We're talking about a hypothetical situation where android doesn't exist.
Microsoft phone OS 7 (the one that was adapted to the Nokia phones originally designed for MeeGo) was very polished and quite pleasant to use. I think it would have succeeded.
I say this through a clenched jaw though because I had just started working at Nokia during the time of the acquisition and was quite enthusiastic about MeeGo.
Microsoft phone 7 that couldn't use an arbitrary mp3 as a ringtone? Microsoft phone 7 that was pretty much ditched with an incompatible update in next to no time?
I don't think it's revisionist to call it a failure here in this universe where android does exist, like I say, if android didn't exist then maybe it would have taken off. Or maybe another linux variant would have had time to come to market. We shall never know.
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I found the marketing campaigns for Win Phone 7 and Win Phone 8 to be quite offensive. It started months before general availability of even an SDK, with posters on popular tech sites like /. asserting that it was the best platform ever for developers, and trying to get that accepted as some sort of consensus before anyone could even try it.
Then Win phone 7 got unceremoniously ditched (screw you developers) seemingly only a few months later and the exact same people started singing the exact same praises about WP8...
It just smacked of trying too hard, and being underhanded.
> Microsoft phone 7 that couldn't use an arbitrary mp3 as a ringtone?
And iOS which couldn't at the time either.
> Microsoft phone 7 that was pretty much ditched with an incompatible update in next to no time?
Due to no market-share. (Silverlight et al. was an abject failure)
I think it's fine to talk about it as if it's failed in the context of android existing; but the context here is iOS dominance in abstentia of Android itself, and I think there would have been other players (Windows Phone included) which would have contested it given the absence of android.
Windows phone was a contender and it just feels like it wasn't because Android not only won (and thus; you think of Android now vs Windows phone then) but won wildly.
Other phones could, and that seemed to be the expectation of two not-especially-technical friends/colleagues of mine at the time, and the answer being "No, you have to go to this special tool and cut out the first minute, then export in this format" led to both saying "what a pile of crap then, I should have got something else"
Microsoft phone OS 7 (the one that was adapted to the Nokia phones originally designed for MeeGo) was very polished and quite pleasant to use. I think it would have succeeded.
I say this through a clenched jaw though because I had just started working at Nokia during the time of the acquisition and was quite enthusiastic about MeeGo.