The problem with that philosophy is Microsoft already tried that path for years. Windows Phone 7, 7.5, 8, and 8.1 were all about "not everyone needs lots of apps" and "let's be awesome in ways uniquely different than iPhone". Microsoft's Lumia 640 was your "working mans smartphone", a small, robust, non-feature-obsessed phone that was silly cheap (roughly $100 US) and felt better designed and outperformed Android phones at the $300+

But the market didn't seem to care -- at least, not enough to justify Microsoft's spending. Perhaps now is different than 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. But it sure feels like Microsoft already did exactly what your asking for, for many years before giving up.

Disclaimer: not a Microsoft employee, but owned and used a LG Quantum, Dell Venue Pro, HTC 8X, Lumia 900, and a Lumia 640.

You make a fair point; I don't make my observation from any internal knowledge, but from a perception of how the win-phone stood as an option during the time period you cite, namely that it didn't fit the needs I described. The lumia 640 was still larger, missing a removable battery, and very tied to the MS ecosystem; in that time period some of the early droids had these functionalities + the sliding keyboard + smaller form factor at a comparable price point. Now, that last point re: non-MS ecosystem may shoot my thesis in the foot from a pragmatic standpoint, but again, I'm talking "pipe dream getting foot into market" here.

I would emphasize my point re: less viable competition for the niche I'm describing though, since as you say "perhaps now is different"; I'm certainly having a much harder time finding my next phone upgrade that fits my criteria now than I felt like I had in 2009~ and in 2012~.

Arguably true. But the real problem is simpler: consumers don't trust MS.

You've inflicted too many false starts, bad products, update nightmares, u-turns, and unplanned obsolescences on the consumer market.

MS as a consumer brand has mostly negative/indifferent associations. You could build the best product in the world, but unless you can sell it in reasonable quantities and prove you're committed to supporting consumers no one - literally - will be buying it.

My experience of MS is that MS products are always broken in major ways. This has been true from MS-DOS onwards.

The most recent example: I've been using Office 365 on the Mac for more than a year, and there hasn't been a single release that doesn't have at least a couple of obvious problems.

Right now I'm looking at a handful of Word windows that are supposed be that corporate MS gray-blue, but which have random bright red corruption in the title bar.

I mean - how do you even do that? How do you, as a multibillion dollar company, have such amateurish QA that you can't produce a flagship business and consumer product without these kinds of spectacularly stupid bugs?

I must say I've long abandoned any illusions of personality and values of big tech companies like Apple/Google/Microsoft, are any one of them better or worse than the other, more moral or less? It's all big companies, shareholders and bottom line, with perhaps the current leadership making a little difference how the company is run.

But companies are not people and we can't trust them as such, the larger the company the more that's the case. It's naive, unfortunately , to think differently.

I have so many things to say in response to this (mostly not negative, actually, and I'm surprised this was so aggressively downvoted, likely because similar problems exist at most large companies?) but to try and both be concise and not overstep what I can say given my position:

Very simply, incentives are not aligned to produce the results you seek. There is some writing that explains the dynamic far better than I can (would heavily recommend Dan Luu's writing, especially normalization of deviance) if you want a window into some of the pathologies.

I can promise that engineers are "fighting the good fight", and I would encourage you to keep calling out when shit is broken despite the negative reception. This is one of the few paths I see to getting the needed alignment of goals to actually start internally prioritizing the stuff you call out.

(Aptly to this topic, I really loved the "errorsazurethrows" blog, it was a moment of brilliant vindication for someone who has both liked the underlying platform but railed against its often esoteric error/failure cases after years of having to use it as a primary tool)

I would still rate Microsoft QA above both Google and Apple. Google doesn't believe in QA, they trust automated testing implicitly, and have no preview cycle. The whole fast ring, slow ring, release preview cycle is fantastic as a thing, and knowing my Windows Mobile device is getting day one direct updates from Microsoft, despite being on Verizon's network, is key.

