View Single Post
Posts: 28 | Thanked: 18 times | Joined on Apr 2010
#48
Originally Posted by Cue View Post
Guys and Gals, please calm down. At this rate the thread is either going to get locked by a mod or your posts are going to get deleted.
Please keep it clean.



I'd have to disagree with this, teens did give a damn though I'm not sure why it's teens we are concentrating on. Like I said smartphones have become more mainstream but it's not like MS was sitting around twiddling their thumbs or not releasing windows mobile phones when smartphones were picking up steam. There were loads released to combat the Iphone, one of the most famous ones (at least here in the UK) was the Xperia X1, but there was also the HTC HD1, 2, Touch pro, etc. These weren't aimed at the business user they were smartphones with media as one of their main selling points. I still remember the TV ads too, they weren't pushing the office side of things but the media playback. Teens did buy those phones. Some will associate their experience with it to WP7. why wouldn't they? You think brand association does not exist? you think somebody who had a good experience of one brands product would not be more likely to look at their succeeding product first? you think somebody who had a bad experience of one brands product would not be more likely to look at other brands first? In fact WP7 was very much about the rebranding, more than the code change. One of it's main changes was also to give a Zune-like experience to unify the two brands.

I also think you give teens way too much credit. I'm willing to bet rational decision making is suppressed by the desire to have the latest most popular device with most people. I went to the Flagship Nokia store to try my N900 but my decision was made before I tried the different phones because the things that annoy or amaze you about a phone often don't surface at a short shop visit, you've more than likely made up your mind before you walk in. If you walk in at all that is, I'm sure a lot of people don't even do that and just read internet hearsay, forums or reviews. I'm still convinced half the people bad mouthing ground up redesigned Symbian^3 on the internet haven't even tried it.
i put a lot of emphasis on teens because they generally are the first consumers of new tech products, especially when these products are considered cool, and smartphone is quite the definition of cool these days. i worked in a electronic stores for the last 2 years in sales and (maybe its not like that everywhere in the world but here in quebec) id say 80% of our sales of smartphones were to teenagers and young adults between 16 and 24 id say as average. i also make my mind before entering a store to buy a phone, but i am not a normal consumer and i am quite informed on new products as you must also be. you'd be suprised how many people still prefer to be advised by a salesman!

you are right that phones like the hd, hd2, x1, etc were marketed as media consumption devices but i think these phones were not too bad. they were only bad if you then compared them to the iphone. i remember the phone reviews back then, every new wm phone was the next iphone killer and the reviews were usually quite good (like for the att tilt i had). what changed everything was the app store in my opinion. the ability to get thousands of apps so easily was a huge difference from all the trouble you had to deal with on a wm phone and it changed the way we use our phone. so my point here is, when we look back at it, we can say it was ****, but at the time, especially before the iphone, it was the best we had and to me, it was quite good so im not sure everybody is mad at microsoft for their mobile OS. Personally, i dont like wp7 but i believe it has its chances of success