01.16.11
Gemini version available ♊︎Fake Coverage and Paid Apologists Not Enough for Microsoft and Apple
Summary: Dirty ‘marketing’ tactics from the proprietary software giants do not work out in the long term; Vista Phony 7 [sic] seems to be on its deathbed already
IN THE COMING days we are going to explain Apple’s and Microsoft’s latest plot to ‘compete’ in the mobile space using software patents — a tactic which is indicative of loss on technical grounds. Tim is still preparing material and evidence with which to post a good report on Microsoft employees who stealthily promote products like Vista Phony 7 (while also insulting people and rival products such as Linux). Here we have some ruthless companies that do not obey even marketing etiquette. They never did. Unlike Free software, ethics and integrity are foreign to them.
Let’s begin with Vista Phony 7, which is failing really badly. Well, just like Vista 7, it has been a lot of hype and massive disappointment for partners of Microsoft, as we last noted yesterday. Here is another post about it that says:
Microsoft’s young smartphone platform is definitely in trouble. In spite of a splashy ad campaign to spur the Windows Phone 7 launch, rumors of poor sales won’t go away. It doesn’t help matters that a big hardware partner of WP7 publicly admits that sales of the company’s phones have been disappointing. Can Microsoft right this ship?
The press started suspecting something wasn’t right with Windows Phone 7 sales when Microsoft sidestepped the issue of sales numbers at the CES. Now one of Microsoft’s largest hardware partners with the platform, LG, has admitted the company’s disappointment with the push of WP7 into the market. That’s about as bad as it gets for a platform builder like Microsoft.
The reader who mailed us this pointer titled it “Windows Phone 7 sales very bad” and moments ago he mailed us this report under the subject line “Windows Phone is dead!!!!”
Chitika, a Web advertising company, has posted some interesting graphs that show Windows Phone 7 isn’t doing so well. After analyzing data from more than 100,000 websites and about 3 billion monthly ad impressions in their advertising network, Chitika has concluded that visits from users running Windows 98 is still almost double the visits from Windows Phone 7 users.
Priceless.
How is Apple doing? Well, Linux has passed Apple’s hypePhone based on various independent metrics. Apple is just suing. There are also hypePad problems after the initial reviews that Apple bribed prominent bloggers for (Apple is controlling the press with legal threats too).
Apple’s hypePad DRM strategy is clearly failing and according to this new article, “Apple nixes free iPad subs for print customers”:
Apple is reportedly on the verge of launching a subscription service for paid apps, and the company appears to be ironing out some final details with publishers who plan to participate.
A number of European newspaper and magazine publishers have been contacted by Apple and informed that they cannot offer free subscriptions for iPad editions through the upcoming service to customers already paying for a print version of their publication, according to a report in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. In other words, once this subscription service finally launches, don’t be surprised if your favorite magazine does an iPad edition and you have to pay for it again.
Disgruntled Apple customers often turn to GNU/Linux (or Android), as we have shown in some recent posts. No wonder Apple is gradually losing to Linux. █
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