WinPho Doom and Gloom? Not just yet…

Matt thank you for bringing Brianna something she could agree with (I imagine she might be a sweet lady who helps people sometimes, probably smiles a healthy amount). She earned it, whatever it is you gave her (to her I imagine it feels like a refreshing dose of truth and reality, like Glenn Beck to Smith), after having to put up with me and my different crazy opinions.

To take on your insightful point about it being premature like prepubescent ejaculation to declare Windows Phone DOA with your comparison to the Android launch, it’s tough for me to really field that effectively because Microsoft kept and continues to keep their embarrassing sales data secret, whereas Google’s open about it.

But I can tell you this without checking Wikipedia, this far in Android’s growth into the market did not become horizontal as Microsoft’s has been for months. It’s been completely flat since April, and the months leading into April it was essentially flat. Instead, Google took the parabolic route. But maybe you should google images a chart on that just in case I’m full of shit especially when I admit to blind speculation. Lots of talk in our world about the platform, but absolutely no growth in fucking market share, zero. Zero!

“Oh but Simmons, yada yada no devices in a while herp derp” you say as if that’s some excuse? Well why haven’t there been any devices? Because what? Something about the people in charge not talking about it, something about consumers being completely stupid? Yeah? That didn’t stop Android (or Apple, obviously).

Just out of curiosity Matt, since you find this performance acceptable given the platform’s youth, what would make you change your tune? It’s a good question considering that it really couldn’t be any worse than it is, and Microsoft has a lot more resources to throw at this compared to what Google had and not only that, Microsoft’s had opportunity to learn from Microsoft’s and Google’s and RIM’s mistakes while taking lots of notes on what they got right. Yet they still aren’t moving these phones. They had Ryan Seacrest going nuts about it, they got a New York Times app and something else on the same day, looking brighter, nope, forecast still showing a high of fail with a 0% swag index.

Nokia launching even a slew of Windows Phone devices will prove to be nothing but a dead cat bounce at best. Murali thinks the Nokia See Doo launch will bring Nokia back into the lead, you seem to be taking a more moderate position, but on the list of things the world needs, another mobile platform, no matter how fruity the tiles and how many hundreds of features some fruity update gave it with the sockets or how smooth it runs on 800mhz chips, is not present. No interest. Good luck buying that interest with marketing, unless you just give the phones out with free unlimited contracts, which actually is not necessarily a stupid idea if you really want to get this thing off the ground. That and putting it on the best hardware, that would have been helpful, whether it needs it or not.

Silver lining, since Microsoft purports to have full control over whether or not any Android device can be sold, if the patents are legit, they could simply shut Android down. That might help Windows Phone sales a little, I’d hope at least. Or they could collect their $15 a copy straight from Google if they had the balls/grounds to sue them instead of just the guys who can’t defend themselves and make a respectable $10m a day. Maybe they could offer the fruity tile source code and make Android destroy Apple, then that’s what, several billion a year?

You people seem to want Microsoft to do well, why not brainstorm better ways to milk Barnes & Nobel? That would be time better spent on your part if you want to help Microsoft and not just get vanity sales data for your telephone. Who the hell do they think they are, refusing to sign the secret papers? “Pay up!” as I keep reading on WMPU. Start with helping Microsoft muscle B&N into a licensing settlement, then move on to bitch slapping the DoJ for stealing the patents Microsoft acquired for anticompetitive purposes. Obviously Google bought the feds off and gave them free Google TVs.

Not to interrupt but FOXLEGEND, if it’s software reviews praising Windows Phone you’re after, I wrote a better one with an unusually fresh perspective too.

I never ever, ever said that Windows Phone is a lousy platform.

I have admiration for Windows Phone (don’t care for Sharepoint and Excel, but I can see why others would need those) and I have sympathy for the people in the trenches behind Windows Phone. Google hasn’t given me anything other than impressive stuff, but not money — whereas Microsoft has given me both paper wealth gains stemming from the nineties and a steady dose of dividends. I still host a windows mobile resource site. No one bought my loyalty, no one’s blinding me. I just sort of stick out here, you know?

I think Windows Phone has a very bleak future which I’ve said from the beginning. I think Microsoft’s legal behavior is very ugly and it bothers me a lot. It also bothers me that it doesn’t seem to bother any of you that, while you want Windows Phone to plant its flag at the top and seem quite fond of Microsoft, their moneymaker by, what, a dozen-fold, who knows how much astronomically more is Android. While I’m at it, I’ll go a step further and say Microsoft would be worse off if Android had never happened (again, assuming these bullshit patents are totally legit, or almost legit enough to keep shaking down OEMs at the present rate).

And to all you fellas tuning in from tide*.microsoft.com hosts, how about chiming in? I realize almost half of you are using Google Reader but I rigged that up for you so you can read the comments and drop in a comment. I promise not to reveal your IP or email or whatever, just could use another set of eyes on this subject, particularly yours, especially if it could shut me up because this is really costing me a lot of time, going on and on like this, and I’m getting on everyone’s nerves.

rob: Honestly, this time at least, because that Google letter and Microsoft’s distracting and mostly irrelevant response (albeit catchy), and Murali’s one worded response to it as being ridiculous, then a journey to WMPU and several other blogs, seeing people pile up on Google going on about how Microsoft has the right to enforce their patents (even though they are probably totally unfamiliar with the actual patents in play and probably that things like predatory patent misuse, in addition to very dick, is illegal) really fired me up, just like it fired all those people up, but in the opposite direction.

The rant was, as categorized, a rant. I got emotional, starting in David K’s initial thread where I wrote several tl;dr comments in a row and then in my head said fuck this I’m pumping out an article, but having reread it the next day after having gotten some sleep, it struck me as not being over the top enough to regret having written it.

If it’s of any worth, sometimes I’m not that extreme with hatred toward Microsoft.

And yet again, I am absolutely impressed with WP (someone let me use their phone for a week) and I can fully appreciate why these articles irritate you, but I’m not entirely without concern for you and your people. For instance, once that article exceeded fifty comments or so, I curbed my response frequency so as not to bother too many people with email notifications over trivial posts. That’s thoughtful right there.