Windows Phone is catching up with the tide, at least according to Terry Myerson, Corporate Vice President for Windows Phone at Microsoft. At the Dive Into Mobile conference in New York city, Terry sat down to speak about Windows Phone and how it is more of a success than a failure.
“Android is kind of a mess”
From the consumers point of view, it may or may not be. But does Windows Phone also share the same status? ‘No way’, according to Terry. Windows Phone seems to be making good profits for its partners and create inroads in the market usage chart globally with a majority of them reporting an increase in adoption of Windows Phone based handsets.
Merry points out that the U.S has been a tough market to break in thanks to the neck-to-neck competition with many of the popular smartphones almost sharing the same price tag – around US $200.
“For us, the momentum we’re building is with building a phone we can offer for less than $650 [unsubsidized]. […] one of the biggest opportunities for us is that not everyone can afford a $650 phone. In the US, it seems that every [major] phone is $200, so we’re forced to challenge at the same price. That’s a playing field that’s a little harder. […] For where we’re at right now, the focus is to really get to 200 million phones a year through the current model.”
On a different note, Terry Myerson speaks about how iOS 5 was a disappointment, caring very little about the user experience and hardly bringing abroad any note-worthy changes apart from just adding a ‘fifth row of icons’.
On Microsoft manufacturing its own Windows Phone device, Terry doesn’t see that to happen any time soon as they are very much content with their partners and their Windows Phone handsets and are consistently working with them to help manufacture even better ones.
One thing we take from this conversation – Microsoft may not be that keen on manufacturing its own Windows Phone device or a ‘Surface Phone’ as the gossip mills are rumored to be suggesting. But who knows, even the Surface tablet was a complete mystery till the day of its launch.
