This morning in San Francisco, Microsoft unveiled infront of us the latest iteration of its mobile OS- Windows Phone 8. The new OS features the same minimalistic tile-based user interface we’ve come to know and love from Windows Phone 7, with some tweaks to tile sizes, layout, and animations. Especially once version 7.8 starts rolling out to the masses, it’s not going to be terribly easy to tell Windows Phone builds apart from a distance,since that resizing tiles are gonna come in 7.8
Windows Phone market share was still stuck below 4% at the top of October, according to ComScore. The reasons behind Microsoft’s struggle to gain place in the mobile world are many and varied, but a bad user experience isn’t one of them: Windows Phone 7 has garnered more critical praise than almost any mobile platform in memory.
But another wave of glowing press won’t be enough to force Windows Phone into relevance. Does version 8 bring enough features to cement its position in the mobile world .Lets find out!
I am gonna break this article into two parts -first why and how WP 8 can make a difference and second -why it can't.So lets get started.
Positive Thinking
Microsoft didn’t just demo family-centric features like the earlier versions of Windows. It also gave us some solid figures to get excited about. Figures like app counts: 125,000 in the Windows Marketplace. That’s 25,000 more than the company reported in June. And Microsoft is putting its focus on apps that people need the most. Windows Phone Manager Joe Belfiore’s quote might not be the event’s most elegant, but it’s ambitious and exciting: “We will be at a point where we will have 46 of the top 50 of the most heavily used apps on other platforms.”
Moreover, big names like Pandora, are coming,which is offering a free one-year premium subscription for buyers of WP8 devices.
Promotional deals like that put us in mind of marketing, and Microsoft has some big talk in that department. As Windows Phone continues to lag behind other platforms in mind share, Microsoft’s renewed commitment to advertising is heartening, and inspires confidence that it knows where it needs to bring the heat.
There are many more variables at play in the Windows Phone-vs-the-world equation, and a lot of room in the market for things to go disastrously wrong -or incredibly right- for Microsoft. Whether you believe the most “beautifully different” platform in mobile will succeed or fail in version 8 will of course depend on your own choices, conceptions, and other thoughts .Fortunately, the speculation period won’t last long, because the first Windows Phone 8 devices will launch in Europe this coming weekend.
Not so positive thinking
Crucial to understanding this argument is to look at where Microsoft put its focus in this morning’s announcement. There was precious little time devoted to blockbuster, competition-crushing features; instead what we got was in-depth explorations of a few new capabilities catering to niche markets. We got to see Jessica Alba tell us all about how Kids Corner lets her rest easy knowing her four-year-old can’t bang out a nonsense-tweet to four million people. Then there is Data Sense, a (carrier-dependent) collection of utilities devoted to saving money on data costs through smart network use and traffic compression(for those with a modest data plan). Needed,but not something new There was more talk about keeping your contacts synced across all of your devices with SkyDrive.
Truly speaking,WP 8 is still lagging behind Android.It doesn't support the highest resolution screens,nor does it support full multitasking(which I desperately need).Infact,I was astonished that even in WP 8 they didn't add an option to close an app,the only way was to press the back button continuously until you are out of the app.Also,seriously speaking not many new and important features were added.So yeah it was a bit of gloomy at the end of the day.
However,it depends upon you people completely how you welcome this OS.So will you buy a WP 8 phone?
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