Windows Phone started off life as a promising alternative to Android and iOS five years ago. Microsoft positioned its range of Windows Phone 7 handsets as the true third mobile ecosystem, but it’s time to admit it has failed. If a lack of devices from phone makers and even Microsoft itself wasn’t enough evidence, the final nail in the coffin hit today. Microsoft only sold 4.5 million Lumia devices in the recent quarter, compared to 10.5 million at the same time last year. That’s a massive 57 percent drop. Even a 57 percent increase wouldn’t be enough to save Windows Phone right now.
I remember being attacked in the comments for claiming Windows Phone was actually not doing as well as some claimed it was, and predicting its inevitable demise – years and years ago.
Vindication.
Yes Thom, you are a genius and a prophet. Despite the fact that nearly every major tech news site stated the same thing many years ago, it is you who are vindicated. Despite the fact that you often plagiarize your positions as original even when you’ve read them first elsewhere, you are still the prodigal son of tech prophecy. Where can I subscribe?!
I know right.
As soon as microsoft starting to use the term “smart phone” to copy apple, they had lost. the iPhone is not cognitive (and thus not smart), but it allowed apple to set the pace.
There is not yet such a thing as a “smart phone” if we are lucky we can at most get a wise phone, but wisdom is useless unless you combine it with other attributes. (the scilent monk vs the world, 778AD)
I’m pretty sure Apple didn’t coin the term “smart phone.” I seem to remember that the Palm, Blackberry, and Symbian devices I had before the iPhone was launched were all called “smart phones” at the time.
Edited 2016-01-29 02:00 UTC
They most certainly didn’t. Go back and watch Steve Jobs doing the original iPhone keynote and you will see him refer to phones already on the market as smartphones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4OEsI0Sc_s
@3:30
Edited 2016-01-29 05:49 UTC
microsoft starting to use the term “smart phone” to copy apple
WAT?
Are you aware of “Smartphone 2002” Microsoft platform?
http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/devices/smartphone2002.htm
Surely you know that Apple invented everything they do.
I think you’ll find that was Bell Labs and Xerox
Telcos -yes, local Telcos- had to repair trademark damage to Ifone, Mexico; a ‘wired’ phones tech company.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-iphone-idUSKBN0EH0FK201406…
Once Apple had launched the iPhone and iOS there was a window of opportunity for someone to effectively supply an OEM operating system to a wide variety of manufacturers. Microsoft automatically thought this would be them. After all, Windows was everywhere on desktops.
However, they missed the ‘smartphone’ change completely and Android now has an installed base of applications that means any third mobile OS has an enormous amount of inertia working against it. There just isn’t the need for another OS. Android can also be taken and installed by anyone.
The only option open to them is to embrace and extend Android, but it’s impossible to see how they’re going to do that and get Windows Phone ahead.
Windows phone failed long before the iPhone was released, at best they reached their previous maximum. But as the market grew they failed to adopt. Kinda like the Be. Inc story, but this time with (hopefully) less shenanigans and bribery.
MS failed around the same time that palm did. They could have had the mobile market, but continued to create terrible systems for years with little to no investment. The famous Ballmer laughing at the iphone video:
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2222662/wireless/a-look-back–s…
I mean has there ever been a worse ceo?
The window of opportunity was still there. Once the smartphone came along, and a mobile OS where apps were written, inertia was going to set in. People simply aren’t going to develop applications for a Windows Phone OS.
https://news.microsoft.com/2014/02/04/satya-nadella-email-to-employe…
He doesn’t seem to have made much progress with that, if Windows Phone is in decline.
Windows Phone isn’t the only egg in the “mobile and cloud first” basket from Microsoft. Office 365 and Azure are there golden eggs and those work well on all platforms and are seeing major uptake.
Although I understand the business and efficiency reasons for this, I don’t think this is good news. Although I’m an admitted fan of BB10 (since switched to Android) I was pulling for windows phone. Much like genetics, homogeneity in mobile OS choices is not a good thing.
Why did you switch? Is not BB10 qnx based, uses qt as the main toolkit and available for free for developers?
