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Nokia's Symbian & Meego sales increase at expense of Windows Phone 8 | 398 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Nokia's Symbian & Meego sales increase at expense of Windows Phone 8
Authored by: kuroshima on Monday, December 24 2012 @ 06:27 AM EST
Customers are realizing that WP7 and WP8 have as much hope
for future support as Symbian, and so are deciding to go for
cheaper handsets? (I have yet to read the linked article
though, I may add a retraction if the article contradicts
this)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Nokia's Symbian & Meego sales increase at expense of Windows Phone 8
Authored by: Gringo_ on Monday, December 24 2012 @ 09:14 AM EST
Thanks for the link. I always look forward to reading Tomi's blogs.

Meanwhile, globally, Windows Phone would have something in the order of 1.3% market share for Christmas and sell 2.9 million units. It would still remain smaller than Symbian now 22 months after Elop decided to sacrifice Symbian and MeeGo instead of Windows Phone. When Palm - once the world's second biggest smartphone platform - had fallen to about 1% market share (and very unprofitable), it had its mercy killing, being sold to HP and ended. How long will Ballmer keep the massive-losses-generating Windows Phone platform even alive? It will soon go the way of the Kin and the Zune and Microsoft will shift its focus only on the PC and tablet side of the Windows 8 operating system.

Here is where I disagree with Tomi. Microsoft will not give up on the WinPhone, and that will be the death of them. It's like that old story - "How do you catch a monkey?"

In Africa, the natives use a technique to catch monkeys. They hollow out one end of a coconut and they put some bait in there like peanuts or a piece of fruit. The monkey puts his hand in the coconut and when he makes a fist to grab the peanuts, he's trapped. He can't pull his hand out without letting go of the bait, and he won't let go of the bait. The natives will pull a string attached to the other end of the coconut and capture the monkey.

This is actually a true story. Here is a video of a man using a variation of this technique. It's in French, but the video tells the story clearly. No narrative is required.

In my version of the story, Ballmer is the monkey, and the Windows phone is the bait. He has it in his hand and will not let go. He is trapped. Here is my reasoning...

Simply, Ballmer is depending on the network effects to eventually take a significant position in the device market - phones and tablets. Why do you suppose they put that awful Metro interface on Windows 8? It conficts with the desktop UI, it's ugly, and nobody likes it. One would think as soon as they saw the first mock up of the Metro interface on a desktop computer, it would have been vetoed, if not sooner, but Ballmer is thinking long term. Ballmer thinks like the executives at Microsoft have been thinking for the past 20 years... They have a monopoly on the desktop, and they can do what they like. Microsoft believes their locked-in customers will go right on buying Windows no matter how bad it is, like they bought Vista. Microsoft believes they will buy the new Windows 8 with the Metro UI that makes no sense on a desktop.

Why force the Metro UI, that was made for phones and tablets, on to a desktop computer? First, Metro is the best they can do. They are not about to abandon it, no matter how bad it is. It is simply too late to go back to the drawing board. So how can they get people to buy that ugly, failed UI? By sticking it in their face every time they go to use their desktop computer, people will will be forced to learn to navigate a UI that is not intuitive, and people will become desensitized to it's garish colours and downright ugliness. The hope is that once people become accustomed to Metro via the desktop or laptop, they will buy the phones and tablets.

This strategy will work, to some extent. Just enough to maintain a small piece of the market, but not enough to be profitable. This is the trap - the peanuts in the jar that Ballmer has in his fist and won't let go of. Microsoft will continue bleeding money on the device market, just as they are with Bing and all the other parts of the infrustructure they developed to support their move into devices, and slowly bleed to death.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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