Has W7P already died?

I think WP7 will do okay, but will never beat Apple or Google. The main problem is that most users are in a two-year contract for their smart phones and can't afford to buy a new one every six months like some tech blogs would have you believe. If a consumer buys an iPhone in early 2010, they're not going to switch to WP7, no matter how good it is, until their contract is up in early 2012.

There is also the question of market saturation. The ads tell me I need a smart phone, but I honestly don't know what I'd do with it. Check emails? Play a few games? I don't need a phone for that; I have a PC at work and a laptop at home. I'm usually driving if I'm not in those places, so a smart phone (and it's accompanying $70+/month plan) is just not practical.

@Jaz: In my opinion that is one of the problems with Android.  Once you buy an Android phone 5 more come out in the next month to make you feel like yours is now old tech.  Now the market is so saturated with Android phones that you can't even tell them apart any more.  I would rather have a slow and steady release of new phones than a constant flood of them.  Give me a few months before I get phone envy.

I saw this article the other day that suggest strong and steady WP7 sales.

http://www.bgr.com/2011/03/15/windows-phone-sales-top-877000-in-february-report-suggests/

I agree that giving it 18 months to make a more accurate determination is wise.  It gives the phone a chance to be updated a couple of times, be available on all carriers, and gives peoples current contracts a chance to expire (or be qualified for an upgrade).

I'm going to use CBC as an example but it's the same for other TV/Radio stations, banks etc. that have apps. It still seems strange to me that these organizations have apps when you can do the same by just going to their websites, but anyway.....

CBC Radio had iOS apps for quite some time so they advertised it allot. In turn that was free advertizing for iOS devices. Now that they also have it available for Android and Blackberry they just say "CBC news app for you smartphone" and sometimes they mention which OSes it's for.
I see they have a CBC Hockey Night In Canada app for WP7 but not the main CBC News app yet.
The Hockey app page doesn't even have a link anywhere on it. It's just a screenshot???

It's stuff like this that MS needs to start pushing. When a TV/Radio station a bank or a store has ONLY an iOS app they should help them get a WP7 version too. It's free advertizing to a slightly different demograhic.

wp7 is great and i love mine, but there could be alot more groth of microsoft pull their finger out and allow global access to the marketplace and doesnt force me to get a us registered email to even get free apps. i dont even want to think about how long i have to wait to get swedish text prediction..

also, paying 99 bucks a year to  be able to give your apps away for free is total b$ and just short sighted greed from microsoft that is also hindering the platform.. had that restriction not been there we'd have many times the 10000 apps we have now

the fact that nodo is so increadibly late is also worrying.. no info about whats wrong, nothing, just scilence.

@dentaku: Microsoft just gave Nokia one billion dollars to use W7P right?

Why not take another billion from the shareholders(as if they truly care), and pool together 50-100 mobile consulting firms, then tell CBC, and business owners this:

"If you use W7P, we'll take your branded app in a queue and have our pooled mobile consultant firms build it for you at our own cost"

That's all people really care about. Most business owners that have an iPhone app wouldn't pass up that offer, plus they would be helping the US economic recovery by re-allocating funds from MSFT shareholders to small businesses in the US only.

All they did so far was pump a billion in US MSFT shareholder money into Europe in the Nokia deal. That's almost a breach of trust and or good faith. If I was holding MSFT, I would sell it off for that reason alone.

Any US company could put their app specs in the queue to be made for free.

In my previous post I referenced CBC, so they would not be elligible. BBC America however would under my proposed plan.

I am worried about Windows 7 Phone. I've known a few people to take back their phone for an android because of the lack of multi tasking features. People got used to having IM programs open in the background, which you can't do on the Windows 7 phone.

The Nokia deal is nice, but they wont produce anything with a Windows 7 Phone OS for a while. Things need to happen now. iOS and Android will only gain more users, and wil lock them in because of their purchased apps. I know I can't live without Google Voice now. Windows Phone 7 does not offer a good Google Voice app due to the lack of multitasking.

@spivonious:

I agree with this (2 year contracts). I have to spend the entire 400 bucks or so, I don't rememeber, just to get my WP7 HTC Surround.

Also WP7 is in its early stage where not many people know about it, not many people use it as word of mouth, not many people like to get the first release (always saying wait for SP1), and iPhone users already have bought many apps on their devices, and etc.