The advantages is plentiful of still using a BB10, but perhaps might be inclined to believe the hype claiming RIM is NSA?
Well, for one they own a company that does security for governments in case you aren’t aware of it.
https://www.secusmart.com/en/for-public-authorities/secusuite-for-go…
Even with this decline, WP represents around 8% (on average) in many European, South American and Asian countries.
All the FFOS, Blackberries, Jolla, Tizen, whatever OS added together don’t make even for 1% world wide and they never will. Does anyone even remember Openmoko?
So if Microsoft does eventually kill Windows Phone, all those that were buying them instead of Android, will go Android as their only viable option.
So lets celebrate the choice between iOS for the rich and Android for everyone else.
Why would you think rich would choose iOS? Your reasoning escapes me.
Because not everyone lives in a country where paying 600 euros for an iOS device is something the majority of the population can afford.
Specially in those countries where pre-pay is the way most folks get their devices.
If it escapes you, I imagine you don’t have to try to live with 400 euros per month.
Edited 2016-01-29 09:18 UTC
I think you are misunderstanding the question
Yes, you have to be “rich” to buy an iOS device.
But you don’t have to buy an iOS device if you are rich. It is perfectly fine to buy an Android device, cheap or expensive, if you are rich. (Or a WP, like me)
That I can understand. While iPhone is certainly overpriced, that does not mean a rich person would prefer it over Android or any other mobile phone.
Yes I got it wrong.
My take on being rich, is that as iOS devices tend to be a status symbol, many that can afford them in those countries do buy them.
A percentage would go to the other niche platforms, some people bought windows phone specifically because it wasnt android or ios…
You got your timing wrong here. This is a drop that already happened and no uptake on other platforms has happened. BlackBerry hasn’t been pronounced dead by Thom yet and they put a “5 million per year” target for themselves (dead WP did that in a few months)…which they are not going to make.
Jolla, Tizen, Ubuntu, FireFox OS…they are nowhere to be found
The lesson is simple, to become a major player you need to be first and you need to keep moving. Catching up is not possible in the OS-market.
I now declare Tizen dead. You will see, my prophesy will come to fruition sooner or later!
Just for the record, I am calling it on the resurrection of Windows Mobile. Not just by Microsoft with Lumia/Surface but by an actual OEM-ecosystem. Should I put a date and marketshare percentage on it so my claim has actual value? YES. So here it is: (and I expect cake from Thome delivered to my home) 2 years from now Windows Mobile will have a marketshare of at least 10 percent worldwide
Windows Phone is dead. But those ugly tiles and the bland design are still plaguing those of us who have to use Windows.
Windows Phone shall be dead whenever Microsoft decides it’s dead and stops developing it. Until then, even with a tiny marketshare, it’s not (otherwise, define ‘dead’).
And luckily for us, Microsoft has decided to bring that stylish and functional design to the desktop version of Windows too – luckily for me, I don’t have to stare at/work in a dull grayish environment where icons are kitsch cartoony depictions of real world objects and windows expose ugly, 80’s office-smelling faux 3D borders and buttons.
Yawn. Why do I keep reading this once-OS-centered-informational-website-turned-technology-tabloid-perso nal-rantpad?
‘undead’ is a much better word then
Some of us use computers for work, not just to look at shiny colorful squares. Metro on desktop is the most retarded GUI idea of all times. And I’m not overstating. Windows 8 Metro GUI is basically Windows 2.0 just somewhat less functional, less friendly and less intuitive. At least, Windows 2.0 had tiling windows, where the best Windows 8 “Metro” could do was split-screen.
Windows Server 2012 <- most evil UI devised by humans.
Windows 8.1 <- Get over it, really not that bad.
Windows 10 <- balance restored.
Well, actually, Windows 8 with “Classic Shell” is perfectly fine. I use them this way myself, and it feels exactly like Windows 7, just with some nice small improvements.
Windows 10 still needs Classic Shell to not suck, so I think they’ve still got some work to do.
Maybe I’m abnormal and just have too many things installed, but I couldn’t stand the Windows 10 start menu; scrolling through the list of installed apps was horrible.
