Posted on 12/28/2010 11:03:47 AM PST by for-q-clinton
While I was on my flight to Alaska, Mary Jo beat me to the punch with the news that more than 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 devices have been sold by the manufacturers since the launch in late October (Europe) and early November (U.S.). While these numbers do not show the total bought by consumers, it still is pretty impressive and much more than what some have predicted. Device sales isn’t the whole story with Windows Phone 7 though as we also see a huge growth in applications with over 4,000 apps now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Device sales I think it is pretty impressive that over 1.5 million phones have been sold by manufacturers given that there are two carriers with only four phones that were available at launch in the US and five more phones on multiple carriers outside the US. I would be interested in seeing the breakdown between the US and non-US figures as well. In the US, we have three phones on AT&T and AT&T is the carrier that is focused on iPhone sales. It must take some major advertising and education for people to go into a store and buy a Windows Phone 7 device instead of an iPhone 4. I have seen a ton of LG WP7 commercials on TV so maybe good advertising is working.
T-Mobile only has a single device, the HTC HD7 (see my hands-on look), available in stores and with nearly the same form factor as the failed HTC HD2 Windows Mobile 6.5 device it seems like people are pretty hesitant to try this device out. Dell has had some major issues with the Venue Pro and it is just this week arriving in people’s hands after some ordering snafus. You can check out the Pocketnow.com and PhoneArena.com reviews to see this may actually be one of the best Windows Phone 7 devices and people haven’t even had a chance to use it much yet.
We know there will be Sprint and Verizon Windows Phone 7 devices launching in early 2011 and hopefully we see more cool devices announced at CES in a couple of weeks.
Windows Phone Marketplace As you can see on the Bing visual search page there is something like 3,000 apps for the US market with a reported 4,000+ available worldwide. The iPhone had 0 apps for a year before Apple decided to roll out support for 3rd party applications. The App Store opened on 11 July 2008 with 500 apps. After two months there were 3,000 apps, which is just about where we are with Windows Phone 7 at the moment. Apple hit the 15,000 app mark at six months.
The Android Market launched with the release of Android devices in late 2008 and after a couple of months there were 800 free apps. It wasn’t until 17 February 2009 that priced apps were available. Data I found showed that there were 2,300 total apps in the Android Market after six months. Here we are at nearly two months with Windows Phone 7 and we are already at the 4,000 apps level with many of these much higher quality than what we saw in the early Android Market. Games on Windows Phone 7 are all still much better than what we have for Android and games are the hottest selling application category.
So, in regards to the number of apps, Windows Phone 7 is showing they are very competitive to Apple and Google so far. There are also a reported 18,000 developers working on apps for Windows Phone Marketplace.
Thoughts on Windows Phone 7 I have been showing off my HTC HD7 to a lot of folks and I haven’t met a single one that was not impressed with the responsiveness and fluid user interface. I have a few people at work who are waiting for CDMA versions to launch and I haven’t heard of too many people giving up on Windows Phone 7 once they try it. My T-Mobile SIM flip flops between the HD7 and Nokia N8, with most of its time spent in the HD7. It is not perfect and there is definitely room for improvement, but the top notch email experience, full Exchange support, enjoyable gaming, and fun user interface keep me using it as my daily device.
I think we can all acknowledge that Windows Phone 7 is no KIN.
The good news is more competition should make for better products from all.
tech ping please.
I’ve had my Dell Venue Pro for about a week now. I like the OS alot and Dell did a solid job on the hardware. Very nice phone.
Will it allow the Manhattan Declaration app....unlike iphone?
My rotten service provider (TMobile) doesn’t have the I Phone, the Windows phone or the Blackberry Storm. They have the truly lousy Android, which I tried for 3 days and then dumped because it’s a phone for chit-chatting and not for business.
I’m actually going to pay the money and get out of my contract and get one of the other phones.
“I have a windows phone 7 and I love it. Android is more like the old failed windows mobile.”
I’m trying to decide between the Samsung Focus, which runs on Windows Phone 7, and the Samsung Captivate, which runs on Android. I think I would like the Windows Phone 7 operating system a little better, but the Focus was significantly slower in some of the head-to-head tests that I saw on YouTube. I’m guessing that the next generation of Windows Phone 7 devices will run much faster, but I don’t have any idea when they will be coming out. If anyone here has tried both the Samsung Focus and Captivate, I’d be curious to know your opinion.
Yep, here’s hoping that the iPhone finally gets some real competition.
I read a review that said the dell venue pro was the fastest windows phone7, but it has the same processor. So it may be an OEM issue.
