Why Windows Phone Was a $7 Billion Failure

I had a windows phone when I was a kid and that shit sucked lol, everyone in my school used Snapchat and my windows phone couldn’t download it so I hated life lol

it would be cool to see another windows phone in 2023 with better app support.

As much as I loved Windows phone it seemed to be the exact opposite or antithesis of what modern communications should be, connecting people. No Google configuration, WhatsApp dying prematurely, come on, even Apple realised their own interests would be helped by resolving conflict issues. I'm sure their desktop system is better but I jumped ship from Microsoft and can cope with the weaknesses of Chromebook and Android any day......imo😊

it's funny every time some other companies go against apple they end up dead 😂. I'm not talking about competition company's like samsung and others. like this windows phones . they mock apple try to make better then apple and end up dead line

Developers developers developers, that's what I was thinking when I first saw windows phone. It has a lot of potential but it fails

Miss Windows Phone / Mobile so much. my journey has started with a Windows Mobile 2003 device back in the day and has ended with the Lumia 950XL. Developing for it was also a pleasure for me. WP7 Easy Backup and USB Storage Enabler :D

I had a windows Phone on the HTC One M8 platform and absolutely loved it. To me going to Android was a downgrade.

if windows phone focused on the word,excel packages it would've become a very good work phone

Man I miss my HTC phone so much, and although they still have nice phones that come out. Samsung has my heart been an Andriod girl since High School

My first real smartphone was a windows phone. I loved it to death and looking back at it I wished that it was more successful.

I miss Windows Phone. It was beautiful. I use a bunch of Android apps to customize my Android to look & work as much like a Windows phone as possible. I even went out of my way to use the original icons, even if it was for analogous apps. Microsoft really screwed up w everything but the design. I love the tiles, you can have a lot more apps organized @ your fingertips on the home screen, than just doing a similar thing to the fully spaced out icons from desktop OSes. I'd never use iPhone because you can't customize anything, you certainly can't make it look & work like Windows Phone, & it's all tied to the "ecosystem" which means damn you better have iTunes & an internet connection for the fun of downloading the whole iOS, in case someone ever asks their "tech guy" (me) to hard reset their iPhone or iTab if they forget their pins / passwords for the devices. I won't help people w i-stuff anymore either.

the problem was it was so limited in terms of apps you were always behind your peers and the UI looks nice but (IMO) feels extremely limited on how you navigate it. Apple had their UI right which is why every phone follows the same basic points.

Windows brand was/is unappealing to many users PERIOD! Apple was about innovation Windows was associated with Bill GATES - STILL A JERK! Windows likes to tie you up as they do today with 360 - into taking your money for the greedy needy Gates! That's how I see it.

OMG it's worse than I thought. Granted Windows 8 was made for touch but it's the worst version there is.

I don't know how apple did it, but basically from 2009 onward the kids my age only wanted iphones. Until I learned how much not being able to manage files easily sucked and I got an android in like 2013, but still most of my peers wanted an iphone. I guess that is about when phones started getting really expensive too.

To summarize: It's Steve Ballmer's fault

I Miss my Nokia Lumia

if windows phone reborn, with the complete costumization like iOS and of course Adnro, i will purchase it soon

Windows phone failed because Microsoft was trying to be Apple. A corporate culture of maximizing profits over consumer needs shrouded Microsoft's vision into windows phone. Microsoft had long lost its goodwill among consumers several years before windows phone and iphone. When developers were asked to create apps for microsoft, many developers gave microsoft the middle finger instead. CEO Steve's thinking was backward, his cold-war era reasoning and decision making was awkwardly dated and incompatible with the changing world before him. Had he remained Microsoft CEO any longer, Microsoft as a company would've collapsed in 2018 and shut doors by 2021.

I'm surprised Microsoft couldn't dominate the enterprise sector the way Blackberry did for a time.

I had a Windows phone. It was like a combination of all the worst traits of both iPhone and Android, all in one useless package. It was as locked down as an iphone, and had even fewer apps than Android (Android had fewer apps than iphone at the time). And the dumbest thing: it was barely compatible with Windows!

Steve balmer is literally an insane person

Thank you htc when you made that HD2 and that t-mobile edition and we were able to enjoy windows in all editions and android at the same time. I miss htc

We were past college when a friend of mine bought a Windows Phone. We played around with it and found it to be so clunky and impossible to use that we started making fun of our friend for buying a Windows phone.
He himself wasn't too happy with it and ditched it for an Android as soon as possible.

TBH, personally, i find the tiles that you praise to be the root of the problem. Look at the devices people were used to before smartphones became the norm - desktops and laptops. These devices had icons. So, it's no wonder that smartphones with OS's that use icons would succeed! Most people mostly want tech to advance at a rate at which they can keep pace with it. Introducing completely new features makes devices unusable, essentially. People want progress, but always with that little bit of familiarity.

