For years now, Microsoft's Windows Phone platform has been a plucky underdog in the great Android v iOS smartphone wars. But with their user base collapsing and their hardware division all but shut down, it seems the writing is finally on the wall for the best mobile OS you’ve never used.
Despite enjoying more than 20 years as the dominant player in home computing, Microsoft have struggled to make headway in today's fastest-growing technology market: the smartphone business.
Windows Phone – or Windows 10 Mobile, as the latest iteration is known – has long struggled to make an impact, but even by its own standards it's had a truly terrible year.
Last July, it was reported that Microsoft were planning on cutting up to 7,800 jobs and writing off as a loss $7.6 billion of the cash paid for Nokia’s phone hardware division – acquired with much fanfare just 14 months earlier.
Since then, things have only got worse for the struggling platform. According to Microsoft’s own Q2 2016 figures, Windows Phone hardware sales have dropped from 10.5 million to 4.5 million year-on-year – an eye-watering 57%. And to really put those numbers in perspective, more than 4.5 billion Android and iOS devices were sold over the same period!
Based solely on the numbers, Windows Phone has to be considered an abject failure. It’s a sorry end for an operating system once touted as a genuine alternative to Apple and Google’s mobile dominance and which, for all its troubles, still has a small but dedicated community of users – including a few on the Geek Squad team.
Today, then, let’s take a look at the fascinating history of Microsoft’s problem child, as I try to pinpoint where it all went wrong for the troubled platform.
The history
Windows Phone was launched in November 2010 as the successor to the practically prehistoric Windows Mobile – an ancient mobile OS that pre-dates both iOS and Android.
In the wild pre-iPhone days BlackBerry was king, and standards for mobile user interfaces were considerably lower. But as everybody knows, the iPhone arrived in 2007 – and changed everything.
All of a sudden, interfaces that resembled a shrunken, low-budget version of your computer desktop were out – and sleek, intuitive, touch-based designs were in. The 2010 Windows Phone, then, was an attempt to modernise and broaden the appeal of Microsoft’s hitherto rather niche mobile platforms.
Perhaps it was already too late. By the time Windows Phone was announced, the iPhone was on to its fourth iteration, and Apple were shifting millions of the devices a month – and so, Microsoft already had a mountain to climb.
But it also had an opportunity. At the time, Android was still considered a rather poor substitute for iOS: the platform was plagued by low-quality hardware, inconsistent and unpredictable performance and a relative lack of apps. In other words, there was clearly space in the market for a challenger: an insurgent newcomer to provide some much-needed competition.
But it wasn't to be. After years of sluggish growth, Windows Phone’s market share hit an underwhelming peak of 3.4% in 2013 – and has been steadily shrinking again ever since.
Now, with Microsoft mothballing the hardware operation and all but abandoning the platform, any opportunities it had have been squandered. But why?
The software slump
I’ve always been impressed by the loyalty Windows Phone inspires in its users. Sure, there aren’t too many of them – but everyone I’ve spoken to says the same thing: they love the OS.
Indeed, I’m quite fond of it myself. While I’ve never owned a Windows Phone, whenever I’ve had a chance to play with one I’ve been genuinely impressed by its clear, responsive and well-designed interface. Remember those ‘Live Tiles’ everyone hated in Windows 8? Well, on Windows Phone, they actually work.
The point is, Windows Phone hasn’t failed because it’s a crummy OS. Tragically, it’s a good OS that’s been let down by a critical lack of support.
Nowhere is this more apparent than Windows Phone’s barren app store. Many of the big-name apps Android and iOS users take for granted – like YouTube, Snapchat and Google Maps– are still conspicuous by their absence.
What’s worse, some high-profile apps like PayPal have recently been removed from the Windows Phone store as their developers decide it’s simply not worth supporting an underused platform.
Thus, it’s tempting to point the finger at app developers: if they’d been more willing to take a chance on the new platform from the outset, it might have stood more of a chance.
But some of the blame has to lie with Microsoft, and the fact that Windows Phone turned up on the scene too late. Software development is costly – and with developers already making a decent profit out of iOS and Android devices, the risks of developing for an unproven platform were simply too high.
If Microsoft had had a modern, Android-beating operating system ready in 2008, things may have been different. But today, we’ll never know.
The Hardware Part
Beyond the software issues, there’s also the question of Windows Phone hardware. One of the strengths of Android is that it caters to a range devices –covering the high and low ends of the market and everything between.
But once again, with Android already so well established, there was little incentive for third parties to venture into the expensive and unpredictable world of hardware manufacturing for Windows Phone.
To their credit, companies like Huawei, Samsung and HTC made efforts to develop Windows Phone devices – but with Android providing the vast majority of their income, these were never a priority. Indeed, by the end of last year, Microsoft’s own Lumia devices accounted for more than 97% of all Windows Phone device sold.
Now, the iPhone has taught us that it’s possible to have a wildly popular mobile platform that runs solely on proprietary hardware. But this approach only works at the highest end of the market – just ask BlackBerry, who saw their own market share tumble in the face of more sophisticated competition from Apple.
All of this paints a pretty bleak picture. But is there any kind of future for Windows Phone?
What future?
Even as someone who’s never been a Windows Phone user, I’m actually really sad about the platform’s continued decline. There's just so much wasted potential – and even in its twilight years, Microsoft have continued to innovate in certain areas:
First of all, the AI ‘assistant’ Cortana is widely considered superior to Apple’s Siri or Google’s Now offering – irritating TV ads notwithstanding. Indeed, our own Agent Bishop was singing her praises just last year. Whatever happens with Windows Phone, Cortana will continue to live on in the desktop version of Windows 10 – but let's be honest, this kind of assistant is far more useful on a smartphone that’s always to hand.
Another potentially game-changing – but criminally underused – Windows Phone feature is its support for ‘Universal Windows Applications’. As Agent Watling recently explored, this has the potential to open up the number of apps available to the platform by making life much easier for developers – but at this stage in the platform’s life cycle, it’s too little too late.
Likewise, the ‘Continuum’ feature allows you to use your phone as a mobile PC, with full-size Microsoft Office apps, just by plugging in to a monitor – but it’s a feature with limited usefulness outside of business, and unlikely to sway the undecided.
Finally, Windows Phone has been enjoying one interesting success: Lumia devices are routinely issued to NYPD officers, packed with custom apps to help them fight crime.
Thanks to custom-built apps, cops receive alerts and notifications about 911 calls even before dispatchers send traditional alerts over the radio – leading to an incredible 12.6% drop in response times to crimes in progress so far in 2016.
But the sad truth is, these are tiny islands of success in a vast sea of failure and missed opportunities. In my opinion – and that of pretty much every other tech commentator – Windows Phone is pretty much dead.
Microsoft themselves have strongly hinted that there will be no more Lumia devices– and while rumours suggest they’ll be launching a ‘Surface Phone’ next year to complement their popular hybrid PC range of the same name, this has the distinct feeling of a face-saving exercise with little mainstream appeal.
Like I say, a sad truth. It didn’t have to be this way – but it is. And at this point, if you’re looking for a new device, I’d recommend pretty much anything else.
What do you reckon: are you still holding a torch for Windows Phone? Whether you love or loathe Microsoft’s struggling platform, we’d love to know – leave us a message below and join the conversation.