[AlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by Laurent06

Stating the obvious, heh?

Considering you and others have said it can't succeed, it seemed it wasn't obvious.

If MS can get any sort of cross platform traction, developers should have sufficient incentive.

[Dominik D]

Originally Posted by Laurent06

But this is some vicious circle as far as devs are concerned: unless it sells a significant amount, many smaller companies won't probably take the plunge of GL ES to D3D conversion, and unless there are some appealing apps many customers won't buy the devices.

The value of rendering APIs as a lock-in mechanism is greatly overrated. The part calling 3D API is a small percentage of a renderer which is a small percentage of the game. For existing games there's little to no incentive to move to WP but if you're considering starting from scratch, superior tools can mean a lot to you. For this very reason some people develop x-platform games on top of (supposedly dead) XNA and use MonoTouch and friends to bring games to the iOS/Android platforms. Unless you're thinking about developing next Infinity Blade, you're much better off going for the smoother development than native solution for a given platform. And quality of tools Microsoft provides cannot be overstated. Is this enough? Probably not, there has to be a strong "port from WP to iOS/Android" story form MS itself (and not via 3rd parties like Xamarin) and probably some other things. But it's not like cake has been cut and MS has nothing to eat anymore.

[Laurent06]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

Considering you and others have said it can't succeed, it seemed it wasn't obvious.

If MS can get any sort of cross platform traction, developers should have sufficient incentive.

Feel free to find a quote where I wrote it can't succeed! I just said it will be very difficult because MS is in the situation where it comes late in the game. They came late into the console market and it took them long to succeed, but they did in the end; will that be the same in the smartphone market, time will tell.

Now can you tell me what is so interesting in WP8 for early starters? You have escaped that question twice already

@Dominik: you have very good points, MS tools have a very good reputation. I wonder if people who are using Android SDK and iOS SDK are ready to move to a Windows platform and its SDK; as a developer myself I just can't stand MS dev tools no matter how great they are (I tried for 6 months at my previous job and I finaly came with my Linux CD), I've been spoiled by UNIX for too long, but I wonder how other developers would feel about such a switch.

[Dominik D]

Most of the Android devs I know use Windows anyway so there should be little "cultural" shock. But my POV may be severely skewed of course. Sure, there are people who use vim or emacs even for win32 development and, honestly, I don't use VS that much for core development myself, but that's not because the quality of the tools MS provides. I mean: I use PIX a lot and can't imagine debugging w/o it. I use WinDbg almost exclusively for debugging. And I prototype in either C++ or C# using VS because it's much faster. It is only when I have to edit a large code base that does not have a proper VS project/solution I turn to SourceInsight.

And I'm a strong believer that source control tools from MS are piece of crap. But I'm a true Perforce fanboy so take that with a grain of salt.

[wco81]

Developers are going to go where the market is. Are they going to only develop for Windows Phone because the tools are nicer when the revenues for iOS and Android apps. are several times the WP market?

Did developers not develop for the PS2 because the tools were not easy to use?

[Dominik D]

Let me quote myself from two posts ago.

And quality of tools Microsoft provides cannot be overstated. Is this enough? Probably not, there has to be a strong "port from WP to iOS/Android" story form MS itself (...) and probably some other things.

[ams]

I see no reason why Windows 8/RT as a platform will not be successful in smartphones. Microsoft has many hardware partners for Windows 8/RT tablets, and some of them will surely work on Windows 8/RT smartphones too. And companies such as Samsung, HTC, LG, etc. are not tied down to one [Android] OS platform, so I expect to see Windows 8/RT smartphones from them too in the near future.

[eastmen]

Well , HTC might be looking for a non andriod market as their current strategy doesn't seem to work

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-574...und-struggles/

The struggling smartphone company posted a second-quarter profit of NT$7.4 billion, or US$247 million, nearly a 60 percent decline from its year-earlier profit of NT$17.5 billion, or US$584.3 million

Its third-quarter results aren't expected to be much better, with the company expecting to generate between NT$70 billion ($2.34 billion) and NT$80 billion ($584.3 million) in revenue, a sequential decline from the second quarter.

