“I think it’s time for Microsoft to concede defeat in the smartphones war. As a latecomer to the game, it has got off to a bad start partnering up with Nokia , pumping out subpar phones one after another on a weak ecosystem,” William Feng writes for Seeking Alpha. “Its failure to gain traction in its collaboration with Samsung and HTC provides further testimony to this truth. And recently, the numbers are out.”
Feng writes, “The Windows Phone is dead as a doornail.”
“Based on the latest statistics from Kantar Worldpanel, market share for Windows OS phones has seen declines in many key regions such as the U.S., China, UK, and Germany,” Feng writes. “In the United States, market share for Windows phones has dropped almost 30% from 5.3% to 3.8% over the past four months. In China, it’s even worse; market share has dropped 40% from 1% to 0.6%. In Germany and the UK, market share has dropped 20% from 7.5% to 5.9% and from 11.3% to 9.1%, respectively.”
“With its abysmal number of users, Microsoft will continue to have a hard time persuading developers to create apps for its ecosystem. And without apps, consumers will not want to buy its devices. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s only going worse,” Feng writes. “To see how big the app disparity is currently, take a look at WPCentral’s recent comparison of the Windows App Store with Apple’s App Store. The author has found that out of the top 25 apps from iOS, Microsoft has only 6 of them available in its app store.”
“6 out of 25,” Feng writes. “It’s beyond pathetic.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
“Beyond pathetic”
MS believe’s its own BS.
MS simply does not know the deep gut wrenching fear inducing effect users have from a decade of punches in the stomach coming from random BSODs and its effect on the minds of users.
The effect is summed up in a 4 letter word: FEAR.
The education arc: BS, MS, PhD
Bull Stuff, More Stuff, stuff Piled Higher & Deeper.
“With all this stuff, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”
That’s what happens when you have “no taste”.
As odd as it seems I mis Balmer’s idiocy
Just be secure in the knowledge he is actively still directing their eventual demise from behind the CEO throne.
I’m in agreement with Steve Ballmer for a change…
I like it. I like it a lot!!!
“I like it. I like it a lot!!!”
OK, overdone. Dead as a doornail. Like Windows mobile.
Light-years beyond pathetic applies to Guugle and Andwoid.
Had he stepped down as CEO at the time of this video MS might have stood a chance of not fading into irrelevance as they are. As far as Apple competition goes, MS is the lesser of 2 evils when compared with google so I wish them all the best with windows 9 and whatever they decide to with mobile in the future. They have seen the 1 size fits all windows 8 was a bad idea so it will be interesting to see where they go
One size fits no one most likely
If Microsoft ever stops to wonder why it lost in this market…just watch this interview. The smugness and arrogance of Ballmer and their ‘strategy’ says it all. Never gets old.:)
I would say “nervous contemptuous arrogance.” He KNEW they were caught with their pants down and had to minimize the impact in his inimitable feeble laugh-it-off way. Only it didn’t work and now for all time his hubris is preserved on the Internet and he looks even more disingenuously buffoonish than usual.
Another one was Ballmer T. Clown trying to show off an unreleased tablet in the HP Slate as their answer to another paradigm shifting Apple product the iPad. Only HP of course never released the Slate – D’Oh!
Late to the party now is almost always the kiss of device death, unless you’re Apple who redefines the space. Not like the old days where you might catch up.
Wow, such a nice headline to wake up to!
And what about Microsoft’s Courier project? That might have given iPad a run for the money, but some jackass shot it down. Such was, and is, the fate of innovation at massively blinkered Microshaft.
Yeah the Courier was interesting but anything people might actually want will never have a chance at Microsoft.
Errr… Courier was a video, a CGI video. There never was any hardware or software. Total vaporware.
At the time, many of us did enjoy mocking Microsoft for its ‘vapourware’, but the product was $23M deep in development, steps away from a product announcement, before (essentially) Bill Gates did a thumbs down, and Ballmer shuttered the project in favour of Windows 8 everywhere. Jay Greene pieced together the inside story.
HP did release the slate. The built 9,000 then they shut down the project.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/HP-Sells-9-000-Slate-500-Tablets-Twice-What-It-2471986.php
9,000 doesn’t really constitute a bonafide release, such a sub-rounding error margin of devices. That many probably go out to reviewers and for misc. purposes alone. But thanks for the info.
Was in a mall over the weekend with both an Apple and MS Store. Only about 20 people in the MS Store – no one looking at phones, others either playing with Xboxes or curious about the new Surface Pro 3. Did not see one single purchase.
Then I went to the Apple Store. Packed to the max with hundreds of people. People buying iPads, MacBooks, iPhones in droves. It got to a point where there wasn’t even much room to move. And this was a larger than average store.
