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.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about on this. There is just too much wrong to even begin to correct.
But whatever the reason doesn't matter as the xbox made huge in-roads on the playstation and surpassed it. And if the PS3 was so far advanced why is the GPU weaker than the 360's? And why do most all the multiplatform games look best on the 360. I mean technology that is so far advanced should easily have better looking multiplatform games--just like the xbox over the PS2 last generation.
The real issue with the PS3 was that Sony wanted to get bluray on the market and wanted to use their playstation brand to achieve that. They did get the format on the market and bluray didn't fail as beta did; however, it really cost them another market--the gaming market. Which is more valuable? I'm not sure but with everything going digital distribution I think the long term win would be winning the living room.
Haha! As long as we can send an error report back to MS. I have heard some friends complain about their Android phones too.
I’ve had difficulty in the past with Samsung hardware (particularly the GPS), and they were basically non-existent with updates.
If you are a Samsung user and haven’t had these issues, that’s great, but I would research it a bit more.
Just my $.02, if that.
Mine focus hasn’t locked up (yet). I’m sure it will happen. But not yet.
In fact the manager at my local ATT store said he’d tried getting the WP7 to lock up but everythign they do it just keeps on trucking. And he said that’s why he can’t wait for his WP7 to come in so he can get rid of his iPhone 4. I was shocked when he said this.
But it does make sense. With WP7 only allowing Microsoft OS core apps to multi-task it eliminates bad behaving apps from crashing the phone. But then you can’t fully multi-task. So if you need 3rd party app multi-tasking be prepared for more freezes and hangs. Choose your poison type thing.
I picked up an Android phone (HTC Evo 4G) a couple of weeks ago... so far it’s a fantastic device... I really am impressed.
Yeah, I’ve heard about the serious GPS problems that the Samsung Captivate has been having, but I haven’t yet heard about similar problems with the Focus. I don’t intend to use GPS much, but still it would be nice to know that it’s gonna work when you need it.
I agree. I picked up a myTouch 4g with Android 2.2 and I can’t say enough about it. I don’t have any experience with WP7 but most reviews I have found favor Android.
My problem is that the GPS would not work with my programs, but it would not turn off, either - the battery would drain down very quickly. This was on two successive phones, so I moved on.
The samsung focus GPS is rock solid. I go to my map application and in a second it has me pin-pointed. Plus windows phone 7 is able to manage the GPS radio so that it doesn’t drain the battery once you use it. It knows when to turn it on and off.
But the next version of the bing map should really make it a stand out. Right now it’s good but not great. It has the best eye candy but it’s missing a couple key things. Like an arrow for your direction (currently it’s just a diamond) and voice turn-by-turn direction.
Might be the application leaving it on. I know on my windows phone 7 samsung focus using GPS doesn’t really impact my battery (meaning it turns off when I leave the application).
May want to look at updating the OS. I know windows mobile used to have this issue but so far windows phone 7 has completley fixed it for me.
That was the weird part. No applications would be running, and the phone would “say” that the GPS was off. However, there was some glitch that needed a reboot to fully turn it off.
It was a known issue for the Blackjack II and the Epix, and I’m using an HTC Evo now. If it’s fixed, that’s great, but I still maintain their updates were very slow, if non-existent.
I had that same issue with HTC phones running windows mobile. I think the issue must have been more driver related. Windows Mobile allowed the OEM to do whatever they wanted and it didn’t supply many of the basics (like even a keyboard driver interface). So all the OEMs did whatever and the end experience was great for some and poor for others. Much like the Android market today.
Some very very good phones and experiences out there, but also some very bad ones. The EVO does look like a good phone to me.
we will know the real impact of windows when verizon and sprint have the 7 version.
Thanks for the ping.
I went from Windows Mobile 6.5 (T-Mobile Dash) to Android (Samsung Galaxy S) and the Android is nothing at all like WinMob 6.5.
Really? How is the overall model different? I’m talking about standards, OEM support and Carrier support.
Please explain. I'm describing my user experience.
In WM the carrier and oem controlled the experience just like Android. Some good some bad. With WP7 Microsoft controls the experience if you like it on one phone you,will like it on all phones.
Though I am otherwise quite happy with T-Mobile, as a 12 to 13 year customer (including Voicestream days), though their rural coverage is not as good as other carriers.
And my overall experience with the T-Mobile Vibrant is way above the T-Mobile Dash; the Dash was far better than the phones that preceded it (with it I retired the PDA), but the Vibrant has been delivering much more.
I don't use a bunch of different phones and am not at all ready to change carriers, so if the phone is "good enough" I am satisfied. (Long ago this techie decided to hang back from the "bleeding edge of technology" as a consumer and let others take the arrows first.)
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