“The Microsoft executive who oversees software design for Windows Phone admitted that the mobile operating system was redesigned in response to Apple’s iPhone,” Steven Musil reports for CNET. “‘Apple created a sea change in the industry in terms of the kinds of things they did that were unique and highly appealing to consumers,’ Joe Belfiore told The New York Times. ‘We wanted to respond with something that would be competitive, but not the same.'”
“Despite being an early player in the smartphone sector, Microsoft’s effort was hobbled by software that featured complex on-screen menus that borrowed design cues from its desktop cousin,” Musil reports. “As insiders tell the newspaper, once the iPhone appeared on the scene, Microsoft executives knew that their OS would not be able to compete as designed.”
Musil reports, “Microsoft hopes to recapture some of that lost luster with the expected launch of the Nokia Lumia 900 at CES this week. The two companies are reportedly planning to spend $200 million on marketing in the U.S. to promote the upcoming lineup of Windows Phone 7 handsets.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Windows Phone will remain an also-ran unless or until the patent infringement cases, security concerns, and/or fragmentation end up increasing the price of Google’s pretend iOS to the point where Microsoft’s mobile OS becomes more attractive to cellphone makers than creating trade dress infringing iPhone clones, loading them up with Android, and peddling them with depressingly inane marketing campaigns targeted at preteen boys waiting for their pubes to sprout.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “silverhawk1” for the heads up.]
Take it easy on those Android fans.
Waiting for your pubes to sprout is agony enough.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again – If I couldn’t afford an iPhone, I’d get the Lumia 900. It really is a great looking phone. As for the topic of Windows Phone 7, I’m relieved to hear that Microsoft has gotten bored of copying Apple! (either that or it got too expensive to maintain their copiers)
My friend’s Android died last week (got his before Verison had iPhones), so he tried to replace it with an iPhone and Verison told him he’d have to wait to get an iPhone, all he could have immediately is another Android phone. He has a business and so could not wait. So now he’s stuck with another Droooid.
Many people not owning an iPhone may be due to things beyond their control, not by choice.
You can make the same statement regarding people who do own an iPhone. They may not have known that superior products exist. Popularity doesn’t necessarily mean a better product. It might just be mindshare.
How much cheaper do you think it will be, especially when you figure in the data plan cost per month? Is Nokia going to sell them at a loss? Most smartphones that purport to compete with the iPhone cost about the same as it costs.
Huh? How far apart are the 4S and Lumia 900 priced? Your comment reeks of typical elitist asshattery.
From original NYT article:
“Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, didn’t like that the first screen that appeared after turning on the device contained oversized type that cut off the day of the week. (Wednesday showed up as Wed.) Revisions were made.”
Hard-nosed, executive decision making at its best. Exactly what I’ve come to expect out of MS. 😉
Ballmer probably didn’t know what “Wed.” stood for and needed it spelled out in its entirety.
And of course there’s the Ballmer quote from 07 about the new iPhone -(words of a true leader) “Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? I want to have products that appeal to everybody,” he said. “We’ll get a chance to go through this [Apple versus Microsoft debate] again in phones and music players. There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.”
The quote encapsulates everything that is wrong with Ballmer’s strategy, which seemed to work with the Windows market but has turned out to not work at all in different markets with different dynamics and constituencies.
Microsoft’s weapons (like price fixing, bribery, FUD, and vaporware) have been shown to be ineffective in the face of radical technological innovations which disrupt existing markets and spin out unpredictable new ones.
When Ballmer says “no chance”, he’s seeing a niche product, doomed to small market share at best. How could he have been so wrong? By being certain that MS’s world dominance of computing (at the time) was literally a textbook principle that would apply forevermore.
Quoth the raven.
Ballmer may have thought it was spelled “Wensday”
$200 million dollars? Wouldn’t they just be better off spending that money making an insanely great product and letting it speak for itself?
For that to happen they would first have to understand that a good user experience is the most important thing, but they are more concerned with their shareholders than their customers.
Apparently you’ve never used a WP. The user experience of WP is far more pleasing, easy to use, and smooth than anything the iPhone has to offer. I can state this because I’ve actually owned both phones for considerable amounts of time.
And for the asshat comments about Ballmer, don’t forget that this man is VERY intelligent, is the CEO of a mega billion dollar company. What exactly do you do for a living that makes you smarter?
They have the product. It’s called WP. You really should learn about it.
Here’s another learning opportunity: Mindshare isn’t free. Neither is advertising.
Well at least he had the guts to call it like it is.
Gee, ya think??
Nothing new here:
“Despite being an early player in the smartphone sector, Microsoft’s effort was hobbled by software that featured complex on-screen menus…”
Isn’t EVERYTHING Microsoft makes hobbled by that same factor?
Pick up a WP and then come back and discuss. You’ve obviously never used one.
“We wanted to respond…..” Therein lies the history of Microsoft. Almost everything they do is a response to Apple.
Bob and ribbons i would think were spontaneous self-inflicted screw ups. Hard to believe either were based on a shipping product from apple.
Wasn’t the ribbon supposed to have been a pet idea of Bill Gates’ wife? Bob, on the other hand, had to have been the pet idea of the village idiot…
Ribbon is a screw-up? You mean that feature which is so wildly successful in Office 2007 that they improved it and kept it for Office 2010? Then it was taken a step further and integrated into server products like SharePoint. Now it is brought into Explorer in Windows 8, 5 years after it’s initial release as a new feature.
What a screw-up! It’s a good thing it never caught on, huh?
Yeah, EVERYTHING they do!!!
Like:
-Office
-XBox
-Bing
-Azure
-Office 365
-Their entire Servers and Tools business
-Windows Live
This list could go on for a long while.
Try again. Your statement makes no sense. Apple has 3 successes: iPhone, iPad, iPod.
Neither WP nor Win8 nor Zune takes ANY design queues from any Apple product. Not one.
Does anyone else see Microsoft following in the footsteps of once mighty Chrysler Corporation? I see no future for this company. Apple has yet to make a play for the enterprise. When
It does what will Microsoft have to offer but yesterday’s news? I give Office one more release and, boom, it will be relegated to has-been status.
Chrysler has been making a comeback.
I was just reading another business site that thinks Microsoft may make a comeback in 2012.
(I am not joking about either.)
Too bad both are making their comebacks just as the world is ending…
You’re lumping into a “fail” category: a company suffering annual losses (Chrysler) to a company that continues to grow by double-digits YoY (Microsoft).
While we’re at it, let’s all agree that Apple is exactly like Enron. According to your “logic”…..
I know knee-jerk Microsoft-hating is the order of the day in the MDN comments section, but I wish Microsoft luck. Whatever else you can say about Windows Phone, it is not an iPhone rip-off. I would much rather see Apple compete against a different unique product then the blatant copy that is Android.
——RM
My Lord, I am with you. It is the madmen at Google who are the true enemy today, not sad Gargantua and Pantagruel, whose lumbering pace and atrophying wares betoken doom.
<i? inane marketing campaigns targeted at preteen boys waiting for their pubes to sprout
Best MDN take in a long time!!!!