A new email from Microsoft’s Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group, firmly states that the company is devoted to Windows 10 on mobile for ‘many years’ and that they are currently working on next generation products.
Whenever you have to repeatedly come out and say you’re committed to something, you’re probably not committed to it.
Call it a burning platform and hope people stay until the next generation comes ‘soon’
People have already left, as is evident by looking at the sales charts. Also, not a single device in the top 10 of (most popular) devices running Windows Phone are from the latest generation of Microsoft-produced Lumias, they’re all from older iterations.
Edited 2016-05-03 05:24 UTC
They did not left. They don’t care that much about what phone or apps they are using to show off to people.
Same as Blackberry. Passport is such a great and unique device but if you look at numbers you may think it’s a failure..
These devices are made for the mass market, so if they don’t sell well they should be considered failures indeed.
Of course everything is relative. I just read that Jolla got 12 million in funding (of which a big chunk will have to be used for finally refunding the tablets and paying the personel) and that only about 600 tablets have actually ever reached users
Well, a consumer device success is indicated by either sales volume or profit margins it generates. The Passport is an abject failure in both counts. So thinking of it as a failure is a correct assessment.
Of course there had to be a snarky comment
Last week was kind of a crazy week for Windows 10 Mobile:
There wasn’t only this article about committing to Windows 10 Mobile and the mentioning of future devices, but there was also:
* (rumor about future hardware) http://www.windowscentral.com/surface-phone-slated-april-2017
* (new Redstone build) http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-build-14332-now-available-…
* (new Production build) http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-mobile-build-10586242-insi…
* (FaceBook apps) http://www.windowscentral.com/release-facebook-messenger-and-instag…
Of course the big problem is now that the hardware-sales are crashing, but for me personally the last production build was so great that I tried the new Redstone Build and that also worked basically flawlessly. Windows 10 Mobile is really getting its act together and my phone is getting better and better.
…but no official support for my older 1020 after that was promised is still unforgivable!
As Windows / Java dev, I was still betting on it, specially since on my home country, WP tends to be the only option for those that dislike Android.
Not many are going to get an iOS device, when the average salary (with university degree) is around 1000 euros.
However, my beloved 630 can now either keep using WP8.1 or the last internal WP10 build after they decided to go 1GB only, in spite of promises made when WP 10 was announced that all 8.1 devices (including 512 MB ones) would be upgradable.
Last Gartner figures are 1% world wide sales for 2015.
So they might win the desktop, XBox, meeting rooms interactive boards with Hub and tablets as they should be made with the Surface.
But mobile phones, they just pissed off too many devs that still had a drop of hope, with their last WP10 announcement.
Edited 2016-05-03 08:59 UTC
Yes, I think it is safe to say they will win Xbox.
Oh, there is no hope that many developers (like you and me) would develop for Windows 10 Mobile. But we do develop for Windows 10 UWP so the app situation on mobile will improve just because of that. I actually had a couple of WP8 apps that weren’t updated that I replaced with new WM10 apps that work much better.
But that decision to leave so many devices behind on WP8x is unbelievable after their promise to update all devices “that can” (meaning having enough storage). And it seems that decision was made simply by looking at feedback from insiders that thought “if we mark this feature as not good enough yet, they will improve it for my device” and instead got “we will not support W10M on your device, period!”.
I still prefer the latest production build of W10M on my 1020 eventhough there are some issues. But apps like Outlook mail, Edge and the general OS are just so much better on 10 compared to 8 that I will gladly live with those issues that are becoming less and less. I really hope they will reconsider to allow Insiders to always run the latest version, even if that is in an unsupported scenario (duh, Insider!)
I tend to track market share way too much for my own good, and thought I’d check the 2015 figures against your assertions.
The Surface is a great little device, but it’s hardly a dominant tablet player. Android still holds about 60% of that shrinking market (Samsung alone accounts for almost 20%), mostly via inexpensive devices and Amazon readers, while Apple holds around 30%.
But what is interesting is that Microsoft’s sales with the Surface are growing in both number and market share, while Android and Apple’s shares are dropping in both. So it’s possible that Microsoft could become a major player in the shrinking tablet arena given time. I suspect Samsung and Apple would disagree, and have product plans to back them up.
Doing well in two shrinking markets may not be the right goal, but I guess we take what we can. *shrugs*
So in summary, Linux dominates most computing markets, including those you didn’t mention, with BSD Unix dominating gaming consoles and doing a healthy minority business via Apple in tablets, phones, and to some extent in desktops, and Windows dominating desktops except for education and holding a small but steadily growing share of tablets.
It’s interesting to have competition in operating systems again…
Edited 2016-05-03 16:32 UTC
Here is some info on OS use from Stack Overflow:
https://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-…
While OS use and hardware use are not completely identical (i.e. Linus uses a Mac; he’s not the only one) it gives a clear picture that OS X use among devs is large and growing.
It doesn’t outnumber the combined stats for all Windows OSes and all of the Linuxes are lumped together as well. So post-process these stats to get a different look at things. (-;
Thanks for the link – very helpful!
Then there is this counter point, just saw it today. Grist for the mill.
Where have all the MacBooks gone at Linux conferences?