Microsoft has taken some of the wrong lessons from Google though, between forcing cumulative updates and collecting telemetry data. I really hope they figure out that they're losing out there. Being able to claim how many million minutes people were using Edge isn't worth losing so much customer trust.

> consumers don't trust MS.

Well, Microsoft is actively chasing consumers away. Proof: reneging on OneDrive offer to Lumia phone buyers, current lineup of two phones nearing end of production.

They want to be Oracle in place of ORCL, milking those big fat enterprise cows, and the stock market is nodding approvingly.

Good luck, godspeed, and thanks for the nice phones. Didn't last long, but was OK while it did. Designers never got any props, too.

I dunno. Microsoft's problem is that they kind of seem to give up on a technology and let it wither away.

People were excited about it, it was making forward/upward progress for a few years. Microsoft bought Nokia, and people got even more excited.

Then what happened? Years passed with no flagship phone, literally no reason from me to move on from my Nokia 1020 because there was no hardware to move to. Then they announce that older models weren't getting the Windows 10 update, which was another nail in the coffin (not to mention a big "fuck you" to the fans that have stuck with Windows Phone this long). Now we're hearing basically... nothing at all about anything.

I loved Windows Phone 7 on my HTC Titan II, and I love Windows Phone 8 on my Nokia 1020. But unless a really killer new phone is in stores before January 1st, there's basically no way I can stick with Windows Phone for my next phone.

I think the main thing holding MS back is that people are doubting their commitment to mobile. It's so weird, they finally clawed their way to a position where there most of the "must have" apps finally are on the platform (snapchat being the exeption) and then Microsoft went into a kind of "wait-and-see"-pattern where they didn't seem to want to over invest or put too much into it. The reality might be one thing but the perception of Microsoft right now in mobile is horrible.

I can kinda understand them wanting to stay silent until they have something substantial to announce after the Nokia transition... but they've been too slow and have almost lost all the momentum they had. And again, I see now reason why they should be acting like this except for short term gain over long term strategic benefits.

I just wrote a post making this same point, but you did it so much better. Thanks.

"...there are a few situations I'd agree that if you don't have the first-to-market advantage you're basically fucked (social networking being a prime one..."

10 years ago there where a number of articles about how MySpace won the social media war. The current king of that particular hill did not have first to market advantage. Your argument is invalid.

http://www.devlounge.net/webapps/why-myspace-won-the-social-...

I think you're reading too much into my argument. I never said you win _forever_ but that it's not worth trying to win market share iteratively when an incumbent with heavy network effects is already well serving your niche.

I'd argue myspace is a perfect example of this, largely due to when you look at when it was finally dethroned, it was VERY sudden, and came after years of the platform languishing from a user point of view. It took a hell of a lot of pain to push myspace past the point where the network effect could be overcome.

I love my Lumia 929, but Microsoft has essentially abandoned Verizon, so even I'm having a hard time staying here. (The idea that Microsoft is targeting professional users in the US without Verizon is COMICAL, since Verizon is the number one carrier for enterprise use. Selling to non-Verizon enterprises in the US is basically selling to a non-existent market.)

Windows 10 Mobile currently does have all the apps I need, but it seems very few people are willing to give up Google's apps (particularly Gmail and YouTube) to switch, and Google refuses to allow another competitor into the mobile space. As long as Google's monopoly persists, they'll decide who has a successful mobile platform.

The problem is that for a lot of us, some apps have become necessary for day-to-day life.

For example, I cannot get around without using Uber and Lyft. I need to carry a phone on me with these apps at all times. Windows doesn't support either of them, so I can't use a Windows phone until it does.

I'd love to use Windows on a phone -- I'm actually starting to fall in love with the new MS -- but I simply can't.

Uber's official app is available on my Windows 10 Mobile device. Just checked for you.

And it's not "Windows doesn't support either". It's "They don't support Windows". The platform does not have to do anything to support them, they need to choose to make apps for the platform. ;)

Huh, that must be a pretty recent thing. I remember checking a year or so ago and being disappointed that neither of them run on Windows. Thanks for letting me know it's changed.