Reply to post: Re: Hold on, if I read this right

NYPD head of IT doubles down on Windows smartphone idiocy

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Hold on, if I read this right

Was Microsoft really so desperate they made an offer to not only provide free Windows Phones, but buy 36K competitor phones in two years? Something about that sounds fishy.

I'm not so sure. Go back three years or so, and Slurp were indeed desperate to get traction in the enterprise market with their phones. At that point they still believed they'd be able to carve out a lucrative share of the phone market as the mythical "third ecosystem", but actual sales figures were poor. I suspect they'd have been sufficiently keen to win the NYPD contract that giving the phones away for free was seen as a good deal for Microsoft - and likewise the "buy the next one for you" promise. The $15-25m cost is chump change for MS, and they'd have hoped other police forces and public bodies would follow the NYPD lead, using the logic "if it's good enough for NYPD..."

Of course, what's actually happened is that it's all blown up in Microsoft's face, and all they've got to show for giving away the phones is some very potent brand damage for Windows Phone.

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