We all remember the time when Nokia made a deal with Microsoft to launch the Windows OS phones. And we also know some reasons why Windows Phones failed, which include; lack of accessibility to some useful Apps, partners like Samsung not launching Windows Phone, Microsoft's approach to licensing Windows Phone, and the company's failure to attract developers.
A former Nokia engineer shared some reasons behind the failure of Windows Phone on Reddit. He joined Nokia after the 2011 deal with Microsoft to put windows 7 on all its smartphones. And he also worked with the Nokia X project.
He believes that Microsoft's failure to launch Android was the company's biggest regret. Also, Microsoft underestimated Google and its services like G-mail, Google Maps, etc. Which ended up in 2012 when Google stopped funding efforts to make Apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
He wrote, "Obviously Apple was red hot and Microsoft knew that, but Google was new to the OS business and they weren't taken seriously enough. Android was pretty rough then, but the real value was Google's services; when Google cut Microsoft off of YouTube, Maps, Gmail, etc, it made WP look cheap."
The second reason mentioned was with ‘botched Windows 8’ and with the disgrace over ‘Microsoft metro interface’. Metro interface worked great with Windows 7 touch screen devices but it didn't come out that great when Microsoft put it on the desktop in Windows 8.
The former employee wrote, “Before Windows 8, WP had a lot of people's curiosity. After Windows 8, people associated the two together as bad products even though the teams then were pretty independent, and things done poorly on Windows 8 were not reflective of how the experience was on WP. Even with Windows 10, the stigma against Metro never recovered.”
He argues that as a leading tech company Microsoft still has a bad reputation due to its actions over the past decade. "At the time it was still horrible and it meant that the young guys who grew up hating Microsoft were making the big startups for other platforms," the engineer said. He also said, “For all the negatives on the consumer side, coding for WP was always better than Android.”
After the harsh failure of Windows Phone, it was not possible to get the company back with more Windows Phone. By the year 2014, Android and iOS were blooming in the market, and no matter what Microsoft did to improve their Windows Phone there was no vital reason to switch. It was then when they decided to launch a secret work project “Nokia X”, the first android phone launched by Nokia.
