Microsoft cell phone

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: akugami
I think RIM's Blackberry is very vulnerable to poaching from Windows Mobile. If MS plays its cards right, they can devastate RIM. Let's face it, most of the customers for BB's are in the corporate world. Much of the corporate world runs on MS based software, from servers on down to the Office suite of apps. MS is well entrenched to say the least and it shouldn't be too hard for them to add functionality for accessing other services such as Lotus, Novel, Groupwise, etc. I think if MS doesn't screw up Windows Mobile 7 and integrates it with Server 2008, Sharepoint, Exchange, etc. then there is a huge chance of MS taking RIM's lunch.

Symbian may have a wide user base but that decreases as time goes by. As people replace their older Nokia phones with new smart phones, many of them are turning to phones other than those from Nokia. Unlike today's PC market where computers can be used for 5+ years, phones are replaced within 1-2 years. The smart phone market is in such a state of flux that it really is impossible to say who will ultimately win out. I do think that the next five years, and especially the next two, is crucial in establishing a hold on the market and whichever phone OS falters is gone.

I'm a fanboi for BB, but I don't think you understand that what has happened in the last five years is RIM ate MS's lunch. Nothing short of a miracle is going to reverse that right now.

RIM are only threatened by Apple, and, ironically, their appearance in the market has boosted BlackBerry. Smartphones are centre stage, where before they were for geeks and businessmen.

Also, RIM has just been crowned the worlds fastest growing company by Forbes. That's a whole lot of lunch, right there.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero
I'm a fanboi for BB, but I don't think you understand that what has happened in the last five years is RIM ate MS's lunch. Nothing short of a miracle is going to reverse that right now.

This is what I don't get: Microsoft dominates a market for like five years, and then RIM came in and "dominated" it. Why is RIM (and, by extension, Apple) somehow so special that they're immune to competition? Why is competition something that just Microsoft has to worry about?

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero
I'm a fanboi for BB, but I don't think you understand that what has happened in the last five years is RIM ate MS's lunch. Nothing short of a miracle is going to reverse that right now.

This is what I don't get: Microsoft dominates a market for like five years, and then RIM came in and "dominated" it. Why is RIM (and, by extension, Apple) somehow so special that they're immune to competition? Why is competition something that just Microsoft has to worry about?

To the best of my knowledge, Microsoft has never dominated the smartphone market - Nokia has (and still does) (see: http://fortuneapple20.files.wo...2008/12/picture-43.png ). And even if I accept that Microsoft was a dominate player several years ago (maybe in just the US market?), the smartphone market represented less than 1% of total cell phone sales worldwide in 2002, and total sales in 2002 were 3.5 million units. In 2009, smartphones represent roughly 14% of total cell phone sales worldwide, and over 150 million units were sold. The predications for the future are for continued rapid growth.

But this whole discussion is about the future, not the past, and the trends in favor of RIM and Apple are impressive and the trends for Nokia and Microsoft, not so much. In 2007, Apple sold ~1.5 million iPhones, in 2008, ~11.6 million iPhones, and 2009 sales are almost certainly going to exceed 20 million iPhones. Whether you hate the iPhone or love it, the sales growth is impressive year-on-year.

Similarly, RIM's growth rate has been steady over the last couple of years with sustained year-on-year growth rates. From ~2 million units sold in Q1/07 to 4.5 million in Q1/08 to 7.7 million in Q1/09. Meanwhile, WinMo and Symbian sales have been flat to down during that period.

The market for smartphone is growing rapidly - despite the economy - and you can look at trend graphs for the last couple of years and start to pick winners and losers. The winners from 2007 through 2009 are RIM and Apple and the losers are Microsoft and Nokia. Look at this graph and look and the trend lines.
http://betweenthescreens.com/w...6/Smartphones.0051.jpg

I agree with what you originally said - there is competition and no one is immune to it. But the industry has moved to a period of mature growth and the addition of tens of thousands of application writing software for various platforms will make it increasingly difficult for companies to recover lost market share. If a user spends $100 buying TomTom's iPhone GPS software and then $50 on other apps, and then it's time to upgrade phones, it's less likely that he will jump ship to WinMo or Symbian or Android. Instead he'll be inclined to stick with Apple. So my point is that this is a bad time to be losing marketshare in the smartphone market.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Essentially we are seeing the transformation of the mobile handset into a mobile computing platform. The existing players had offerings that were good, but had stagnated. Both RIM and Apple presented something with true power and a compelling reason to move from dumb/feature phones. Now the market is moving from Smartphones being a niche to the mainstream, and those that have stagnated are finding it hard to claw back credibility among the newly established leaders (RIM/Apple) and the new wave(e.g., Android).

