shortformblog:
Some design agency spent a lot of time coming up with a rough concept of what iOS 7 probably isn’t going to look like. But let’s just say it looks kind of cool.
Some good stuff, some awful stuff. Overall, a “B”. Expect about 1,000 more of these as we inch closer to WWDC.
Update: John Gruber has some good thoughts on the video:
The shape of app icons is not going to change from round-cornered squares to sharp-cornered ones (or any other shape for that matter). Apple owns this shape; this shape says “iOS app” in everyone’s mind. It’s even printed right on the hardware home button of every iOS device. In fact it’s the only thing printed on the front face of every iOS device.
It’s not clear why so many people seem to think “flat” equates to “square”. Because Windows Phone tiles are square? If that’s the case, chalk something up to Windows Phone — while they may not be doing well in market share, they seem to have a pretty good presence in mind share, at least from a “flat” design perspective.
John Paczkowski writing for AllThingsD in September of last year:
“One year from now, between Windows phones, Windows tablets and Windows PCs, we’ll see close to … 400 million new devices running those new operating systems,” Ballmer said during the unveiling of Nokia’s new Lumia smartphones this morning. “Those devices running Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 represent the single largest opportunity for software developers today. Four hundred million per year? That is unrivaled. I’ll bet you right now, the next app developer to hit it really big will do so on Windows.”
As Horace Dediu quipped on Twitter yesterday, “Only 320 million to go.”
Jo Best of ZDNet looks at Nokia’s Windows Phone and remaining Symbian devices versus the low-end Series 40 and Series 30 devices:
After all, unlike the smartphone segment, there are still battles to be fought and won for Nokia in the mid and low-end. Nokia’s Windows Phone and Symbian ranges may have an average selling price of €186, bringing in €1.2bn in sales, it’s still small fry compared to S40 and its lower-end cousin S30. Devices on the platforms manage an average selling price of a mere €31, but when Nokia is shifting around 80 million of them in the last quarter, that’s €2.5bn of sales – double what those fancy Windows Phones bring in.
How poorly is Windows Phone doing for Nokia? So poorly that not only are S40 and S30 phones outselling their (true) smartphone brethren, they’re bringing in double the money.
Best’s parallels between Nokia with Symbian competing in the high-end of the mobile market versus Nokia with S40 and S30 in the low-end of the market is interesting as well. Android. Is. Coming.
Here we go again.
Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s head of communications, took to the company blog today to “congratulate” Facebook on the launch of Facebook Home. Except that he’s not really congratulating Facebook, he’s passive-aggressively signaling the old “WE DID THIS FIRST!!!” whiny bullshit that Microsoft loves to pull from time to time.
Microsoft, by way of Shaw, seems annoyed that Facebook is getting all this buzz for something they believe they did in 2011 with Windows Phone. They’re pissed off that such a fact which seems so obvious to them wasn’t brought up enough yesterday, so they’re bringing it up themselves.
Not mentioned is that it wasn’t brought up because Windows Phone, while a good product in many regards, is a complete after-thought in the smartphone market. You can yell “FIRST!!!” as loudly as you want to try to change that, but that never works.
Said another way: If you guys were the inventors of Facebook Home, you’d have invented Facebook Home.
What’s deliciously awkward here is that Microsoft is actually an investor in Facebook, and a close partner. It must be especially maddening that Facebook would choose to utilize (or “spoon”) a product by their chief rival — hence Shaw’s comments about Android in his post.
I’ll just repeat what I said a year ago on a similar matter:
If you have to tell people you won, you lost.
Gogo:
Apple devices are still reigning above the clouds, following the tablet trend with the iPad being the device of choice. Among all mobile devices being used to connect through Gogo, 84 percent carry Apple’s iOS operating system while 16 percent carry the Android operating system. If you look only at the smartphones our customers are using, the iPhone makes up 73 percent and all Android devices make up 26 percent, with Blackberry and Windows based devices each making up less than 1 percent of devices being used in air.
Android is winning.
But really, the BlackBerry and Windows Phone numbers are just pathetic.
[via Daring Fireball]
Ladies and gentleman, I present to you 3,000 words in which Danny Sullivan talks himself into something, then talks himself out of it, then back into it.
Seriously, why does Google Maps not work on your Windows Phone? I don’t know, why doesn’t it work on your graphing calculator or your espresso machine?
It’s simple really. Google made sure Maps worked on Windows Mobile because it had market share. Google doesn’t give a shit about Maps working on Windows Phone because it doesn’t. Any questions? Consult Sullivan’s post and then come back here again.
Paul Thurrott:
Today, almost exactly one month after the Windows Phone 8 release and over 5 months after it was announced, Microsoft has never really publicly discussed Windows Phone 7.8 again nor has it hinted at when it might be released.
The fact that no Windows Phone 7 devices could be upgraded to Windows Phone 8 was the equivalent of throwing a flaming bag of shit on the doorstep of those users. The fact that they still can’t update — as promised — to at least some of those features is the equivalent of making those users eat said shit.
Unleash the “Android peace” stories but remember that HTC was and is in a very vulnerable position right now. Profit is falling like a rock as a result of selling Android devices so they appear to be shifting more towards Windows Phone (and remember that Microsoft and Apple already have an agreement in place).
Also not explicitly stated in the release, but clear: HTC is paying Apple as a part of this agreement. It may not have an “adverse material impact” on their financials, but maybe that’s only because they’re simply not selling very many Android devices…
Speaking of Windows Phone 8, former Windows Phone general manager Charlie Kindel had an interesting piece in GeekWire this week.
Bringing up the importance of co-marketing (that is, insuring the carriers push certain products in stores), Kindel writes:
But I do know the way you can tell if it is working or not is to go to the carriers’ stores once WP8 phones are actually available and ask the RSPs what phone you should buy. Heck, even handicap them by saying “I hear Windows Phone is great. Help me pick one out.”
If they steer you to a WP8 device then the air is clear. The canary is happily chirping. Coal mining can continue. Sales will skyrocket.
If they steer you to an iPhone or Android device then I’m sorry, but that’s the equivalent of the canary lying feet up in the bottom of the cage.
This may be different if Microsoft had a significant presence with their own retail stores, like Apple. But they don’t. Not yet, anyway. So they really do have to rely on the carriers to push their products. That didn’t happen with Windows Phone 7…