Scrolling the Start Menu? How 1998
FFS just type the name of the thing you want it and it is found. Start and then start typing the name of what you want to launch.
This has worked exactly the same with no changes from Vista to 10.
Edited 2016-01-29 20:00 UTC
And it’s a feature I’ve never used.
Although, ironically, I use Launchy.
It sounds like something you should as it would stop you from having to use a third party launcher for stuff already baked into the OS.
Works well.. until you don’t remember the name… then it is as useful as a chocolate teapot.
You don’t need the name, just a part of it, a part of the description, a part of the manufacturer or basically anythings else that would point to that program. If you can’t remember that you can STILL use the old drilldown menu’s by simply adding a link to “Start menu” to Start.
Complaining that you want the old tree-structure because you might not remember the name is like complaining that you miss the Yahoo “sites directory” because Google might not find you that website AND you cannot find it in your own history or favorites.
Also, chocolate teapots are useful when you want something to snack!
Edited 2016-02-01 14:30 UTC
With the old classic menus of XP you would still have to scan through the list, and the functionality is in 10 anyway.
Which is nothing you are forced to if you use Windows 10. You have your Start Menu back, and you can make all tiles disappear…
Now compare the final result with a, say, Windows XP desktop. What is really missing? What is actually preventing you “to work”?
I was talking about Metro here. Not sure what are you talking about.
Even if it dies MS will keep on inflicting the desktop users of the world with an awful tiled UI that was designed for a phone.
That will be their sadistic pleasure. Keep on inflicting it on us even though Windows Phones might be dead and burried.
All that shareholder money spent on Nokia pissed away down the drain. For what eh?
It matters diddly squat that the underlying harware might be brilliant and the OS fantastic but the buying public have said ‘No thanks’ to it big time. Only Android and IOS are in the game.
With profits in the phone market place set to drop like a stone in the next 2-3 years it might just the be right time for MS to pull the plug.
Will they?
Proably not. Far too much egg on face if they do.
Even worse.
In their unrelenting quest to get people to buy Windows phones, Microsoft did not only inflict the disastrous Windows 8 UI onto users. They were even willing to throw Office under the bus.
It was pointed out by the Verge that 110 million Lumias have been sold since launch, while in the same period a combined 4.5 billion iPhones and Android phones were sold.
That would have been 4.5 billion personal computing devices without Microsoft Office. With Nadella’s new strategy, at least a fraction of them now has Office installed.
Nelson (the guy who was promoting Windows phone here long time ago and was seeing Windows phone as a smashing success) are you reading this?
I could’ve predicted an iPhone decline in 2006 and eventually be right next quarter. Vindication indeed.
That’s the thing about unbounded predictions.
The smartphone market is winding down and Microsoft changed their mobile strategy like a year ago, so I’m not sure why any of this is new to anyone.
Comedy gold as usual.
My dear friend Tyler, how could I forget my favorite troll
Glad to see you in such high spirits after that epic nosedive.
Edited 2016-01-29 21:26 UTC
oh come on, I get name dropped every WP article. You guys miss me
A 57% drop is incredibly bad news. Microsoft made some bad decisions with the 950/950XL (camera instead of fingerprint?), and seems to have some quality control issues with both hardware and software (or as it is now called, release early…release oft…oh wait)
What isn’t unexpected is Toms tone in this article and how happy he is about his “vindication”. We are quickly heading for a 2-player arena and that is not enough competition for a healthy market.
I have always considered Windows Phone as Linux
On the desktop: Windows 90%, Apple 9%, Linux 1%
On the phone: Linux (Android) 85%, Apple 14%, Windows 1%
Just like the Linux people I hoped that my favorite platform would grow and get more attention from developers. And just like them I will hope “next year” and I will continue to love my hardware (1520) and OS (build 10.0.10586.63). May many OS-improvements and apps come my way.
Now Loving something dead…is that necrophilia?
P.S. Nokia will go into the books as the smartest phone company ever. They managed to get 7 Billion for this part of their company!
Considering the consistent abuse and hate I got in the comments for not being blinded by Microsoft and Nokia PR regarding Windows Phone, you can be damn sure I’m happy about being right.
