For Microsoft’s sake, I hope W(P)8 lives up to all the hype.

And for the record, I want them to succeed. Two players on the market is just not enough. But I’ve owned three Windows Mobile devices. And just the thought of my phone running anything from MS frightens me.

I’ll admit WP8 looks interesting, so I’m happy that’s going well. Looking forward to its release.

But just to recap, from a communications and marketing point of view… this was a bad strategy. If you can’t agree with that, I’m sure you could agree on thuis: just by looking at the numbers, it was not the right strategy.

Android has its strengths, but pointing to market share is like pointing to market share back in the days of PC vs Mac.  Sure Mac had some minuscule percentage, but a bit of marketing backing a good product – that number has significantly change in the past few years.  Of course while Microsoft is hoping people who got the ‘free’ android phone of last year will become converts – their real competition is iPhone users who are the most loyal to their phones.  Android has good market share right now, but I expect that to drop a bit honestly after so many crappy android phones come back up for upgrades.

Anyone who has owned an iPhone or Android and has sunk any cost or effort into buying and tuning apps isn’t going to want to start from scratch unless this phone can do stuff that theirs can’t.  MS can’t just sweep up the bottom few that haven’t bought smartphones yet, they have to displace Androids and iPhones and that doesn’t seem to be happening.

One strategy that worked for RIM, before they completely lost their way, was to market to the junior high/high school kids with cheap phone/texting and a few apps. I think that might work here, but MS additionally should strike turn-your-head deals ($20-$30 per month?) with the off contract vendors (Cricket, MetroPCS, Virgin, Boost, etc.). That might be one strategy that would get THIS parent to take a look.

Yes, this is a huge cost and risk and maybe even seems desperate for Microsoft, but how else do they turn heads. WP is a refreshing new mobile software but people naturally choose the Default when offered too many choices.

Giving an album, case, headphones, charging dock, xbox live subscription, even a complete xbox I guess (you’ll make the money back with the games they buy) can be considered a marketing strategy. They might just dump buckets full of these phones in the streets, throw ‘em out of helicopters or something. I bet that’s also a great “marketing strategy”. First the “smoked by Andr… I mean Windows Phone” campaign and now this? Is the communications department on vacation?

It looks to me as if the store (and Microsoft, maybe) is(/are) realising that no one is buying these phones. And that not even giving them away for free, with a contract, is enough to make enough people want to buy them. So let’s just hand ‘em out in return for anything.

To add insult to injury, the $10 gift card substite was not the wisest “symbol” for a Windows Phone. Kinda says: “We’re giving ‘em away for free, though we could’ve charged you ten whole bucks for ‘em.” A simple voucher might have been wiser.

Comscore numbers in January 2012 put Android at 48.6% of the market, compared to 29.5% for Apple and 4.4% for Microsoft.

You obviously don’t have an Android device running ICS either, nor have you ever used one.

I really do think Microsoft have a winner on their hands. But I totally agree with you, getting the people without smartphones onto a Windows phone is the best strategy. These people are probably running Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7 and these phones will be the fastest computing devices they are going to own for some time. They’ll love it.