video, me thinks you got the rumor wrong, he’s joining Apple:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/03/elop-throws-iphone/
With the utter rejection of both Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 in the marketplace so far, if I were him I would not be bragging too much just yet. Comments like “running out of steam” while everyone knows the iPhone is still selling like hotcakes and just became the top seller over Android in the US just make him look silly. Android is an excellent OS and is available on a host of form-factor phones, from junkers to top-tier models. Only the pundits seem to be disappointed with iOS as sales continue to be excellent for all models that are available. Refreshes will come, to both iOS and Android, so we will have to wait and see what model Android phones will receive updates and what models will not, and we will see what Apple has up its sleeve. Meanwhile, Microsoft needs to find some sort of way to just get people to BUY their phone OS and PC OS.
Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 are not commercial failures.
Well, that settles it then.
That’s all it should really take, given the relative weakness of the arguments put forward.
a very subjective totally biased answer to a half assed argument, it is still a very subjective totally biased answer. 😉
I agree that Android is a mess, but that’s exactly what desktop windows is as well. Disclaimer: I have no experience with phone windows and no desire to acquire any.
Edited 2013-04-16 18:09 UTC
I think pretty much all Linux-dominated markets could be fairly categorized as “a mess”, which is another way of saying “a driven herd of excited manufacturers are innovating like crazy with a broad stack of flexible technology”.
Give me that kind of “mess” any day of the week!
Example: Steve Jobs declared the 7″ tablet DOA. The first few Android 7″ tablets didn’t quite get it right, then the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire stole Christmas. Cue the iPad Mini, which is also selling like crazy. Why, now I hear even Microsoft will “permit” their little camp of licensees to look into possibly making a 7″ tablet eventually (ahem).
“A mess” is sometimes just the label we use for “figuring out what the customer wants”.
We got a shitty phone os that nobody gives a fig about, that no one really wants to make good applications for and it comes on phones nobody seems to buy.
PICK US!!!
By the way, the competition sucks balls! Honest!
I like how he mentions “making money”, when the one thing that made Android what it is now is the OEM’s ability to “customze” it, in order to “differentiate”, in order to be able to charge a premium for “that feature other phones don’t have”, aka make more money. Phone OEMs don’t want to become chip packagers and suffer the same margin crush the PC OEMs suffered in the 90s (when they became chip packagers when intel started making chipsets) That’s why all non-Nokia Windows Phone designs are the “hedging your bets” kind, not the “we put our hearts and minds” kind, and Samsung even has another hedge with Tizen, because Samsung thinks Windows Phone is a terrible prospect even as a just-in-case alternative.
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; el-gr; LG-P990 Build/GRJ23) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1 MMS/LG-Android-MMS-V1.0/1.2
Edited 2013-04-16 19:30 UTC
And now that Google supports CISPA: They’re going down next. Linux and Open Source are going to dominate everything eventually. It’s inevitable. And if companies like Apple, MS, Google keep doing EVIL SHIT like supporting CISPA, well, people will stop buying their garbage. Might take a while, but it will happen eventually.
No it won’t because the average person has not idea what CISPA is and everyone wants a shiny toy.
Not counting that most of the world don’t care about american laws.
Android is a lot more refined than it used to be which makes WP even less of a value proposition. I think WP has the best interface but I’m not going to put someone on it only to have them bitch about how it doesn’t have app X. People are satisfied with iOS and Android so MS needs more than a pretty interface and a shit talker.
The cold hard truth is that mobile devices are replacing PC on the desktop. Thats just the way it is for the average consumer who just checks email and the web. And when you talk about tablets, you have Android and you have iOS. Microsoft is way at the bottom. You can’t argue that Windows 8 is selling well because PC sales are down 14% last quarter. There just aren’t enough PCs being sold to say that Windows 8 is selling as well as Vista. That doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t sell millions of copies. They will. But as a desktop OS, Windows 8 blows. Newsflash for Windows devs, no one has a touch screen interface on their desktop and even if they did, no one will put up with fingerprints all over their screen. Its a broken paradigm for the desktop. It makes sense on mobile devices where you don’t want a keyboard or mouse.
Newsflash: Ultramobile PCs are set to explode over the next few years. You speak of a PC in decline, but when you redefine PCs to include these figures, you end up with a market segment that actually grows.
Ok. Then we do that and we notice that Windows, selling ~80 million licenses per quarter, is being under attack by iOS and even Android. Windows sales are dropping, while iOS and Android are growing.
That’s a slightly more fair point than people just saying “Windows 8 isn’t selling” which is complete and utter bullshit.
Then though, your comment justifies Windows 8 instead of condemning it. Windows 8 is a forward facing product and an admission that the future of the PC landscape is very different.
So, what’s the best selling laptop on Amazon – for the past 6 months – and how does that prove that “Microsoft’s still got it” (images of Betty Boop serving a drink to Eddie Valiant while watching Jessica Rabbit steal the show).
Great. When Amazon becomes the entire market you’ll have a point. Windows Phones also routinely top the best sellers list on Amazon.
Chrome OS has a smaller marketshare than Windows RT, which many love to call a failure.
As mentioned above, Microsoft is losing massively on the ultramobile device front for ARM devices. Windows draws its power from backward compatibility and familiarity. Take those away and the user may as well be using any interface. And Windows doesn’t (or at least hasn’t before now) evolved quickly enough to keep up with the mobile market.
Windows is not only valuable from a legacy point of view, though that is a big one. It is valuable from a services perspective. Windows integrates better with Windows services that are used by millions of people.
Windows is now on a yearly cadence and they’re looking to deliver on that with Blue which should make them more competitive.
And no one is really kind of ultraportables now, meaning convertible tablets/hybrid devices like the Surface, but that sector is poised to explode.
The ecosystem best equipped to navigate that boom is Windows and Intel with their more efficient chips launching this year. Intel tablets will likely be good enough from a power draw POV to make ARM irrelevant, and the gap will only widen.
Windows RT transcends ARM though, it just happens to run on ARM at the moment. Windows RT is about eschewing the traditional legacy platform — and clearly Windows RT will eventually be the one true Windows.
Sure, Android is a more messy platform than their Windows Phone.
Problem is the bazar has 50+% or marketshare, when *their* cathedrale is where? ~3%.
What does it means?
Maybe people don’t want cathedrale anymore.
Maybe people don’t want to wait the long time it takes for a cathedrale to become a cathedrale.
Maybe people don’t mind mess as much as they care about using whats works for them. Everyday life is a lot messy than 50 years ago. They got used to, they knows more how to handle it, to avoid it or to not mind that much anymore.
Plus, Microsoft calling something messy is quite ironic, seriously.
I wish Microsoft would just STFU and deliver good and usable software.
All they do is spreading FUD, crying like a baby because of declining market shares and trying to sue competition over idiotic software patents.
Dear Microsoft, get your shit together and STFU! You just make yourself look worse and worse each day.
Adrian
I especially like the Samsung comment. Couldn’t you say the same thing about the Windows PC market? Last I heard Lenovo was one of the few making money there too.
Funny that some are still trying to argue that people want Android rather than a Galaxy or Nexus.
Anyways, MS isn’t wrong in their assessment. And, they also haven’t done very good at capitalizing on it as already pointed out by others.