Windows Phone (WP) is widely considered one of Microsoft, and the company has since retired it. Many tech have offered various explanations as to how WP ended up this way.
One of the most obvious reasons for the failure of the operating system in question is the lack of app support for the platform, an area where Android and iOS excel. However, a Reddit user, /u/jollycode, who says he has worked as a Software Development Engineer for Nokia, presented some other issues that have led to the failure of WP devices.
/u/jollycode, mentioned the Ovi Store and said it was very difficult to manage. Ovi was an ambitious plan by Nokia for its Symbian devices, which ultimately suffered the same fate as the rest.
However, what is interesting is that he revealed that: "Despite so many negatives from the consumer side, programming for WP has always been better than on Android.".
The four main reasons that seem to have contributed to the failure of WP are as follows:
Google undervaluation
“Apple was a strong player and Microsoft knew it, but Google was new to the OS space and wasn’t taken seriously. Android wasn’t taken very seriously either, but the real value was in Google’s services: when Google cut Microsoft off from YouTube, Maps, Gmail, etc., it really made WP look cheap.”
Bill Gates himself recently stated that not paying close attention to Android was perhaps their biggest mistake.
It seems that at that time, Google was really worried about its future. That's why the company focused exclusively on Android, offering most of it for free in order to win the game, which it eventually succeeded in. Its initial focus was to surpass Windows Mobile, but then its biggest competitor became Apple's iOS.
Windows 8 failures
“Before Windows 8, WP had a lot of attention from users.” The former Nokia states that the bad reputation of Windows 8 could have negatively affected Windows Phone as well because users may have mixed them up, even though there were different teams working on each of them.
Microsoft's reputation
"Microsoft's reputation back then was still terrible, which meant that young people who grew up hating Microsoft were turning to other platforms.".
Possibly because the company has a history of monopoly in the technology sector, it led to this situation, which no longer exists.
Loyal fans
This is certainly one of the reasons we have all noticed, just think of the lines outside Apple stores since the first iPhone was released.
The same goes for Android. People who have tried Google's open and customizable operating system find it very difficult to switch to Apple's more closed realm.
“Until 2014, people were pretty comfortable with iOS or Android, and even if WP got apps and everything else that they didn’t have before, there wasn’t really a compelling reason for a user to switch. Even now, I feel like the number of people switching from iOS to Android is pretty low,” said Jollycode.
