Windows Phone 7 - Quo Vadis?
Last week Nokia announced her Windows Phone 7 devices: Lumia 710 and 800. They are very nice devices, but enough to change the game? Let’s be clear: I think Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is best platform available today, superior to iPhone and the ‘iPhone-Clone’-Android. Sure, if you don’t like the Metro design, you stick with the other platforms, but if you are interested in ‘get the things done’ and stability, WP7 is your device.
So why is WP7 not taking off, like Android? My thoughts about that are:
- Microsoft isn’t cool.
So Microsoft needs to convince the buyer and seller, that there’s a new cool device out which has nothing to do with the old Windows Mobile 6.x platform. There are rumors out, that even sellers are not willing to promote WP7 devices. - WP7 has no press coverage.
For every little iPhone feature you will have a “two page”-article, written by Apple devotees, praising the greatness and I think: ‘This feature, I have on my WP7 since a year”. But not often you see such an article for WP7, and when yes, afterwards are there comments that this article is paid by Microsoft. Many times they are only speaking of iPhone and Android, with only short side remark of WP7. This is the most difficult piece to change. - WP7 hasn’t a broad range of devices, from cheap to expensive.
They are planning to offer cheaper devices like the Lumia 710, but where are high level devices? For example there are no devices out with more than 16GB, iPhone 4S has up to 64GB. I was hoping the Nokia Lumia 800 will offer a SD-Memorycard option, but no. If you use your phone as music player, as podcast player and application and game center, you are running out of memory the first day. And I’m not speaking of watching movies on the phone. - WP7 still missing some important apps.
With the Mango release, it’s now possible to implement Skype-style and nice AR apps, etc. So there no technical limitations anymore.