{"id":56,"date":"2015-05-28T15:17:45","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T20:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=56"},"modified":"2016-09-21T22:21:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T22:21:59","slug":"the-waiting-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=56","title":{"rendered":"The Waiting Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last two years, Microsoft has been focused on the middle and low end of the market, ignoring the flagship market and attempting to make a play for volume and the developing markets. And at the end of the period, the result is… a 3.5% market share<\/a>. This has barely moved over the last several years, despite the focus on low end volume.<\/p>\n

Now, there’s likely several reasons for this, but one of them is the insanity of the\u00a0Microsoft\/Nokia lineup right now. Here’s\u00a0the Lumia lineup as it currently exists (ignoring any phones that\u00a0came out with Nokia branding):<\/p>\n

430
\n435
\n532
\n535
\n540
\n640
\n640 XL<\/p>\n

It’s easy to\u00a0tell that the 640 XL is the direct successor to the 1320,\u00a0right? And this doesn’t include the Nokia phones still being sold, like the 530, 630, 635, 730, 735, and on and on. Because of the large number of overlapping low end phones, it’s impossible to decipher the best option is these days.<\/p>\n

And when\u00a0overall specifications are taken into account, phones like the $199 ASUS ZenPhone 2 outdo everything\u00a0Windows Phone currently ships in the same price bracket. In the US, that’s currently the 640 XL, although a little deal hunting can bring down better phones into the same price bracket. Regardless of which one it is, though, the only existing Windows Phones that can\u00a0equal the ZenPhone 2’s hardware are the nearly two year old 930 and 1520, former flagships that are now on deep discount.<\/p>\n

Unfortuantely, this is all part of a larger pattern.\u00a0There has been no new flagship Windows Phone for\u00a0two years, nor a new camera phone to replace the 1020 (Nokia’s\u00a0former biggest area of leadership in the mobile space). Combine this with an uninspiring midrange of 730 and 830 models that is consistently out-specced and under-priced by their Android rivals, and it is impossible to arrive at a conclusion except that Microsoft\u00a0is consistently late to launch models, confusing\u00a0consumers with their vast array of mostly similar phones, and completely missing\u00a0the highest margin of the phone market.<\/p>\n

Bluntly, unless they can create a\u00a0miracle with Windows 10 Mobile and its bevy of new features,\u00a0their place in the smartphone market will become the joke that many pundits already treat it as.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last two years, Microsoft has been focused on the middle and low end of the market, ignoring the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[22,3],"tags":[14,13,5,12,15],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Featured.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lA9R-U","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":50,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=50","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":0},"title":"MWC – Wednesday Update","date":"February 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As I had predicted with the previous Mobile World Congress post, there really hasn't been a great deal of buzz produced by MWC this year. Yes, Samsung announced the Galaxy S5, but it's a technical iteration of the S4, rather than anything groundbreaking. In some ways, this is a sign\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/MWC.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":158,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=158","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":1},"title":"The world without an iPhone\u00a0","date":"January 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The linked article (see below) postulates that the world without an iPhone would be a more interesting one. My views mostly concur. Today, the two largest phone manufacturers and the ones who dictate the market (or have, anyway) are Apple and Samsung, and they\u2019ve *never* put high end hardware in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/porsche-design-p9981-blackberry-smartphone-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":47,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=47","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":2},"title":"Too Big for it’s Own Good","date":"February 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As many of you know, Mobile World Congress, one of the largest and most prestigious tech conventions in the world, is happening next week. It is a spectacle of all the latest and greatest in smartphone development... or at least that's what it's supposed to be. You see, MWC has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/MWC.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":194,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=194","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":3},"title":"HTC leaves the Entry-Level Phone Market","date":"February 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The once market leading HTC has been forced to pull out of the less profitable end of the cellphone business after years of failed high end models. Given the continual push of the Chinese manufacturers both upmarket and into wider areas of business than HTC themselves, it's likely that HTC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In Depth"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/img_1471.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":111,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=111","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":4},"title":"Goodbye, Blackberry","date":"October 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Blackberry has announced it will no longer design and sell phones. It will license its name to others (with approval, of course), and instead focused on enterprise security and software, as it has been doing more and more so ever since its phone business collapsed under it. While Blackberry was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/porsche-design-p9981-blackberry-smartphone-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":108,"url":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/?p=108","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":5},"title":"Goodbye, Motorola","date":"September 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Lenovo has finished killing Motorola and reducing it to nothing more than a marketing term. By laying off the vast majority of the remaining Moto workforce, a once proud company that sported 20,000 employees in 2012 has been reduced to about 300-500 four years and two owners (Google and Lenovo)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mobile"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gdgtfix.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/untitled-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gdgtfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}