While all the major publications – Engadget, The Verge, Ars, etc. – kept falling for Microsoft and Nokia PR, I, and a lot of other smart people here, looked beyond the PR, and focused on the actual numbers, trends, developer interest, and software quality, and we came to the conclusion years and years ago that this was going nowhere. The abuse and hate we got was staggering. You have no idea.
So damn straight I’m happy about sticking to my informed guns.
That has no relation to whether or not I’m happy about us now having a two-horse race – in fact, I think if there’s one person who ALWAYS advocates in favour of consumer choice, it’s me.
Oh, I have a pretty good idea but from the other side. The last years I have been explaining/defending Windows Phone against all the uninformed opinions from people that said it was dead, had no apps, bad devices, no development, etc. So I am quite surprised to hear that you have such an opposite opinion
Microsoft is going to keep trowing money at this. Even if only employees use them, at working hours.
Their potential clients are not actually asking for all the bells an whistles, but for a smooth flow of work in between device agents. Same for their tablets and slims.
Last time I checked this Microsoft was also heavily erring market assessment. You can’t go directly after Applers, you know?
As much as any dominant player is a bad thing, android is far preferable to windows in this regard simply because it’s far more open.
You only really care how open a platform is if you are a developer or a software house.
I’m extremely happy with my Lumia 930.
Hifi is dead too. Less than 1% of the sound solutions sold today sound good. Yay – told u !
People are sheep. Don’t cheer about that…
On killing the ecosystem, also killed an educated market. Its a pain to listen contemporaneous audio hardware.
I happen to really like the Windows Phone environment though Android is my workhorse daily driver.
I keep hoping that the platform might finally turn the corner on application support but WP10 universal apps won’t be helpful enough at this late date.
With no apps there is no future.
Microsoft doesn’t have to be the largest mobile phone maker, to succeed in mobile. I think their new strategies and change of focus are what MS has needed for a long time. Time will tell, if I’m right or wrong…
No doubt Microsoft has a place.
They could sell just 1 device per year or none at all, that does not change the fact that WP8.1 is just a delightful experience to use and I dont give a damn how the existing ecosystem runs or what the market numbers are. I do not use a single app from the store and 95% of the stuff that cam with the phone is useless as well. But the 7 day battery life and just a consistent UX of WP8.1 on my Lumia 520 is phenomenal and no other smartphone can come close.
Just check FireOS, they’re hanging from the clift, on the last of the threads. PalmOS also had CLASS, but its guardians allowed it to fall.
Raw numbers are a bit disappointing but Apple have anticipated a 30% drop in iPhone sales and no-one said iPhones are doomed 😉
Seriously, this was not completely unexpected because newest Lumias were late in the market and Microsoft rushed Windows 10 Mobile a bit without having enough Windows 10 UWP apps already available.
However, what “bloggers” seems to fail to understand is that looking at phone sales for Microsoft is completely irrelevant. There is no Windows Phone anymore. Microsoft changed the game while “bloggers” are still comparing Apples to… Androids 😉 With an unified platform, how many phones, tablets, Xboxes, PCs you sell is completely irrelevant for the platform and it is only relevant for profits.
When you decide to develop for Windows 10 now, you only care how many devices you could target. Is that number growing ? You bet!
How many Windows 10 devices are already active ? 100 millions ? Well, now there are 100 millions PLUS 4.5 millions (plus 20 millions Xboxes). How many WP 8 will they convert to W10 out of their 100 million devices installed base ? 20% to stay VERY conservative ? So W10 platform will be 100m + 4.5m + 20m (plus 20m Xboxes). Irrelevant ? LOL!
Microsoft changed the game when it was able to let developers create for the Windows 10 platform instead of Windows Phones, Windows PCs, tablets and so on. Every single UWP app developed for PCs becomes a phone app. Every single UWP app developed for phones becomes an Xbox app.
So they basically said: if you develop for Windows 10, you will develop for all devices. If you don’t do that, you will ignore Windows platform. What sane developer would do that ? no-one and in facts more and more Windows 10 UWP are announced, be those airliners support/booking apps or Facebook and even those apps that you laughed all about, like Retrica. How come they’re developing a W10 app if the platform is doomed ?
