New Lumia mobes nudge Microkia ever closer to biz customers It was strange to see Lumia Windows Phones announced yesterday with Stephen Elop absent – the Canadian was nowhere to be found, for the first time. We spent a bit of time with Not-Nokia’s new Nokias, and the 2014 strategy for Microsoft’s huge new hardware division is a bit clearer. In all, Nokia launched eleven Windows Phone 8 …
That was a huge mistake, at least if they could have relegated it to being an add-on module.
The ideal solution would have been to create a product to handle all employee-generated data that would replace the PIM in Exchange as well as handle documents and settings. Essentially make a private version of the account syncing services that are now part of Windows Live and OneDrive.
Done right, it would sync data between the employee's documents folder and their phone while providing the company a method to track where that data is stored, where its been sent, and the ability to delete that data if required (assuming it stays within company-controlled assets); it would also allow an employee to report a lost or stolen phone to the company, the company would then remote-wipe it, the employee would then receive a new phone with all their documents, apps, and settings already in place.
My firm of 4500 staff has had a compulsory Windows Phone policy for a couple of years. The standard offering changes every few months as we search for a model that works properly.
The top three issues seem to be:
1. Many users complain of attempting to answer calls only to find that the screen will not respond to touch, or if it does the answer button is greyed out.
2. Battery life (my own example struggles to make 30 hours on standby, and a 30 minute call can eat half the battery)
3. Forwarding even small attachments is complete luck of the draw, and you don't know if it has worked until the client phones up to ask you where it is (if your battery hasn't run out and you can answer the call!)
Needless to say, all those with enough clout get iPhones.
Similar experience. We have just been bought out, and our new sister company has a "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft policy". So employees all get Windows Phone handsets. They are pretty much universally hated, they are a buggy mess, with even basic functionality broken and failing to live up to it's promise. It this case, I suspect someone will get fired very soon for buying Microsoft....
We have already decided we won't be going that way. BYOD works really we for us, with MobileIron, and the phones we supply are high end Android devices (S5, Nexus5, Xperia Z2), or latest iPhone. Marketing guys usually choose the iPhone, engineering guys one of the Androids. The point is, we don't have issues from end users, they are happy with their products, and they all work for the most part. (if anything, it's usually the S5 out of that lot that's trouble).
"1. Many users complain of attempting to answer calls only to find that the screen will not respond to touch, or if it does the answer button is greyed out."
Do you work in a chocolate factory? I have seen this issue a couple of times across several thousand WP users and it is invariably because the handset is so dirty that the proximity detector thinks the phone is being held against a head and therefore disables the screen and buttons..
"2. Battery life (my own example struggles to make 30 hours on standby, and a 30 minute call can eat half the battery)"
Always due to applications. There are battery profiling tools in WP 8.1 to work out the problem apps and disabling them running in the background.
"3. Forwarding even small attachments is complete luck of the draw"
Never seen or heard of any issue with this.
It's getting harder and harder to get excited by these things.
The attraction for the business market isn't there. There are no valuable business applications available on this platform. Nobody wants to bother with it.
As far as Entreprise buyers are concerned Nokia is dead and therefore WindowsPhones are stillbirth.
Worldwide media keeps trying to get people interested but it's just not happening.
WP represents 2.5% of the market, they should get 2.5% of the coverage.
Nadella seems like a clever enough guy, hopefully he'll pull the plug on this sorry experiment before Microsoft loses too much billions on it
"The attraction for the business market isn't there."
Over 20% market share says it is.
"There are no valuable business applications available on this platform."
Not true - there are now over 300,000 WP apps and most enterprise stuff is there.
"As far as Entreprise buyers are concerned Nokia is dead and therefore WindowsPhones are stillbirth."
No that's Blackberry. Nokia's (and Microsoft's) shareprices continue to rise.
It's a decent phone operating system, but why did they have to make people wait for so long to get it? And why miss out features that are obvious, especially when other operating systems have them? For instance, in Office, which is made by Microsoft, there is no way (no way that I can see) to get a word count of a Word document. Whereas on the Android AND IOS platforms, neither of which are made by Microsoft, you can do it. It's details like this that cause it to be not considered as a serious alternative...even by those people who don't care about the 'app stores'.
No don't laugh and I'm not on drugs.
As an ex-iPhone 4 user that actually just used it as a phone (yes you read right) and didn't spend ££'s buying useless apps (Apple are rich enough), my Lumina 625 WP8.1 is a very nice device, a lot quicker than IP4 and handles my corporate and private emails accounts perfectly. Yeh the camera may not be as good as the IP4 but the battery life is far superior. Now if only M$ can get it apps store with decent content that people will use, don't concentrate on trashy games and fix a few bugs, especially wireless login page and keep the price low, they have a outside chance!
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