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Why is WinPhone a failure but OSX a success?

7 points by netpenthe ↗ HN
OSX has about 9% market share and has taken a long time to get there.

i don't think it is considered a massive failure

c.f.

Windows Phone which has about 4% of the phone market and growing fast, but is considered by many to be a failure.

why

15 comments

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electic
First off, I think you are talking about iOS not OS X. If you are talking about OS X then you need to look at margins, not marketshare.
lostlogin
iOS has more than 9%, but I suspect your right about the margins. If your 9% share makes you the most profitable PC maker, what's the point in being the leader in market share?
chris_wot
If you become the market leader then you make bigger bucks.
lostlogin
This is a good question. I don't pretend to know the answer, however the following may be related. In print, design, photography, music etc, OSX has far more than 10% of the market. Macs are a standard in small but important markets. The (so-called) creatives for example. I don't see an area where this is true for smart phones.
replax
I am not sure I agree. Many design companies and advertisement copmanies I know charge extra if their project has to involve anything to be done on a mac. eg if the client wants a mac compatible file, final cut project etc, because of the added overhead as macs apparently don't play nice with other systems.

also, they dont have any advantage over a dedicated windows machine anymore stability wise.

bennyg
Where I went to college, The University of Alabama, their design departments in the College of Art and Art History only had Macs in the computer labs where graphic design was taught. And the Advertising department only had Macs in the computer labs across the whole College of Communication and Information Sciences - which includes Advertising, PR, Communication Studies, Journalism, Videography, etc. When it came down to the amount of computers with the Adobe CS software packages on them, the main Library on campus was about 95% Macs, and you had to go up 3 floors before you finally got to a computer lab that had Windows with CS on them. And there were only about 8 of them.

Just one data point, I know, but my college was basically training people to work on a Mac if you used any Adobe CS software.

geuis
Who exactly is considering Windows Phone a failure?

When iOS came on the scene, it was mostly a different kind of animal than any other phone. There wasn't really any similar device so it got first-comer status. Android was able to compete by taking an opposite model. Be cheap and on as many devices as possible, which is more or less what Windows did back in the '80's to out compete Macintosh. Windows Phone took a very different UI/UX approach and was late into what had become a competitive market.

Considering all that, 4% market share and continuing growth is good. If it was stagnant or shrinking, that would be something different.

covgjai
Here in India, Windows phone is not only gaining sales it is also gaining market share relative to others. Windows Phone momentum has never been as high as it is now.

I think it is same all over the world.

froze
Hmm...interesting. Which part of India is this happening?
mcintyre1994
To preface this, I think it's unfair to consider Windows Phone a failure at this point.

I think it's a matter of business models. OS X, like iOS has Apple hardware and software, huge margins and makes Apple the most profitable OEM in both markets.

Windows Phone, more like Android (and Windows of course) allows multiple manufacturers to provide it, and all those manufacturers who also produce Android phones are doing better with Android. It's not a totally fair comparison because they pay for WP licenses, but then they pay for MS patents with Android too.

There's also the issue of Nokia, an iconic manufacturer who bet everything on Windows Phone. It's not fair, but Windows Phone has the pressure of keeping Nokia alive.

Basically, Microsoft took the Windows approach to Windows Phone, in a market Android is entrenched with a similar (cheaper for OEMs) approach. In that light, 4% against 90% or so for Windows with the same model looks like a failure.

GoldenMonkey
OSX is a failure compared to Windows Desktop Marketshare. And this is important because software is built for Windows first and OSX later or never. Case in point, mac users often 'need to' run VM's to run windows apps. Windows is the dominant platform for the desktop.

Windows Phone on the other hand is a failure because at 4% marketshare, Microsoft has no workable business model. They are losing money to play catch up.

Carriers have cheaper and better margin alternatives to pushing windows phones. Developers don't have the user base to justify apps for the platform. Consumers don't see the compelling reason to switch from iOS or android.

The sad thing is, the windows phone business (6.x) was doing great at 16% market share before iOS and android. Microsoft got disrupted by new technology.

mamcx
For a lot of reasons.

OSX have a profitable section of the market. Is not the size what determine if something is or not a failure, is your POSITION in that market.

Having 90% of all the non-paying customer VS 10% of all the paying customers is a different position for a for-profit company. In this case, you truly want the 10%.

If WinPhone have a desirable portion of the market, untouched/unchallenged by others, then could be called a success.

Le't use a contrived example: vim/emacs have a strong position in a desirable sub-set of the developer mindshare. His position is so strong, that no-IDE to date have be able to destroy it.

Then if also is growing, is something powerful.

Let's play the (almost incorrect) stereotype of the Apple users: Them are hipster, richer, more creative, select for themselves the gadgets, etc. And pay. This segment, even at %1, is valuable. And if nobody else touch it, then is more than valuable, is unchallenged. Could be say: Is bullet-prof, failure-prof.

And then android. Android is for geeks (and the masses that wanna cheap). Have the subset of geeks is desirable. Probably, a lot of android users hate so bad Apple that will never use it. The position of Android in that case is solid.

Both have solid position.

Windows phone? No have it.

tsagi
Mac OS X is a necessity for some users specially in media related industries and not only. It also manages to offer most of the software regular users want and Apple makes a profit from Mac sales.

As hardware and software Windows Phone is by no means a failure. Nokia creating beautiful devices with good cameras and the fact that even in low specs WP runs snappy is promising and helped a lot to achieve this 4%. But WP is not yet profitable. One of the reasons Windows Phone is considered to be a failure is that it hasn't managed to create an ecosystem where most popular apps exist at the three years of its existing form (counting from Windows Phone 7).