Originally Posted by call100:
“Not really. Not making money out of it doesn't make it a bad OS. Luckily MS pockets are fairly deep and they will probably come through enough to make it worthwhile. I think, that, if anything, it doesn't appeal so much to a younger audience as Android does.
Yes there are one or two things that I did miss initially, but have since found that they were not vital.....
Hopefully, more people will give it a go and build the market share.....Who knows?”
Microsoft does have a fair bit of money, and in my last job we got quite a bit of it to run a series of projects for them to promote Windows Phone.
It started with a physical magazine given out in retail stores to showcase apps and games, followed by a digital edition, and progressing on to a website that could be viewed on any phone to see the latest apps and games - and invite comments from people.
The website also had a section that I personally worked on about equivalent apps. For example, looking for Dropbox - well how about xxxxx instead?
As time went on, more official apps appeared, but it was still a nightmare trying to add new content and the various agencies we worked with within Microsoft often kept getting us to keep promoting the same old apps over and over again, with very little new stuff arriving worthy of inclusion. The engagement from the general public was also minimal, to the point where Microsoft must have realised the only option was to get rid of it as it was doing more harm than good.
I don't think Microsoft now does any of this sort of thing, having pretty much accepted defeat and trying to find other ways to sell the OS. This appears to be TV adverts that show young business professionals showing off how cool a Windows Phone is, and promoting Microsoft services like Skype or Office.
Maybe when Windows 10 comes out and Microsoft can reinvent itself again, and perhaps make the UI even more customisable, it will get the success many say it deserves, but it will have lost even more marketshare by then.
Ultimately, most phones sold were low-end, low-profit, devices. It might have bought Microsoft the numbers, but it didn't make money. The comments from Huawei might be unexpected but they weren't surprising. That was obvious when all the big players stopped making phones or, at best, made token gesture models by just chucking WP on an existing Android phone and spending hardly anything on redesign.
Oh, and the fact that these phones weren't widely available to buy either.
If these had been successful, retailers would be selling and promoting them.