The proof is there – MS is DEAD. Apple is still hotter than hot. And the nail in the coffin will be the iPhone 6 and OS X 10. Goodbye, Microsoft – you’ve sucked for a long, long time – now it’s time to just fade away for good.
I see the same thing every time in go to the Mall. The MS store is right across from the Apple Store at the Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara CA. Barely anyone in the M$ store and the Apple store is packed to the brim.
Apple do really need to increase the footprint of the store though. It is half the size of the M$ one and contains 10X more customers. Definitely a vibrant place but could be more comfortable for the customers.
The funny part is Microsoft intentionally placed their stores in the same proximity as Apple stores to draw away Apple’s customers to their stores.
Karma is a bitch! 😉
I have never seen anyone in the wild with one of these.
My idiot cousin has one. A couple of clients have them. And they actually swear by them. One of my clients is a stubborn IT techie and refuses to go Apple (after all these years of MS mediocrity). But I will say this – the Windows Phone 8.1 has a much larger ecosystem of apps than Windows OS 8.1 Modern UI – in fact the disparity between the two are striking. Still, it doesn’t hold a candle to iOS 7 and is definitely dying.
I’ve never seen one either, but if I wasn’t allowed an iPhone for some strange reason I’d take a look at Windows phone as at least it shows some originality over Android.
I have to agree – it is more original than Andreck. But with such a small ecosystem of apps, it is basically irrelevant at this point.
Thanks for the idea – ‘Andreck’ – love it !
I’ve seen one. One. I have to agree that Microsoft’s phone is a more worthy competitor than the Andrhoid pile.
I am one of those strange, aliens who owns his third Windows phone. I have tried multiple iOS and Android devices and I disliked them all. WP8 does what I need a phone to do. Microsoft’s difficulty in this space can be summed up in two words: Abysmal Marketing.
Not only that, but an abysmal ecosystem.
“Abysmal Marketing.”
Apple spent about 1 billion in marketing 2013, Microsoft over 2.5 billion. Msft spends near 3 times apple every year.
(check the yearly stats and charts at Asymco).
Doesn’t even count ad dollars spent by Win phone allies like Nokia.
So it’s not as if they didn’t spend enough ad dollars….
obviously Marketing is ANOTHER thing Msft sucks at…
It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer.
It’s not how much you spend, but how you spend it.
Actually, MS wasn’t “a latecomer to the game” they were early–albeit with terrible hardware and software.
But no, these stories never get old.
Their modern smart phone with it’s current mobile OS WAS late to the game which is why they are in their current rounding error market share pickle. The Windows Mobile OS before it was a wonderful example of lazy mediocrity and they paid the price for their lack of vision, as a certain Emperor once said. It’s so nice when tech justice is finally applied.
My goodness I’d almost wiped Windows Mobile OS from my memory… Thanks for reminding me of that utter POS!!!
Yeah pretty awful and the garbage they were making as Steve Ballmer was laughing off the iPhone and liking their stragedy a LOT!
A monopolistic power finds self-renewal hard and to maintain it’s dominance it tries to leverage it’s monopoly into other areas. Eventually, loss of focus becomes its own source of irrelevance and decline. Next in line – Search giant Google.
Oh how we miss Monkeyboy.
(Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers) You get the Picture !!!
in a hoarse voice . . . DEVELOPERS -DEVELOPERS – DEVELOPERS – DEVELOPERS – DEVELOPERS – repeat 5 more times
Lol, the only word I can think of for Ballmer is “BAFOON” lol
The biggest win phone fanboi I know switched to android. When you lose the geeks, you lose the game.
(;_;) Sad fellow. Out of the fire and into the frying pan. He must be addicted to malware.
I enjoy reading MDN, but they have this tendency to cherry-pick news–even from sources that they have attacked in the past, such as Seeking Alpha–when that news tells a narrative that they happen to agree with.
I honestly love Apple products, but that’s a bit weak.
Not all ‘journalists’ at the same ‘news’ service are alike. I know a number of great people who write great articles for MacWorld. I also know of two total shite articles published in the last 6 months at the MacWorld site from two dimwit ‘journalists’ I’d rather never read again.
Nokia. Disconnecting Microshit
While PCs were always seen as complex and mysterious, often plagued by viruses, with the iPhone users found out they don’t need some fat power hungry “chief information officer” telling them how or what to do with their phones.
So while MS was wining and dining CIOs everywhere with money from hefty Office and Windows “Enterprise” subscriptions users were telling them to go fuck themselves.
Meanwhile, in NeverGartnerNever Land:
Gartner says Windows Phone to hit 10% market share in 2018. In what universe is that?
Gartner: Desperate MS boot lickers.
I thought they could only fit 6 apps in the phones memory! Oops, my bad.
I don’t like mainstream and sheep, so I’m supporting windows phone!