When it comes to mobile operating system, Apple's iOS and Google's Android are ruling the mobile devices quite comprehensively and they are not going to let any other penetrate the mobile operating system market.
No matter how much money and willpower, third party mobile operating system put in, they just can't break the duopoly of these two leading mobile operating systems.
Despite its shrinking market share, which further slipped to 3.0% from last year's 3.6%, according to Strategy Analytics' statistics, Microsoft Corporation is still planning to hit back this year with its upcoming Windows 10 for mobile devices.
Chris Weber, Microsoft's head of mobile device sales, revealed at Mobile World Congress, that Washington based technology giant Redmond has agreed to launch its premium flagship smartphone brand this year, which will be powered by upcoming Windows 10.
With the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft aims to lure application developer companies and indie mobile app developers to build apps for its platform. However, just like its shrinking mobile operating system market share, there are not many application development firms and indie developers willing to dedicate time and resources for phones that make up just a small fraction of the overall smartphone market.
However, Chris Weber is hopeful that more developers will come in as Windows 10 apps will have a technology that other mobile operating system does not offer. A universal app technology, which will enable application development firms and indie developers to build apps that work equally well on pocket-sized screens as well as widescreen monitors without any extra programming.
This will drastically increase app development firm's reach, because they will be able to instantly reach to about a billion Windows PC users, in addition to users of Windows Phone powered smartphones.
"It is only possible to meet these million or billion of users with Windows 10 universal app technology, which is not offered by any other ecosystems," said Chris Weber.
If we compare Microsoft's mobile operating system strategy to lure application development firms and indie developers, it is not that different from other operating systems like Mozilla's Firefox OS and Samsung's Tizen operating system. Samsung especially tried to sell lots and lots of low and mid-range smartphones in developing markets in hopes of constructing a healthy market share and luring mobile apps developer companies and indie developers with a lot of users.
To follow that lead, Microsoft unveiled two low-end smartphones, each of them is wrapped with one year free subscription to its products like Office 365, OneDrive and Skype.
According to Chris Weber, these services will differentiate Microsoft from low-end Chinese and Indian smartphones, which sacrifices usability to cut the cost.
Having said that, Chris Weber also acknowledged that Microsoft has still a long way to go and it still faces long odds. "Developing these ecosystems is not an easy game by any means," he said. "It requires gigantic investment and scale around apps and service, it's very difficult to build these ecosystems, whether it's Mozilla or Tizen, and it will be interesting to watch."
John Read is the Author - (Bio) of this post
0 comments:
Post a Comment