Tag Archives: Windows Phone

Is Windows Phone a Serious Competitor to iPhone and Android?

Is Windows Phone a Serious Competitor to iPhone and Android?A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to receive a shiny new Nokia Lumia 810 in the mail courtesy of Nokia USA. This was very welcome because I’ve been subjected to what I can only describe as a technology torture inflicted upon me for more than a year by a horribly designed Samsung Galaxy S. So anything would have been a step up, but so far the Nokia Lumia 810 has been a BIG step up.

My Samsung Galaxy S used to decrease my productivity, but the Nokia Lumia 810 now adds to my quality of life.

This isn’t exactly a product review, because that’s not typically something that I do. I will however give you my honest reaction to the Nokia Lumia 810 and how it has fit into the life of this busy innovation and marketing professional so far.

To date, the Nokia Lumia 810 has yet to crash a single time. My old Samsung Galaxy S in contrast crashed at least once every one to two days, and because of what seemed to be a flawed design I was never really able to download and successfully use applications on the device that weren’t loaded at the factory (despite a 16gb SD card being installed).

Thus far on the Nokia Lumia 810 I’ve been able to set up Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, GMail, Twitter, Outlook, Linkedin, CNN, ESPN and other applications. I’ve also been able to load 15GB of music successfully onto the phone and use all of these applications multiple times every day and keep them synced without issues. Bottom line, the Nokia Lumia 810 has been a much smarter smartphone than my Samsung Galaxy S.

The one thing I haven’t found to be as good on the Nokia Lumia 810 as my old Samsung Galaxy S is the voice command functionality. The Nokia Lumia 810 doesn’t seem to recognize my voice as well with my new Motorola Elite Sliver bluetooth headset.

Now obviously today’s Samsung Galaxy S3 is probably a better device than the Samsung Galaxy S, and the iPhone 5 is for sure a solid device. But so far I find the Windows 8 OS on the Nokia Lumia 810 to provide a much more attractive user interface than iOS or Android thus far and to provide roughly a level of parity in overall functionality with these other competitors and a serious competitor to the market leaders.

Is parity and a better UI enough to help Nokia and Microsoft get back into the game?

Only time will tell, but it is my opinion that Nokia and Microsoft will need some kind of a killer app to truly gain traction towards regaining market share. Unfortunately, as I’ve written before, I think that Apple will introduce the next killer function to the smartphone – truly useful and viable mCommerce. But, only time will tell to see if this theory plays out or not.

What do you think?


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Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?

Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?Nobody, including people inside Microsoft, would argue with the fact that Microsoft beat Google and Apple to the Mobile OS marketplace, but lags them both in terms of market share.

According to Wikipedia, the IBM Simon was the world’s first smartphone and was released to the world nearly twenty years ago. This means that the smartphone market is yet another example of a market where mass adoption has lagged behind initial product introduction by 20-30 years. For the inventor audience this is important to note, because it shows that #1 – innovation takes time – and #2 – that being first is no guarantee of being number one in the market when mass adoption arrives.

Well, mass adoption in the smartphone market is now upon us.

The only question is – which operating system maker will dominate the golden years of the smartphone market?

Will it be Apple or Google?

Or do Microsoft and RIM have a change to counterattack and make themselves relevant again?

Invention does not guarantee innovation. Innovation requires that you create value above every existing alternative and that you achieve wide adoption. The reason we often see changes in the leadership of the marketplace of an emerging innovation is that often the market creator does a worse job than new entrants of adapting their solution offering for the evolving desires of the customers. New entrants generally see an opportunity to solve problems that the incumbents don’t, and an create new value that the incumbent solutions don’t deliver.

But can an incumbent react to newer entrants and rebuild momentum in the marketplace?

Motorola’s revitalization in mobile handsets shows that a competitive response focused on leadership instead of reaction can in fact get you back in the game.

So can Microsoft do the same thing and steal share from Apple and Google in the smartphone OS market?

The answer lies in whether Microsoft can do a better job than Apple or Google (or even RIM) of understanding why people hate their current smartphones, while also anticipating:

  1. What the needs of customers will be in 6-12 months
  2. What customers will want in 6-12 months
  3. What emerging technologies will make possible in 6-12 months

Timing is one of the key components to successful innovation. You can invent things at any time, but you can only turn an invention into an innovation when customers and other parts of the value chain can see the value and are ready to accept it. Whether customers and the value chain can see the value is of course dependent on how well you translate for them how a potential innovation will fit into their lives.

Can Microsoft and Nokia come up with the answers that the marketplace will accept in 6-12 months? Are their existing phones the right answer for customers now?

I don’t know. But I can tell you that I hate, absolutely hate, the Google Android operating system on my Samsung Galaxy S. The Samsung device itself seems relatively well-designed but the Google Android OS is always crashing, doesn’t make smart use of the SD Card (the internal memory is always filling up), and leaves me constantly frustrated.

I bought two Samsung Galaxy S phones on T-Mobile over two iPhones on Verizon or AT&T for my wife and I, because they will cost me $1,000 less over the two-year commitment.

I can tell you with certainty that my next smartphone when I’m eligible for an upgrade will NOT be a Google Android phone. At the same time I know people who hate their iPhones and their Blackberries as well, so this represents an opportunity for Microsoft to convert disgruntled iOS, Android and Blackberry customers. Plus, there are a still a lot of people without a smartphone that will buy one in the next 6-12 months.

These two market dynamics represent a huge opportunity for Microsoft to get back in the smartphone OS market. The only question is:

Will they take advantage of this opportunity?


Article first published as ‘An Opening for Microsoft and Nokia?’ on Technorati.

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