UK phone store MobilesPlease reported today that Windows Phone 7 sales may be even more lackluster than originally reported. Data collected from phones purchased on its website, as well as from other networks that use its service, shows that only 3% of smartphones sold were Windows Phone devices. This is a far cry from the nearly 45% of sales that Android accounts for on the site, and even less than the moribund Symbian platform.
Even though the public is being bombarded by Windows Phone hype, they continue to demand Apple phones and, according to MobilesPlease, HTC Android phones. There is even great demand for the Blackberry, a company that many technology experts suggest is dying. What does this mean for Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft’s mobile strategy in general?
Given the huge amounts of money Microsoft is pouring into the platform (nearly a billion dollars between Windows Phone and Kinect), I find it hard to believe that they will be abandoning the platform any time soon. They have also invested heavily in developers, in some cases paying them to build third-party apps for WP7. It won’t go away anytime soon in the next few years, but there’s also no reason to assume demand won’t pick up before Microsoft declares the platform dead.
The main obstacles for Microsoft at the moment seem to be dull hardware and a lack of important features. Overall, the Windows Phone 7 lineup is boring. All telephones (except perhaps the 7 Mozart) are black plastic blocks. Some of them have standout features like a keyboard or larger screen, but there’s nothing to set them apart from similar Android phones. There’s very little to separate phones like the EVO 4G and the HD7; both have the same screen size, the same overall design, and the same build quality.
Windows Phone 7 also lacks features that its competitors have had for years. One of the big disappointments in the original Windows Phone announcement was the lack of copy and paste. iOS had had this feature for almost a year before the announcement, and Android has always had it integrated with the rest of the operating system. It was a bit daunting and even confusing, given that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile was one of the first copy-and-paste smartphone platforms. Arpan Shah, director of The Microsoft Project, wrote on his blog in early November that the company would release an update with the feature “in a matter of weeks.”
Unfortunately, the platform also lacks multitasking. Many tech experts, both online and offline, have criticized WP7 for not including a feature that is critical to Android. These two features may be major roadblocks for Microsoft right now as they learn about their shortcomings.
However, take reports like these with a grain of salt. These numbers come from a less conventional source in one country. They may not reflect the performance of Windows Phone 7 in general around the world. Also, carriers and manufacturers have made some mistakes along the way; there are many people who find that there is little or no advertising or support for the platform in the operator stores, and the huge supply restrictions have also hampered the platform.
While all reports indicate that Windows Phone 7 is off to a rocky start, that could easily change in the coming months as Microsoft patches some of the biggest holes in the platform and manufacturers and carriers up their game. Personally, I’d like to see a flood of WP7 devices hit the market; it’s such a different experience from Android and iOS. It’s very fresh and clean, and definitely represents the future of mobile devices as a whole.
