Though Microsoft’s Windows Phone has managed to successfully beat most iPhone and Android devices at most tasks in the ‘Smoked by Windows Phone’ challenge, in spite of having gained critical acclaim and being affordable, people in U.S are not keen on purchasing devices running on the Windows Phone platform.
Earlier this year, Microsoft started their promotion campaign called ‘Smoked by Windows Phone’ wherein Ben Rudolph conducted challenges between Windows Phone devices and other competing smartphones in the market. Any device which managed to beat a Windows Phone was rewarded $100. Prizes even went up to $1,000 in cash and a new laptop! Challenges included everyday tasks like locating a restaurant, looking up movie timings, checking for weather conditions or posting pictures. According to the final results, Microsoft claims to have beaten over 50,000 competitors and boasts of a 98% winning rate.
However, Smoked by Windows Phone has also been accused of being partial towards the Windows Phone devices due to the inherent features in the OS. There has been an instance wherein Microsoft tried to argue their way out of a defeat when beaten by a Samsung Galaxy Nexus user during a challenge centered on checking the weather forecast in Santa Clara. The Verge, a technology site, has challenged Microsoft and accused the company of picking challenges that particularly favoured Windows Phone devices and the features offered by them with respect to social networking.
Despite all these efforts, Microsoft has not been able to increase the popularity of their products among consumers in the market. Strangely, Windows Phone, with a market share of just 1.7 % at the start of 2012, seems to be less popular as compared to Windows Mobile which had a market share of 4.1%. Microsoft recently joined hands with Nokia to introduce their new range of mobile phone devices which will run on the Windows Phone platform.
However, Nokia has reported a 50% decline in the sales of their smartphones in the first quarter itself in comparison to sales in the previous year. In spite of Nokia’s Lumia 900 earning positive reviews, it has not been able to fetch buyers in the same quantity as the iPhone. LG is also reportedly not keen on producing Windows Phone devices due to their poor performance in the market.
Microsoft, however, remains upbeat and is keen on introducing their next version of Windows Phone which will be deeply integrated with Windows 8.
May 11, 2012 at 10:35 am
Nokia losing market share in the first quarter is completely irrelevant considering the fact that they launched the Lumia 900, their flagship Windows phone in the second quarter. For all we know, they could have single-handedly doubled the windows phone market share. Wait till those numbers come out in a month and a half or so before you count your iEggs. You iFanboys are getting more and more annoying by the day with your retarded claims based on irrelevant an misleading data.
May 12, 2012 at 12:45 am
There is a religious i-Cult that is trying to downplay all the alternative options in the smartphone market. I know this very well, because I used to be part of that cult …. I used macs for 17 years, which were reliable nice devices in early 90s, but then in late 90s the PC machines started to be as reliable and to have more nice features. I still struggled in my belief, and used my employer’s resources to get mac devices for my research division – well – because I was part of the i-Cult !
Finally, in 2007, I accidentally had to use a PC-laptop for 1 month, and I was amazed: with a price of 40% of my imac I had a HP laptop that was as reliable and more powerful and had more features than imac …. that was the starting point to my conversion !
Now I am using PC laptops (as most of my division), and we are using the awesome Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phones. Things are running very well indeed, and we do not need to pay the outrageous apple prices anymore.
People are not stupid – the Windows Phone ecosystem will grow gradually. That is for sure. Technically WP LUMIA 900 is already better than e.g iphone which is only a 3G phone.