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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Windows Phone failed because there were no apps for it. There was no YouTube app, no Facebook app, no Twitter app, etc until very late or never at all. They should have just paid developers to make the apps so that people would buy the phones. The OS was great and worked on a wide range of hardware. It could have been a great enterprise solution and they seemed to be heading that direction but the lack of third party made it little more than A Microsoft feature phone.
They literally couldn’t pay the devs. Netflix for instance flat out refused to have blackberry pay for 2 full time devs to maintain an app.
Netflix looked at the market share and determined that there was 0 benefit. The people that were on blackberry devices already had a Netflix account.
Additionally Blackberry store apps were compelling for devs. Dev feedback included ease of development and more importantly they made a lot more money on the blackberry store than on iOS/android, both because the cut was better and they could jack the prices up because the customers were not nearly as frugal.
To get into mobile would require a massive overhaul of windows apps to get them mobile-friendly
Oh look, that’s exactly what they did and now we have PWAs for lots of apps. Maybe MS is getting ready to take a stab at mobile again.
Netflix have a different relationship with Microsoft than they did with Blackberry, MS would have had much more clout.