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3064273/linux/where-have-all-th…
I am really wondering where you got your numbers from and if you aren’t confusing market share in 2015 with sales in 2015. Market share includes all the devices sold in the past as well (sometimes adjusted for actively used). Your numbers also seem very US centric
ChromeOS:
I only hear stories about ChromeOS in education, I cannot find any hard numbers on it anywhere and have never seen anyone actually using or selling it. “The majority of the education segment went to ChromeOS a couple of years back” seems ridicoulous to me given their 0.5% usage share (src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)
I have no idea if Android app compatibilty would change the marketshare of ChromeOS in the consumer desktop space. Android is nowhere to be found and neither is ChromeOS, but maybe when the features get combined it will go somewhere?
MacBooks for developers have increased a bit because mobile development has gone up and for iOS you basically need a Mac. But I would still call it roughly 60% Windows, 20% Mac and 20% Linux (src: https://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016)
PS4 vs XBox One vs Wii U would be roughly 50-30-20, but they are absolutely tiny compared to the previous gens that are still actively used and sold (src: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07/analysis-sony-pushes-past-50-…)
The tablet market is a market that is really hard to define. From 50 dollar Amazon tablets to 1200 dollar iPad Pro’s. And then their is the semi-artificial divide with 2-in-1’s. Expensive tablets (Apple/Samsung) were down a lot with 2-in-1’s basically replacing them.
But why leave out the smartphone market? Basically flat with some internal Android shifts, iOS down and Windows Phone/BlackBerry/Everyone else disappearing even more than they did before.
And why leave out the TV/wearables/etc markets? Well, because nobody sees those as the same market, just like consoles/smartboards/etc aren’t the same market. In all those markets the OS simply doesn’t interest many people (except people like us here on OSnews) because it is basically fixed and a commodity
Here’s your problem:
That is actually called “installed base”.
The classic definition for “market share” is the number of units sold during a period of time.
For example, from Investopedia (emphasis added):
“Market share is the percentage of an industry or market’s total sales that is earned by a particular company over a specified time period.”
Read more: Market Share Definition | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketshare.asp#ixzz47d9dea47
So market share in 2015 is equal by definition to sales in 2015. 🙂
Hope this helps. It does address a lot of your disagreement, e.g., “they are absolutely tiny compared to the previous gens that are still actively used”, where you are referencing installed base (for which your comments are probably fairly accurate – installed base is notoriously difficult to track) rather than market share (for which they aren’t).
As to ChromeOS in education, your personal experience is anecdotal and thus irrelevant. What matters are actual market reports, and the rapid rise of ChromeOS in education was well reported earlier this year, e.g., http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/01/11/apple-loses-more… .
The other numbers are equally well reported, I believe. I just looked them up briefly, and didn’t include the links since I thought they would be well-known here. If not, please let me know and I’ll provide specific references, but you shouldn’t have problem locating them.
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the respectful tone and sourced materials. Our number differences are indeed as I expected, between US-Only and worldwide and installed base vs market share for 2015. I always thought market share IN 2015 equaled installed base and market share FOR 2015 equaled sales.
I do have to disagree with you on the education numbers though. Those are VERY US centric and entirely different worldwide. Your source describes that as well: “Windows-based machines, remains on top for the K-12 market worldwide, with a 47% share. Chromebooks follows at 19% and Apple at 13%”. These numbers also don’t represent the entire education market but just K12 schools buying tech in bulk for their students. That explains why their monitored usage is so low at 0.55%, these devices are education tools and not used outside the classroom. For this goal they seem perfect indeed (given the desired education software exists)
It will be interesting to see if consumers will find some use for it.
I tried finding numbers for ps4 vs ps3 sales to see how many people are now buying the previous gen consoles. I just keep finding “ps4 vs xbone” and “ps4 now vs ps3 sales in the past” numbers. We always get sold the impression that people buy the latest and greatest while in reality the bulk of sales is in the low/mid-end. But for consoles I couldn’t find numbers to back that up. 60/30 for ps4 vs xbone sounds incomplete to me though.
Again, thanks for the conversation and I hope you can add “in the US” when that is relevant
Maybe in the USA. The education market in Australia is totally dominated by Lenovo and Apple.
Chromebooks have had very little uptake in Australia. Few stores sell them. The very popular Cloudbook are (much) cheaper, Chromebooks are practically useless because very few homes have fast unlimited broadband and wireless data costs are totally prohibitive (~AUD10/GB).
Edited 2016-05-04 04:51 UTC
Something for our german readers:
Angela Merkel spricht Windows 10 Mobile ihr vollstes Vertrauen aus.
That’s amusing, if my somewhat rusty German is comprehending that correctly.
“We are committed to this product.” Translation: we are still in the reality denial phase that it bombed.
Committed just means you haven’t devised the right way to say that you’re dropping this like the garbage it is.
as in..”No Honey, I’m committed to this marriage by our contractual obligations”
Thiom pulled out his tiny analytical prediction-ball the other day and was quite sure MS was switching to android.
Now he is predicting that MS will drop Windows
Duh-Da-Duh-Di…DONK.
Is this not the same person that promised us we’d be able to turn off the get Windows 10 nagware? So, where is that switch again?
Just trying to be helpful here: https://www.grc.com/never10.htm