The Windows phone failed majorly in that regard.

As regards the tiles, Windows' worst adopted OS, in recent years, has been Windows 8 - an OS that went heavy on the tiles.
They scaled back with Windows 10, gave people that familiarity and got back the adoption rates they sought.

You have to do that! As a company, you have to CATER to people. Keep in mind what they like and work extra hard to keep those features while innovating.

We have to get some things straight:-
Nokia didn't fail, it was sabotaged by someone from USA, I'll let you guess. This someone, ended all the successful projects by calling them "burning platforms" and then he switched it all to Windows Mobile.
I'll give you a hint: Nokia was the only data center outside the USA.

when i was a kid my dad had a windows phone
no clue what phone it was
but i remember one time he accidentally ran it over with his motorcycle and i swear the phone still worked great after my mom replaced the screen for him😭it’s fuckin black magic

I used the WIndows phone almost till it was EOL! At that time I also at ios and android devices and Windows OS was the best! But as rightfully mentioned in the video and numerous comments, the app gap led to it's failure and the MS was late to the party despite having an early start (Windows CE HP Jornado and iPAQ).

I loved my Nokia Lumia and was heart-broken when microsoft gave up trying to port android apps onto the windows phone ecosystem

Google should buy microsoft. Then use windows phone tech with the power hungry android. Everytime i see the battery life losing to iphone is so painful to see.

maybe it's not the consumer who didn't see the value in it.. maybe Microsoft only concerned on the their own mobile system and didn't see the value of the future in app and subscription based services ?

I remember smashing my iPhone while away on work and picking up a cheap new Nokia as a temporary phone and being absolutely blown away with it. It was so much smoother than the iPhone 4 I had, even the camera in this basic bitch Nokia was better. I ended up keeping the thing for years as a standby and used any excuse to use it. It was my Zune player for so many years… until MS killed that (never bought anything, just good software to manage music library)

"Was better designed that iOS"

what lmao. What a subjective and nonsensical thing to say.

How do you press “control alt delete” on the windows phone?

i really miss this phone

I miss Nokia Lumia 😢
Android, iOS and Windows it could be today😢 I still have my Nokia Lumia 1020 with me. I think 5 years getting strong. For alarm.

i remember having one of these as i kid, it was from my dad and i remember loving and hating it at the same time

everyone was playing minecraft and Pou and what not on their phones and i couldn't, but guess what, i could use mobile emulators, and it made me really happy that i could play all the retro games i grown up with on my pc, this actually allowed me to find new games that i still love and play today

Used to like it. But it was like a betrayal from Microsoft. I trusted them. But no more.

The biggest tragedy here is that criminal, murderer, satanist bill gates didn’t fail completely too. Anyone who supports ANYTHING bill gates should be completely utterly ashamed of themselves as were those who helped hitler.

I knew a girl in my Magic The Gathering club back in 7th grade who had a Windows phone. I remember thinking it was hella weird but I had like no self concept of a smartphone back then. Sometimes I wonder how she is now, I haven't talked to her since she moved back to Texas in 2016.

I still miss windows phone, its UI/UX was ahead of its time, and here we are stuck with Android/iOS boring icons layout. But windows phone had so many issues, it was never polished, never bugs free.

I had a HTC HD7, I loved EVERYTHING it and Windows phone software accept the one major thing, NO APPS! I left for Android and never looked back. Shame.

I still use windows phone

I am retired and have always loved Apple. However I love trying new things. I was not aware of the Microsoft phone. My bad. I would have had one to compare with my Iphone at the time.
To me this was a typical Microsoft half measure. Apparently they had a great phone and as is their way they did not support it.

I kinda hope, like everyone, that an Android version of metro ui comes back one day. It’s genuinely still better than any android or iOS phone I’ve used

Windows Phone was actually good. The problem is MS didn't push it hard enough for other manufacturers to pick it up. Another major problem was Windows phone was originally based on Windows CE, an OS with a different kernel than regular Windows. MS then decided to streamline all is OSes to use a common Kernel (Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8, etc). Which is what should have happen from the start.... Anyways WP8 broke backwards compatibility with WP7 and threw all the developers invested in platform under the bus..... The lack of apps for WP8 is what ultimately killed it

I miss keyboards on phones....

I did switch briefly to a Nokia Lumia, not as to replace my daily iPhone but as an extra so I could learn what it’s ecosystem was and in case it would have been able to seize some market share. Because I was responsible for making and maintaining the websites that made us the majority of money I wanted to have our sites work on the Lumia. Luckily I never really needed to include this device into devices our company Needed a special website version for because it was a disaster from the get-go to build onto its ecosystem.