[wco81]

They're still making a profit. What are their unit sales compared to Nokia's WP7 unit sales?

Or to any other WP maker's unit sales?

[Mize]

HTC is still moving 2x all of windows phone units.

[joker454]

Originally Posted by Laurent06

What about you tell us what WP8 brings at the launch that could convince people? This is a honest question, I am wondering. I switched from Symbian to Linux to Android, so my attachment can be considered as low; so what would WP8 bring to me?

It's a phone that doesn't crash? I film girls regularly for my new business and they use their phones frequently for twitter, social networking, email, videos, pictures, etc, they live off their phones so they are good candidates to ask how usable they are. I've never seen one with a Windows phone, usually they have either Android or iOS phones and sometimes Blackberrys so I ask them what they think of them every time I film them. This is what literally comes up every time from the girls that use android phones:

1) crashes a lot
2) have to reboot it sometimes
3) email stops working sometimes
4) videos sometimes stop playing
5) camera doesn't always work
6) hate it
7) worst phone I've ever owned

....etc, etc, etc. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I've heard those comments from these girls about their Android phones. When they see my Windows phone the Htc Titan it always gets a wtf! reaction from them and they are hugely impressed at how slick it is. Really I think the main problem is still by and large most people don't even know that Windows phones exist, in fact so far only one girl of the hundreds I've filmed had actually heard of it, the rest had no idea what it was. The Android experience from what these girls are telling me is still weak so I really don't think stealing Android customers would be that hard once word of mouth got out on Windows phones. Not everyone wants to root their phone or install other os's on it, they just want their email, twitter, camera, videos, etc to work and work all the time. These people are ripe to be stolen from Android, but the first step is they actually need to be aware that Windows phone actually exists.

[Billy Idol]

Originally Posted by joker454

I film girls regularly for my new business ...

Err, do you need a co-worker

[wco81]

If people haven't heard of Windows Phone, what has MS being doing with the hundreds of millions marketing budget that they supposedly deployed?

[AlphaWolf]

Probably not enough kickbacks to the carriers.

[joker454]

Originally Posted by Billy Idol

Err, do you need a co-worker

Lol I get asked that quite a bit, people mysteriously wanting to volunteer as lighting engineers

Originally Posted by wco81

If people haven't heard of Windows Phone, what has MS being doing with the hundreds of millions marketing budget that they supposedly deployed?

That's a very good question, I really would have thought that more of them would have known about windows phones but to my surprise it's still largely a complete unknown. That should definitely be a concern as these younger folk are the future customers, they are the ones that will talk about their phones with their friends, etc. I think part of the issue as Alphawolf said is not enough kickbacks to the carriers. Back when I tried to buy my Titan phone I literally gave up trying to buy it in a store because the stores would always steer you to android and/or they wouldn't carry windows phone and/or they would play dumb when the topic of windows phones came up and/or they would say to avoid windows phone, etc, so I just bought my phone online. I can't imagine that helps awareness of the phone in spite of advertising campaigns. Just for reference because I hadn't mentioned it, the girls mostly seemed happy with their iOS and Blackberry phones.

[ams]

Originally Posted by eastmen

Well , HTC might be looking for a non andriod market as their current strategy doesn't seem to work

At least HTC is still profitable, so the news is not all negative. The important thing for HTC moving forward (with respect to stock price) is to meet or beat expectations that are set for them by stock market analysts.

In order to keep up with Samsung and Apple, HTC needs to keep building upon what they have with the One X line of phones. Just as Samsung updates Galaxy S/SII/SIII each year, and just as Apple updates iphone 3/4/5 each year, HTC needs to update One X/Two X/Three X on a yearly cadence too, rather than coming out with completely new and dissimilar names and phones each year.