And to the other person who quoted me. Ehhhh..... if I use iPhone or Android, I also only use free games. I play free MMO, Champions and NeoSaurs. I play free FB games, BushWhacker, FarmVille (finally quit few months back). I use free VS Express, free MSE, free WL Essentials, free Paint .Net, free whatever. It has nothing to do with MS. I just want free stuff. (I did bought 2 games on WP7 nevertheless). And are those free stuff canabolized their own market? I seriously don't care as a customer. In fact, I love it because I want more free apps and games.

Certainly WP7 is weeker, it is still not NoDo update yet. It still lacks many things people wants. But, the core design, the fundations, the core UI, the more cloud storage and links, the core "vendor cannot customize / screw it up", the core "no multi-virusing" which already happend on other platforms app store BTW, the core consistant experience, and etc.

I am confident WP7 has a solid fundation for something better. And it will get better one-step at a time.

"This is comming from an actual WP7 owner who has used it over 3 months now", thank you for reading.

@blowdart: "How is doing something that should boast adoption of a Microsoft OS a breach of trust? It's driving adoption (should it work)"

http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/16/technology/nokia/index.htm

"Nokia phones make up just 7.8% of the U.S. handset market, according to comScore, far behind leaders Samsung, LG and Motorola"

People that buy phones for apps simply don't buy Nokia phones. I haven't seen any coworker, friend, or anybody else with a Nokia phone in the US for years.

This is the only way to get a Nokia phone into the hands of an American person:

http://scobleizer.com/2007/06/03/the-better-iphone-nokia-n95/

"Mauricio Idarraga at Puremobile.com sent me a Nokia N95. He wrote in the letter that came with the phone:

My name is Mauricio Idarraga and I am the Ecommerce Manager at PureMobile. I read your blog almost every day, that’s how I found out that you wanted an N95.

We don’t expect anything in return, but if you could tell your friends we sent it to you, that would be really cool."

Of course Scoble says he loved it, he wanted people to continue to send him products for free, and they did.

W7P Timeline 2011:

###################################

Circa: Summer 2011: Nokia sends all bloggers W7P phones proclaiming: We have Windows (and their money) now!!!

Circa: Summer 2011: Bloggers write negative articles about it, except those paid as part of "conversational marketing" intiatives.

Circa: Fall 2011: Same result as the Zune, some poor moron gets a tattoo and all is forgotten.

##################################

So yeah, MSFT shareholders beware

/Me throws a beer bottle at Setag_Yrneh's head.

@ZippyV: good catch, but PaoloM beat you to that in a different thread. Sometimes I wonder if this wouldn't be a perfect application for a Bayesian classifier...

@ZippyV: The tone of neanderthalic violence in your comment lends to the unsophisticated discourse of this forum. Dare I say that I am no longer interested in reading about Windows Mobile 7.

2 days ago, Setag_Yrneh wrote

That's what I would like to see, and I am not seeing that.

I could be wrong, but perhaps Microsoft has some standards and doesn't offer cash to just any developer willy nilly.

2 days ago, Setag_Yrneh wrote

So Microsoft wants all these already small dev teams to pay out of pocket because there is no business there.

Geez, do you want somebody to cut the meat on your plate too? Buck up and design a compelling app, or go home. There are more than enough WP7 users to make good money if you have the chops to design a good, quality app. With only 10K+ apps in the WP7 marketplace, there's less competition right now too.

2 days ago, spivonious wrote

I think WP7 will do okay, but will never beat Apple or Google. The main problem is that most users are in a two-year contract for their smart phones and can't afford to buy a new one every six months like some tech blogs would have you believe. If a consumer buys an iPhone in early 2010, they're not going to switch to WP7, no matter how good it is, until their contract is up in early 2012.

What kind of warped logic is this? There are plenty of people that bought iPhones in 2009 that are tired of the boring grid of icons interface and might want to change to WP7. People are up for phone contract renewals every day. Each one of them is fair game for any platform.

10 hours ago, aL_ wrote

also, paying 99 bucks a year to  be able to give your apps away for free is total b$ and just short sighted greed from microsoft that is also hindering the platform.. had that restriction not been there we'd have many times the 10000 apps we have now

Apple charges the same amount for the iOS Developer Program. I understand that Microsoft returns the $99 once you have two apps in the Marketplace anyway.