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero
I'm a fanboi for BB, but I don't think you understand that what has happened in the last five years is RIM ate MS's lunch. Nothing short of a miracle is going to reverse that right now.

RIM are only threatened by Apple, and, ironically, their appearance in the market has boosted BlackBerry. Smartphones are centre stage, where before they were for geeks and businessmen.

Also, RIM has just been crowned the worlds fastest growing company by Forbes. That's a whole lot of lunch, right there.

I really don't think MS had a good product for the smart phone market. Even Windows Mobile 6 required major UI reworking in the form of 6.5 and people still are lukewarm towards it at best. RIM on the other hand had a great product for their niche market and that is why it dominates in the corporate world. Again, they never had any serious competition from MS.

At the same time, in the corporate world, only MS has the infrastructure in place to pose a serious challenge to RIM currently. It's no secret that MS will leverage their existing servers and software in the corporate world to help push Windows Mobile.

The smart phone market is growing and I think it likely that as time goes by, most phone sold can be labeled as smart phones while the phones of today with very little features will be relegated to those used by older folks or for parents giving phones to younger children.

There is room for both RIM and MS in the corporate smart phone niche just as there is room for more than one smart phone provider. RIM needs some more work if they want their BB's to be a hot commodity in the general consumer market while Apple has generated a lot of positive buzz. Google and Pre are also garnering attention and walking the school campus (going back to school after 10 years to get my degree) I see a lot of people with a lot of iPhones and believe it or not T-Mobile G1's.

As for Nokia and Symbian, I think Symbian may have a very wide user base but most users don't buy the Nokia phones as smart phones but rather as a Nokia phone. So the market share for Symbian is deceptive. I know in the Asian community a lot of people love Nokia phones. They have never accessed any smart phone features on them.

 

[theeedude]

I think they'll have to. They cannot make money on OS like they do in desktop space because the competition (Android, etc) is giving their software away for free. They only make money on Windows because they have monopoly power, not something they enjoy in mobile space. So, with that in mind, they will have to sell a full hardware/software stack to make money in the mobile market. Otherwise, they will have to create an advertising/service based model to make money, and frankly they don't have a lot of pull in this area to accomplish that. It will be hard enough for Google to make money off Android.

 

[her209]

I'd personally like to see a Zune HD with cell phone capability.

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: her209
I'd personally like to see a Zune HD with cell phone capability.

I think you will see something similar to that appear around the time Windows Mobile 7.0 comes out next year. Although there are rumors that it has slipped from spring 2010 to fall 2010 with devices in 2011...

In the meantime, Windows Mobile 6.5 looks pretty good:
http://gizmodo.com/5350163/fir...place-launch-october-6
http://www.boygeniusreport.com...-screenshots-revealed/

 

[her209]

Originally posted by: pm

Originally posted by: her209
I'd personally like to see a Zune HD with cell phone capability.

I think you will see something similar to that appear around the time Windows Mobile 7.0 comes out next year. Although there are rumors that it has slipped from spring 2010 to fall 2010 with devices in 2011...

In the meantime, Windows Mobile 6.5 looks pretty good:
http://gizmodo.com/5350163/fir...place-launch-october-6
http://www.boygeniusreport.com...-screenshots-revealed/

Nice!

 

[theeedude]

Platform OS is going to become less and less relevant as applications move online. That is going to happen on both desktop and phone side.
Once you can run Flash on any smart phone, it will become the platform of choice for developers, since they only have to write it once and don't have to give Apple a cut of the profits. I think eventually apps are going to migrate from device centric purchase model to cloud centric subscription model, the bandwidth is there to enable this.
As far as OPs question, I think MS will have to come up with their own phone, because applying their desktop OS strategy from the 1990s to phone OS strategy for 2010s is not going to fly.
They will not be able to make money off WM, when google and others are giving their OS away for free. And since they won't make money off the OS, they will need to make money off the overall device.