[metafor]

Originally Posted by ams

At least HTC is still profitable, so the news is not all negative. The important thing for HTC moving forward (with respect to stock price) is to meet or beat expectations that are set for them by stock market analysts.

In order to keep up with Samsung and Apple, HTC needs to keep building upon what they have with the One X line of phones. Just as Samsung updates Galaxy S/SII/SIII each year, and just as Apple updates iphone 3/4/5 each year, HTC needs to update One X/Two X/Three X on a yearly cadence too, rather than coming out with completely new and dissimilar names and phones each year.

IMO, the biggest problem with their One line has been launch and availability; at least in the U.S. The One X is only on AT&T and the One S is only on T-mobile...with nothing on Verizon and an Evo on Sprint....

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by wco81

If people haven't heard of Windows Phone, what has MS being doing with the hundreds of millions marketing budget that they supposedly deployed?

Not much except to pay the phone carriers lots of USD. Up until AT&T recently, none of the phone carriers in the US even attempted to push a Windows Phone, with most of them prefering to ignore the existence of WP7 devices.

That looks set to change with WP8. I'd imagine AT&T will continue to push WP devices, while Verizon has made a lot of noise about wanting to push Windows Phone at some point.

MS made the mistake of trying to market to the consumer, when they would have been better off just paying the phone carriers to push phones with WP7.

Regards,
SB

[eastmen]

Originally Posted by Mize

HTC is still moving 2x all of windows phone units.

for now , next quarter i doubt it.

[Laurent06]

@joker454: Hmm that looks bad for Android indeed. I never had a single crash on either my Samsung Note or my Nexus 7. I wonder what model they own and what kind of crappy apps they install that could make it unstable; here in France, many people are complaining that operators add buggy overlays above the OS that make it unstable; I'm lucky my phone is free from that...

Did MS clearly state phone operators or phone makers wouldn't have the right to add anything to the pre-loaded OS? If so, that's a definitive plus.

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by Laurent06

Did MS clearly state phone operators or phone makers wouldn't have the right to add anything to the pre-loaded OS? If so, that's a definitive plus.

Phone operators and makers can add stuff, but anything they add must be able to easily be removed by the consumer. As well it can't change the look of the OS.

My fiance has a Samsung Android phone and it absolutely drives her crazy that she can't remove some of the crap that was added that she never uses. Because they all use bandwidth to update periodically and she hasn't been able to figure out how to make it stop. That's fine for the apps she uses, but is just a waste of money for the ones she doesn't. Most of the time it updates at her home which is fine as it's on wifi then, but it is fairly common for one or more of them to decide to update while away.

Regards,
SB

[eastmen]

The htc arrive has a HTC hub which you can enter and it basicly remakes windows phone into a htc skin. There are also basic apps that htc offers.

Now i dn't think you can delete the hub it will allways be in the programs menu , but you can remove it from your home tile screen and you can remove the other htc programs.

[french toast]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Phone operators and makers can add stuff, but anything they add must be able to easily be removed by the consumer. As well it can't change the look of the OS.

My fiance has a Samsung Android phone and it absolutely drives her crazy that she can't remove some of the crap that was added that she never uses. Because they all use bandwidth to update periodically and she hasn't been able to figure out how to make it stop. That's fine for the apps she uses, but is just a waste of money for the ones she doesn't. Most of the time it updates at her home which is fine as it's on wifi then, but it is fairly common for one or more of them to decide to update while away.

Regards,
SB

Yes that is a major annoyance indeed. That plus the slow updates is what I hate about android...but even android 4.04 the lag had completely gone for me.

[eastmen]

Originally Posted by french toast

Yes that is a major annoyance indeed. That plus the slow updates is what I hate about android...but even android 4.04 the lag had completely gone for me.

the lag on andriod for me is something that starts creeping up on me . The devices start off fine but after months of use are slow and nothing short of a hard reset will speed them up to their original state .

[french toast]

Well I'll have to look out for that one then..