This is not a 100mt run anymore: this is a marathon and while phones, tablets and PCs are converging, who has the only platform to run all of them ? You guess 😉
Plus now that Google discovered that Android is not good for productivity unless completely refactored and Apple does the same, Microsoft delivered the only real innovation in mobile since first iPhone. That would be Continuum. Let’s see how Google is able to turn their grid-based phones into productivity machines without disrupting their whole eco-system. Same for iOS. Let’s see how can they adapt their millions apps designed for small screens to 22inches monitors. For sure Metro has been designed for that from the ground up and you now what? It works. Maybe Ballmer was not that fool when he said “from 4″ to 40” “… let’s say how good an Android app will look when run on a 40” monitor 😛
A few years ago the same bloggers stated that Microsoft couldn’t be profitable in the tablet market anymore and should have run Android (lol!). Today Surfaces became iconic and are generating 1.4B revenues per quarter. Oh yeah, they should have given up! 😉
Wondering why Windows 10 Mobile will not be supported after 2018? Maybe by that time, Windows 10 on phones will run Intel chips capable of running x86 apps? Then Continuum will not look like a toy anymore, right?
We already won a few customers telling them that we could develop a Windows 10 UWP enterprise app that would run on their PCs, their Surfaces (yes, they are particularly happy about those), their phones, heck even their Xboxes. And you know what? We showed them that they can SAVE by developing a single app to run on cheap phones like Lumias 640 (or 550) for normal users and on high-end Lumias (950-950XL) for top users.
Microsoft is already capable to deliver higher H/W specs at a lower prices (compare 950XLs to 6s or to Samsungs S6…) so that means saving a lot in enterprise space and even in consumer space.
Meanwhile, just keep writing that Windows Phone is dead… 😛
At lot of what you say meakes perfect sense. But…
MS is forcing a tile interface on ALL of us.
Tiles and Full Screen UI things might work on a phone but it really pisses me off when that happens on my 27in 4K screen.
For the control panel to insist on opening in Full screen is just wrong.
Care to explain why it is such a stonkingly good idea?
As someone who started out programming on an ASR33 Teletype and big IBM Green 3270 screens, IMHO Window 8.0 onwards are an evolutionary dead end just like the Lemurs of Madagascar. I am so glad to be retiring soon. Then I won’t have to fight with anything from Microsoft ever again. It really pains me to see where they have gone. Back in the day of NT4.0 I liked what they were doing and even took my MCSE. I must have been crazy. That’s my POV.
If W8/8.1/10 rocks your boat then so be it. Who am I to argue. Each to their own.
Well, everything changes.
Last few years proved that touch-based UIs are not very productive when compared to the traditional desktops and that’s why iOS / Android are struggling. You can have Office on your PC and Office on your smartphone but you would never choose the latter.
Basically, we are still waiting for a big leap in device interaction. We are still using the desktop metaphor that has been invented in 70s. We thought that touch could replace that but that didn’t work so we’re kind in the middle of the ocean: the old metaphor should be replaced but the new one is not good enough yet.
For sure the next big leap will be based on VR + touch so I’m confident that Hololens could represent a very important step there.
I could see all offices full of this guys and gals, blinded and weaving at the emptiness. Same at home, families ‘sharing a game app’…
Neither want to make multi layer Photoshop on my phone, really.
This artificial policing is a disaster.
Obvious is high ranks at Microsoft doesn’t have a clue of what the biological concept of continuum means.
What about ecosystem: Just another fancy, cloudy, catchy word?
Towards integration with the rest of the World, They are going to flight up in their Cloud, in direction of irrelevance.
‘It really pains me to see where they have gone’.
A decade as a minimalist beast now, Shotsman. No other but the old Microsoft on my back for innumerable lost days and nights of my life.
Wider panorama doesn’t look that different.
Hi,
This is the same delusion that Microsoft themselves suffer from.
For non-trivial apps; you can design the app to be “ideal” for one platform (and bad for all others), or you can design the app to be bad for all platforms. Those are the only choices you have, because there’s severe differences between input devices, screen sizes, processing power, etc. Whether or not the APIs and tools are the same makes no difference whatsoever.
