On October 6th, Microsoft announced their new Lumia phones. Lumias are similar to Google's Nexus project. With the Nexuses, Google install the stock, clean software, and showcases to other companies (OEMs) what the Android OS is capable of. Microsoft's version of this has been their Surface devices and Lumias, showcasing how Windows Phone 10 can work across devices. Microsoft has been losing the smartphone wars, with long-time contendors of Android and iOS crushing marketshare numbers like an Excel sheet against Windows Phone. However, with the release of Windows 10 this fall, Microsoft was set on a mission to unify devices, so that the phone would work with the tablet, the tablet would work with the desktop, the desktop would work with the All-In-One(AIO), the AIO would work with the laptop, and....... you may understand my emphasis on the unification Microsoft was trying to create at this point. Everything would work seemlessly together, and the Microsoft Lumias were supposed to be the hero of all of this. Its been the missing food of Microsoft's feast, so everyone was excited to find out what had been brewing in the pot for the last few years, and lo and behold, the new phones were amazing.
They have the latest processors availble from the likes of Qualcomm, pushing blistering speeds with 3GB of RAM for efficient multitasking, some of the best cameras (definitely the best Windows phones have ever seen), backed with their 20MP sensors, and they have very respectable screen sizes at 5.2" and 5.7", what I consider to be the sweetspots. They ran the latest Windows 10, allowing intercompatibilty between apps on tablets, desktops, and phones, and the UI had once again been revamped from its Windows Phone 8.1 days. It even lost the "running Windows Phone version X.X name", settling for "running Windows 10", a slogan that implies the phone can be just as powerful and as much of a utility as a full-blown Windows 10 desktop or laptop.
All of these "fancy" tech-specs and Windows 10 mean nothing though. Microsoft put the last of their energy into these two new phones, the 950 and 950XL, and reviewers in the Windows 10 Devices conference were blogging about these devices live at the event, with much enthusiasm for the potential they had. But then it all went downhill at the end. Microsoft announced they would sell these phones only one way: through AT&T EXCLUSIVELY. Now, 32% of the US currently are on AT&T's plans, but that eliminates 68% of the market in the US immediately off the bat. That leaves it down to 103 million consumers to make this product a success in the states. It sounds like a large number, but unfortunately, AT&T has a 15:1 iPhone:Android ratio. From my experience, iPhone users are the least likely to switch to another platform, leaving mostly the bottom 5% of people the most likely to switch platforms. Exclusive phones, such as the iPhone, made sense back in 2007, as AT&T paid Apple money, and AT&T made money from users switching to them as a carrier, but in 2015, with so much competition, it was a pointless move on Microsoft's side, and it has doomed this phone for almost all of the states. Sure, AT&T will give this phone good advertisement occasionally, as it did with its "41MP Nokia Lumia 1020", however, this phone will otherwise never see the day of light, and it is a shame, as it may just be Microsoft's last chance at taking a grasping hold on a little marketshare while Windows 10 is still fresh.
-681 words
No comments:
Post a Comment