You are in charge of windows surface/mobile. How do you do?

[desura]

If you were in charge of the windows 8 tablets and smartphones, what moves would you make to compete vs android and iOS?

I'm using a surface RT and I'm pretty impressed with it. MS has some very good basic technologies IMO, and metro is a pretty bold rethinking of computers.

The most obvious change that I can think of is to have some sort of incentive for developers to port their apps over to windows 8 metro. Maybe something like the first 50k in revenue 100% goes to the developer, after which MS gets the standard 30% cut.

 

[saratoga172]

Honestly I'm not too sure other than lower price entry point compared to iOS. If the 32gb Surface RT intro'd for $399 I think it would have taken off much better. It's a great tablet for that price. They also needed to make it full fledged with Outlook support.

Other thing for me would be a higher res screen for gen 2. It doesn't need to be 1080p but maybe 1600x900. Something to make it a bit more crisp. They could also add in an SD card slot (not sure there is one currently).

Also revisit the interface. Not 100% how or what tweaks to make but make the desktop and Metro interface a bit more seamless. Add in a start button for the desktop version. Or maybe even go full on Metro only for RT. It'd be completely mobile but with with power app functionality. You'd still have Office available in it's full or nearly full fledged version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook. The Metro only UI would help drastically reduce HD space needed to give more storage room.

Then also they would need to focus on consumable apps similar to what the iPad has. Find out what makes that successful and work on porting some of that over.

All my opinions but I don't have any plans of getting an RT version. If they intro'd at $399 for 32gb I may consider one. It'd essentially be my laptop replacement...maybe toy and used around the apartment and on the go for quick access. They also need to make a hard keyboard attachment that makes it a bit more like a laptop. Hard shell or base to hold the screen up. This also goes for the Pro version.

 

[Crono]

Buy Blackberry, have their software team and Nokia's work on messenger, social, navigation, and music apps.

Sponsor more free developer workshops and update the Marketplace to have a third of the main page on all versions of Windows be just featured apps. Have a team just dedicated to finding the best active developers making the greatest apps (no matter how obscure, which is why you need a dedicated team) and pay them awards when featuring them - it's a double incentive to succeed.

Take BES/BIS and integrate it as a service into Windows Phone 8 in a thinner, titanium or carbon fiber-body Lumia 1020 with a Blackberry-style keyboard that can slide out vertically or horizontally, bundle it with all of the 365 services for 2 year contracts, call it the Windows Black Phone, and then put $500 million into marketing it and putting it for free into the hands of certain celebrities and CEOs (or even paying them to use it).

I would make color anodized aluminum Xbox phone, pay HTC to manufacture it, develop a bunch of gaming related accessories for it, and have Microsoft Studios skin the Windows Phone interface and put more Xbox Live features in, and give away a year of Xbox Live Gold and a year of Xbox Music subscription with it. Pay a few high profile gaming companies like Bethesda and Valve to develop exclusive mobile games. Find some way to get Valve on board to do Steam for mobile. Pay another $500 million in marketing and sponsor gaming events.

Ramp up production of the low-cost Lumias and bring cost down by economies of scale, even if they have to contract 5 different international manufacturers to do it (approach Huawei, ZTE, LG, Lenovo, etc) and pay billions. If Microsoft can dominate the developing markets initially, they can own it for a few years. Kill the Asha line. It's just going to make the company compete against itself when a market is ready to "graduate" from Symbian feature phones to full smartphones.

Buy B&N for their college bookstores, partner with publishers for best deals on ebook versions of textbooks, and bundle those e-textbooks with Surface RTs (hardware at zero profit, but a little profit on the ebooks) and sell them in those campus bookstores. Make Surface Pros available at steep discount to enrolled and verified students and normal price to everyone else. Give discounts on all services and other devices in the Microsoft ecosystem. Invest heavily in 8" Surfaces (purely RT without desktop - no Windows branding). The problem with RT isn't that it isn't Windows, it's that it confuses people who think it is. No one confuses iOS and OS X because the iOS name isn't very visible in iPads and iPhones, and there isn't a desktop interface.

 

[Crono]

Add in a start button for the desktop version.

It's there in 8.1. 8.1 is fantastic, really solves 90% of the problems of those who didn't like 8.

 

[Imaginer]

It's there in 8.1. 8.1 is fantastic, really solves 90% of the problems of those who didn't like 8.

And it is there in nearly any new tablets and laptops out there with 8 natively there. It is under the screen.