– Brendan
Brendan, in a way you’re absolutely right.
But as you might know, Windows10 UWP allows to customize UI based on several device features just to accomodate those differences. Microsoft already anticipated that and besides Metro UI/UX has been already designed to scale, though that’s not perfect and that’s why you might need to use slightly different UI based on running devices.
Yet, truly multi-devices apps are here, especially when you consider that Microsoft has absolutely NO COMPETITION in productivity and only suffers competition in simpler apps like iPhone / Android ones.
Hi,
Truly multi-device apps are where? They’re not on phone because that died due to lack of apps. Are you suggesting the same game can run on console and PC (despite “all console hardware is always identical” vs. “extremely large variation in PC hardware capabilities”); or are you saying you can run MS Office on an Xbox?
– Brendan
Of course you can do both things. Didn’t you notice that new apps (not legacy Windows apps) are compiled to bytecode ? What do you think bytecode is for ? Exactly to run the same code on any device regardless their “extremely large variation in hardware capabilities”. You might have been missing what happened to the Windows platform since.. hmm… 2003? 😉
Running the same game on console, PCs and your phone is not something I’m suggesting, is the way things works on Windows 10.
Of course there will still be legacy Windows apps, mostly from software maker that have no interest in providing their software to other devices or that cannot use UWP because of complexity or performance requirements but that’s not concerning since Microsoft has no competition in that field.
‘Microsoft has absolutely NO COMPETITION in productivity’.
And THAT, is going to change, no doubt about it.
Linux has been capable of this for years, there is no reason that the kernels shipping on android phones can’t run a full blown linux userland (and some people do so via chroot), and with 99% of the same applications already available for ARM…
It’s not typically done because although the apps will run, their interfaces are not suited to the touchscreen input method or the small screen size.
Well, you provided an answer. It might do that but applications would make no sense on a smartphone.
That’s exactly the problem that Windows 10 UWP can solve. Plus, with Continuum, if Microsoft can stick an x86 into a smartphone, you basically have a PC. Not for CAD/CAM, maybe, but powerful enough for generic x86 applications.
You can make Windows run, in the medium future. No Tiles, less Windows, would be of any use.
That’s not continuum. If you want it, you will have to build it. Same for Google, Apple, Linux.
The future is still undone. Don’t sell ‘air’. Free one is still good enough.
Nobody wants to sit down and code it. For any of You. You don’t have a technological problem.
I prefer Windows Phone to Android and hope it is not killed. I can put my emails and messaging and phone tiles at the top of the phone and they will display whether there has been a message in the tile. I don’t get that with Android.
Also, the best bargain in the phone world right now is the AT&T Go Phone Lumia 640. 59.99 or less with 1280 x 720 screen. Only 8GB memory but expansion with 128GB microSDHC card.
http://static.webwereld.nl/uploads/x/z/xz958es1iaof53cm.png
You can see that sales were up on a steady trajectory until about a year ago and then collapsed. This is the point where Nokia was absorbed by Microsoft, the OS got stuck at 8.1, there were no new flagship models and Nadella made his “we are committing to Windows 10 Mobile with software and hardware…but retrenching” speech.
As a Windows Insider with a 1520 and 1020 I can see the progress but also the loss of uniqueness. Not meeting their own time frames is also a problem.
Still I would say that the development tools, OS itself, default apps, available hardware and even Universal Windows Apps are all in a good place…just the market is not buying it and has decided on the Android/iOS duopoly, where iOS is actually a very distant, but undeniable, second.
If Microsoft cannot make itself relevant in 3rd place after al that investment….is there any hope for BlackBerry, Ubuntu, FireFox, Tizen, anyone else?….Nope
So, let me get this straight: after repeating “The X is dead” for years, and years, and years… when The X thing finally dies (and everything does as there’s nothing eternal), you feel like a prophet? Good strategy. I will now start repeating “Microsoft is dead” and maybe after some 10, 50 or at least 150 years I will get my vindication and get recognized as a prophet.
Good stuff your’e smoking there…