Bonum Certa Men Certa

Vista Phony 7 is Just a Very Costly Experiment

Summary: Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 is failing pretty badly, costing Microsoft a lot of money, and even disapponting its few existing users whose devices are now getting bricked by an update

As something smelly & dirty hits the fan, Microsoft turns to patents and it's easy to see why. Microsoft has not got so much left except for a legacy line of products such as Office and Windows (although they too erode). There yet more Microsoft fawning from Rory Cellan-Jones ("Microsoft's future: Only Kinect") and not much is said about the company's overall situation, including debt.



According to this new article, the price of Vista Phony 7 is negative; "they say Microsoft is paying vendors to use WP7," summarises our regular gnufreex and to quote the original:

Yes, Microsoft is competing with free and open software on price, not the smartest thing to do if you are a for profit company. According to my source, it isn't a one time thing either, not just a temporary launch price to get their foot in the door. He indicated that if MS tries to back off on their pricing model, they will find out exactly how much phone makers think of Windows Phone 7. He strongly hinted that tepid sales more than adequately reflect the love felt by OEMs for the OS.

This 'pricing model', basically kickbacks in a legally palatable form, are nothing new in the industry. A good recent example of the breed came out in the Intel/AMD settlement a bit over a year ago.


To Microsoft's fortune (or misfortune), hardly anyone bought a Vista Phony 7 device and those who did keep complaining about problems like bandwidth drain and now the bricking of Vista Phony 7 devices. From ZDNet UK:

Windows Phone 7 update is 'bricking' some handsets



A minor software update for Windows Phone 7 is causing problems for owners of some handsets, according to posts made on Twitter.

The software — which does little but get the Windows Phone 7 updater ready for future upgrades — started rolling out to users on Monday but some handset owners quickly started reporting problems with it on Twitter.


This whole platform has been a disaster and the NoWin deal [1, 2, 3, 4] can't do much to change this. An analyst which ha[s|d] Microsoft as a client has published this analysis which confirms Nokia cannot do much:

Q: What does this mean for Android?

A: In the short term, very little. A partnership with Nokia would have made the platform an even more formidable competitor to iOS, but volume is at present not a major problem for the Android ecosystem. In the longer term, if this deal energizes a Windows Mobile ecosystem that has largely been treading water since its launch, it could mean increased competition for Android and iOS both.


Given that the market share of Vista Phony 7 is somewhere around 0.1% (Windows Mobile still has more), there is so much that's needed to be gained for it to qualify as "competition". At the moment, it's somewhat of a joke almost comparable with the KIN. But with so much money spent on advertising it may be hard to notice that advocacy of the platform is largely fake. Vista Phony 7 will never be a contender, not even with Elop's entryism (this video of "Nokia Plan 0" is apt).



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