Microsoft: 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 devices sold (Says sales meet 'realistic' expectations)

MSNBC ^ | 12/21/2010 | Edwin Chan

[SeekAndFind]

More than 1.5 million cell phones carrying Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating software have sold in the first six weeks of launch, meeting what the company called "realistic" expectations.

Achim Berg, vice president of business and marketing for Windows phones, released sales numbers for the nascent platform for the first time in an internally conducted interview posted on Microsoft's website. (Msnbc.com is an NBC Universal-Microsoft joint venture.)

Windows Phone 7 was unveiled in October and marked the software maker's expansion into a smart phone arena dominated by Apple and Google. Analysts say it could be Microsoft's last chance to establish a major presence in a hot market.

Taiwan's HTC, Dell Inc, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are among the vendors who have launched or plan to begin selling Phone 7-based devices.

"We all know that the competition is extreme in this industry, and we have to compete on multiple fronts," Berg said in the interview.

"We are on a path to begin releasing the first of several updates in the next couple of months, and several more mobile operators around the world will introduce Windows Phone 7 on their network in 2011."

[Spktyr]

Windows was behind UNIX... about 20 years ago. UNIX, by the was was not kicked out of the market. In fact, many of Microsoft’s own public facing servers... run *nix.

You know, for something that’s been ‘crushed’, the Playstation 3 seems to be doing awfully well. Kinect doesn’t seem to be catching on. Oh, and does the phrase “Red Ring Of Death” mean anything to you?

To go from 0-10% in the search market when your near monopoly OS keeps trying to change your search preferences back to your own search engine is pretty easy. (IE 8 and later keeps trying to do this.)

I did use a WinMo7 phone. While there were many improvements over 6.5.x, yeah, it still sucks.

Microsoft is dominating netbooks? Perhaps, but it’s a market with massively declining sales, and even MS admits that. Tablets, and specifically the iPad, have crushed that market. Even the largest vendor of netbooks, Acer, has admitted that.

[Spktyr]

Also, how do you deal with mouse-over and the like events with a touchscreen? Pretty difficult. I’ve tried Flash games on an Android device and the experience was pretty miserable. Quite a lot didn’t work, especially things that rely on tracking a mouse cursor.

[for-q-clinton]

Right 20 years ago they were behind, but now they aren’t. Look at email. They took over from groupwise and lotus notes.

Playstation has been utterly crushed this generation. They went from a dominate 1st place to 3rd place. Playstation brand and the Playstation 2 was so huge last gen. A good comparison would be if Google Chrome becomes and OS X took over the OS market from Microsoft in 1 year. Yeah it’s pretty amazing what the xbox did to playstation. It’s about share and growth.

What did you find better about windows phone 7 over windows mobile 6.5? A better comparison would be between windows phone 7 and iPhone and Android vs. Windows Mobile 6.5.

[Spktyr]

Windows for ARM looks like it’s just going to be Windows 7 Embedded Compact. Which means slow, crap battery life, and a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/12/21/windows.for.arm.tipped.at.microsoft.ces.keynote/

WinPhone 7 isn’t going to be showing up on tablets for a while.

[for-q-clinton]

I don’t want windows phone 7 on a tablet. It really doesn’t make any sense—if you used a windows phone 7 you’d understand that.

But now all the disappointed people who wanted a real OS on the iPad (OS X) can get a real OS on a windows tablet.

BTW: how do you know windows 7 embedded and Arm chips won’t be great for battery life?

[Spktyr]

I don’t know what you’re smoking, but the xBox360 is in third place behind the Wii and PS3 in terms of market share.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2010/05/29/ps3_quarterly_market_share_jumps_to_31_percent

Not exactly crushed there, buddy.

Exchange took over from Lotus Notes to a degree, but now people are moving away from Exchange.

Well, the fact that you can actually make calls on WinMo7 without the phone crashing was an improvement. The ability to get actual updates instead of having to buy a new device was nice too. Unfortunately, the interface appears to have been designed by a graphic artist that was a schitzophrenic monkey and the email system is laughable.

[Cementjungle]

Windows Phone 7 isn’t your grandads old windows mobile.

Lol. My granddad worked his whole life (an MIT trained electrical engineer) in the long lines division of Bell Labs. I wish he was still around to see today's technologies.

[Spktyr]

Because all the other Win7 versions kicked out for lower power devices so far have shortened battery life. The HP Slate, running a chopped down OEM version of Win 7 has laughable battery life, to use the last try MS made at this.

Oh, and if you jailbreak your iPad, you know what? Hey, look, there really is a UNIX underneath the GUI! So it’s a real OS.

And I have used Win Phone 7. People want a simplified interface for their tablets. They don’t want a desktop interface. The continuous failure of Windows Tablets since Win XP Tablet and the success of the iPad plus the demand for Android tablets should point that out.

[aft_lizard]

I do not understand why people like you believe your opinion actually matters. It is obvious to me and everyone that reads that you are anti-MS which colors your opinion strongly. I would suggest you to simply shut up and let the adults talk.

[aft_lizard]

I simply don’t believe you have even touched a Win7phone, at all. You are trying the old tried and failed tactic of “look at me I used it therefore I am right” when in fact you probably haven’t at all.

[Spktyr]

Erm, no. Consider that I administer a mixed server farm of Solaris and Win 2008R2 servers... pretty sure I know what I’m talking about.

Microsoft products are sometimes the best choice for a particular application. It’s just that the number of applications that this is true for is declining, and that many administrators like myself dislike the strongarm tactics that MS has increasingly resorted to over the years, as well as the “we don’t care” attitude towards security in their server products that they have traditionally held.

