“Neither Microsoft nor Nokia can hide from the very, very ugly truth,” Mark Rogowsky reports for Forbes. “Windows Phone is failing miserably to gain any important traction despite tremendous marketing support.”
“It’s true that globally, Nokia’s Lumia line set a record with 7.4 million units sold in the quarter. But those numbers mask the grim reality,” Rogowsky reports. “irst, North American sales actually fell to just 500,000 units. Second, average selling prices actually fell almost 20% from the prior quarter. To boost sales, Nokia has become a low-end smartphone maker.”
Rogowsky reports, “The two companies sit at a crossroads. Microsoft is paying Nokia $250 million a quarter to lose money pushing inexpensive Windows phones. The platform is picking up marginal share, but quite literally none of it is at the high end. If rumors about a lower cost iPhone from Apple prove true, even those gains are likely to prove short-lived. But more significantly, Windows Phone is on the verge of disappearing in the United States and parts of Western Europe, where most mobile-app development is centered. In theory, developers will write for a platform if the numbers exist somewhere. In reality, developers work on what they see and live with… Nokia and Microsoft both bet on each other and the bet appears to have gone sideways.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Windows Phone had a chance. Its chance was based on the court systems of the world working in a timely fashion to address patent infringement issues and thereby drive up the cost of Android to the point where it became cheaper for phone assemblers to adopt and push Windows Phone to those too ignorant, stupid, and/or cheap to get a real iPhone. Developers would follow. However, at this late date and getting later every second, Windows Phone may not survive, given the glacial pace and/or incompetency of legal “systems” around the world. Timeliness is everything in tech. Missed opportunities are gone forever.
That two of the world’s most inept CEOs, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Nokia’s Stephen Elop, couldn’t succeed is hardly surprising.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tom R.” for the heads up.]