I’ll be honest I had to look over my past posts of Windows Phone 7 to figure out where I used to stand on Microsoft’s latest grab for the smartphone market. Initially I was sceptical, figuring that this was Microsoft’s extremely slow reaction to their competitors gnawing away at their market share. I acknowledged the fact that Microsoft has the power of numbers working for it with masses of developers poised to take advantage of a mobile platform but recognised the fact that if they were serious about the mobile space they’d be invested in it already. Finally I came to like the platform when Microsoft upped the ante with the default feature set, including features for free that their competitors had long been charging for. However after that initial glowing review I hadn’t heard a lot about the Windows Phone 7 had been a rousing retail success nor its dismal failure so I figured it was just going to fade off into obscurity, much like their Kin did before it.
Today however brought the first bit of news that I’d heard about the platform in a long time. Whilst there wasn’t a massive land rush to acquire Microsoft’s latest offering there was a respectable amount of sales:
Sales are ramping well as our reputation is growing for offering users a unique experience and are in line with our expectations – especially when compared to other new platform introductions. With a new platform you have to look at a couple of things, first of all customer satisfaction. As I mentioned before, we’ve seen great response on the complete mobile phone experience.
Another is phone manufacturer sales – phones being bought and stocked by mobile operators and retailers on their way to customers. We are pleased that phone manufacturers sold over 1.5 million phones in the first six weeks, which helps build customer momentum and retail presence.
We know we have tough competition, and this is a completely new product. We’re in the race – it’s not a sprint but we are certainly gaining momentum and we’re in it for the long run
Some quick maths will tell you that 1.5 million handsets in 6 weeks works out to roughly 36,000 handsets sold per day. Whilst this pales in comparison to Android’s 300,000 activations and is a drop in the bucket when compared to Apple’s 230,000¹ it’s still a decent number considering the giants that they’re going up against. Since they managed to release well before the holiday buying period it will be very interesting to see how their holiday sales figures turn out as that will be telling as to how much momentum this particular platform has.
Still though for any developer looking to develop for the mobile world Windows Phone 7 is probably the last platform on their list. Developing for Apple arguably has the best potential for revenue generation from direct sales with Android providing better results from ad based programs and both of them have audiences much larger than Microsoft’s 1.5 million loyal fans. Whilst the barrier to entry might be lower for a long time Microsoft developer anyone really serious about mobile development will take the time to learn a more popular platform. The time invested in learning a new platform is nothing compared to the number of people you’ll be able to reach by developing on something other than Windows Phone 7.
Yet again I find myself back on the fence, unable to say with conviction how I feel about Windows Phone 7. In reality it looks like a solid product and the relatively decent number of sales in its first month and a half of life is definitely promising. However it’s coming to the party about a year or two late with Apple and Google both providing very mature platforms with a large, established fan base. I’d still love it if the platform became popular as it would reduce the amount of work I’d have to do but the harsh reality is that even if it does happen it’s a long time away and they’ve got a long way to go before they’re matching the numbers that Google and Apple have enjoyed for so long.
¹It’s now estimated at up to 270,000 per day, but I couldn’t find a source that states that directly.