OR it could be that they tested with a “Bad” Focus. The focus allows for adding a micro SD card into it but at release there were no micro SD cards certified to work with it. So it could be that they inserted a card that slowed the unit down (there are ton of reports of this on the Internet). I put a 16GB sandisk in and haven’t had any issues (so far).
Anyway, check it out for yourself and see if it’s fast enough for you. To me I don’t notice any lag or long waits to do things.
T-Mobile has the Dell Venue Pro (Win 7), though I ordered it via Dell but it is TMobile service.
Sad thing about android is that they pretty much made the same exact mistakes as windows mobile. It’s one thing to lose because you tried something new, but to take a failed model and expect a different result is just stupid.
I hope you are right. But consider, we have Blackberry (RIM), Apple, Symbian, Android, WebOS and now Windows all competing in the same market.
Historically, Microsoft has not been known to promote a product that is not immediately adopted. I offer the Kin One, the Kin Two and the Zune as examples.
IMHO, while Win7 may have a bit more allure - it's not innovative in any significant manner. No Copy, paste, can't multi-task, no tethering - it offers nothing new. It's very late to market - in a market that is already quite mature.
Talk to someone who jumped on one of the Zune products, or the Kin Products and see how happy they have been with support after the sale.
Actually the LG and Samsung DO tether! It just takes a special code entered and the USB port becomes a tether port instead of a zune sync port.
I think the xbox is a better model to look at for the kin/win phone 7 comparison. The original xbox was killed off early but then the 360 came on the market and whipped the reigning champ (sony). But nintendo had a little say in a new game market for motiona gaming. Now Microsoft is targeting that market with the kinect.
The Samsung Captivate is simply faster. The ARM cores are close, but the Captivate has far superior graphics acceleration with its PowerVR SGX 540 vs. the Adreno 200.
But what does that speed get you? I’m seriously asking because with android most devs have to write to the dumbest standard to make sure the user gets a good experience.
Do the games and apps give more detail when using a better graphics processor (as they do in PC games)? There really isn’t much number crunching on phones yet, so I don’t see that as being a compelling issue unless you do have an app that does some serious number crunching.
This is why iPhone and WP7 are “better” than android. The standards that devs can write do create a common user experience. Why buy a phone with all the power in the world if you can’t use it?
The android UI depends on the OEM and carrier so maybe with the captivate they designed a UI that has even more eye candy than Windows Phone 7. And if so then that power would come in handy.
I beg to differ on this...the market is quite young and it's exploding. Most cell phones are still dumb phones. The smart phones are still a very young and growing market.
The PC and MP3 players are exmaples of mature markets.
One big reason is that the PS3 was far too advanced for its time. Sony was taking a loss of a few hundred dollars each even with the $600 retail price. Given the price, and the fact that developers hadn't gotten used to the new architecture, it did not sell well initially. The PS2 still outsold the PS3 for quite a while.
Another is that Microsoft/IBM ripped off Sony's R&D for the XBox to get to market faster. The Cell processor was a joint venture between IBM, Toshiba and Sony who together invested hundreds of millions of dollars. Microsoft later came to IBM looking for a new CPU, and IBM used the Cell R&D to create the Xenon, which is basically a triple-core version of the Cell's PPE.
For the record, I have all three consoles, and the only console where I've bought a previous generation is the Nintendo, so there's no PlayStation loyalty going on here. IMHO, each has its strengths and weaknesses.
There is such a thing as minimum specs.
Do the games and apps give more detail when using a better graphics processor (as they do in PC games)?
Yes, and a well-written system will use the GPU to accelerate the UI, giving some serious gee-whiz and saving on battery.
This is why iPhone and WP7 are “better” than android. The standards that devs can write do create a common user experience.
Microsoft did well in dictating some pretty high minimum hardware standards, but those have already been surpassed. Soon you will see phones twice as powerful as the WP7 minimum specs, creating the same problem as Android. Already many modern phones have double the minimum of 256 MB RAM, and WP7 only requires a DX9 capable GPU so you will see a wide variation in GPU power on WP7 phones.
No. Microsoft now uses a Red Screen of Death. :)
Seriously though, my Android 2.1 phone has crashed on me a few times. It became unresponsive once, requiring me to pull the battery, and a couple other times it just spontaneously restarted.
Can you please give me an example of such apps that exist?
There is more than just processor to the standards though. For example, screen resolution and shape. A developer has to write to the least common denominator or write multiple interfaces for the mariad of screen sizes/resolutions.
I see windows phone doing revisions so that the next windows phone 8 will have a new baseline and then new apps can be written to take advantage of those new standards. Android has multiple version but I understand it's hard to upgrade and it really is tied to the carrier (just like windows mobile was).
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