And since this is the internet, my opinion is just as valid as yours, o fellow poster shielded behind a pseudonym.

[Spktyr]

Used one for two days, as part of a company-wide evaluation.

It got sent back, along with all but one of the other eval units. The one I had my hands on was a Samsung Focus. Outlook Mobile crashed on a regular basis, battery life was fairly short, and the promised ability to view Office documents was unstable at best.

[aft_lizard]

I do not care what you do for a living, it doesn’t make you correct and it certainly doesn’t mean that you can use your own facts to color everything else. If you wanted to bring facts, comparison, proof to an argument then you might be able to pull some wool over some eyes.

[Spktyr]

Mostly what people post on these threads *is* personal facts.

I should also mention that I actually happen to *like* the xBox360 and own one. (The Halo series is a favorite.) But that doesn’t mean that I am blind to the fact that it’s not the top console and that it hasn’t crushed the PlayStation 3 like some others here think.

[aft_lizard]

Well crushed is a word. The 360 leads the PS3 in worldwide sales, The new Kinect has driven the 360 to the top of the charts for the year. The hardware problems essentially died when the 360 went to jasper in 2007. Three years ago. I don't own a 360, in fact I had a PS3 but sold it. Don't own w7p but a android(will get a w7p as soon as Verizon starts selling them).

[Spktyr]

Guess they got a bit of an edge since I last looked this fall. On the other hand, that’s not exactly a huge margin, certainly about what the margin was on the earlier article I cited. Also, the Wii is still outselling both the other consoles *combined*, so the x360 isn’t exactly the top of the charts there - per your own source at VGchartz.com.

The x360 continues to have problems even after the 2007 switch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems

We should see even more raw and direct competition between phone platforms after Verizon joins the rest of the civilized world with the deployment of LTE over the next year.

[SeekAndFind]

Just curious, are you by any chance working for Microsoft or a developer of their products ?

You seem to be very rah rah behind them...

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I’ve been a .NET developer for years and have a love/hate relationship with them.

[SeekAndFind]

Source

The new first quarter 2010 International Data Corp. numbers are out for the worldwide server market. According to the market researcher, Windows Server is still the runaway leader, in terms of operating system unit shipments, and also still in first place when it comes to revenues compared to Unix and Linux.

In Q1 2010, Windows Server was installed on 75.3 percent of the servers sold worldwide. Linux was on 20.8 percent of the servers and Unix on only 3.6 percent. Both Windows Server and Linux grew in share from Q4 2009 to Q1 2010; Unix declined slightly.

On the revenue side of the house, Windows Server-based systems brought in 48.9 percent of the dollars worldwide, IDC said. Unix was No. 2 with 22 percent and Linux, third, with 16.2 percent. As in the case of units, Unix-based systems lost share between Q4 2009 and Q1 2010.

Here are IDC’s latest figures, as well as the comparable IDC data for Q4 2009. Note the percentages don’t total 100. That is because IDC includes an unspecified “other” category that is not included here.

Q1 2010 units

Windows 1,379,487 (75.3%)
Unix 65,451 (3.6%)
Linux 380,429 (20.8%)

Q4 2009 units

Windows 1,434,225 (73.9%)
Unix 84,851 ( 4.4%)
Linux 412,041 (21.2%)

Q1 2010 dollars

Windows $5.1 billion (48.9%)
Unix $2.3 billion (22.2%)
Linux $1.7 billion (16.2%)

Q4 2009 dollars

Windows $5.4 billion (41.6%)
Unix $3.9 billion (29.9%)
Linux $1.9 billion (14.7%)

A few more observations from IDC’s latest report:

• Microsoft Windows server demand was positively impacted by the accelerating x86 server market, as hardware revenue increased 33.6% and unit shipments increased 28.3% year over year.

• Quarterly revenue of $5.1 billion for Windows servers represented 48.9% of overall quarterly factory revenue. This is the highest percentage of server hardware revenue that Windows servers have ever represented.
• Unix servers experienced 29.0% revenue decline when compared to 1Q09 as customers waited for additional detail on the Sun-Oracle server roadmap. They were also anticipating a ramp of IBM POWER7 servers, which began shipping in Q1, and, separately, HP Integrity servers based on Intel Itanium 9300 processors that were announced in April. Worldwide Unix revenues were $2.3 billion for the quarter, representing 22.2% of quarterly server spending (down 10.5 points over 1Q09).

Microsoft is expected to deliver a first beta of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack (SP) 1 — and, by extension, Windows 7 SP1 — any time now. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Softies announce and/or deliver that beta next week, in conjunction with the company’s Tech Ed conference. Even though Microsoft has been advising IT admins not to wait for SP1 to move to Windows Server 2008 R2, a number of organizations still insist on waiting for SP1 before moving to a new version of Windows.

Microsoft officials said earlier this year that Windows 7 SP1 would be a conglomeration of bug fixes and updates, and would not include any new features. On the server side, SP1 will include two new virtualiztion features, Microsoft officials have said.

These new features include a new graphics acceleration platform, known as RemoteFX, that is based on desktop-remoting technology that Microsoft obtained in 2008 when it acquired Calista Technologies. There also will be a new addition to Hyper-V that will dynamically adjust memory of a guest virtual machine on demand.

[kingu]

I’d have one myself, but alas, picked up an Android phone on Father’s Day, so have to wait until June to switch over. (Zune Pass yearly subscriber...)