windows fo a product with so much
potential that had everything going for
it and yet one that failed spectacularly
despite the billions of dollars and the
priceless connections of Microsoft the
Windows Phone never took off and would
go down in history as one of Microsoft's
most expensive mistakes in this video
we're gonna look at the reasons behind
its failure and the actions Microsoft
could have taken to possibly prevent it
this video is brought to you by dashlane
keep your passwords safe and strong
across all your devices by registering
with the link in the description when
Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007
he took the smartphone world by storm
well how do I scroll through my list of
artists how do I do this I just take my
finger and I scroll up until then
smartphones had a big problem they had
small screens with interfaces that were
hard to navigate and the reason for that
was because half of the phone was
occupied by a keyboard with tiny buttons
you could hardly press with any
precision at all what Steve Jobs showed
to his ecstatic audience was a game
changer but it wasn't just Apple fans
that were watching the engineers at
Google which for the past two years had
been building a smartphone of their own
had to scrap their entire project and to
start over with a touchscreen design
their final product Android would arrive
more than a year later which point the
iPhone had taken the smartphone crown
the iPhones model was built on
exclusivity it was entirely produced by
Apple to establish maximal control over
the user experience and the quality of
the product which allowed Apple to
charge a premium for their phones to
succeed Android would have to adopt a
different strategy instead of going for
exclusivity Google tried to be
everyone's friend partnering up with as
many phone manufacturers as possible
with the selling point of their phones
being the fact that they were cheap yet
for a time the smartphone world was in
balance with Android and the iPhone
occupying very distinct segments of the
market and yet this balance would soon
be disturbed by another tech giant
Microsoft now out of the three companies
it was actually Microsoft that had the
most experience with mobile devices back
in 1996 Bill Gates unveiled what he
called the handheld PC which was really
more of a tiny laptop why best Tom
McGill from the window-seat group to
join me on stage and give us a quick
glimpse of some of the neat things that
are built in to the handheld PC for
those of you that might not have seen
one yet they'll talk a little bit about
the handheld PC and this happens to be
the Casio unit actually the Casio unit
is typical of the handheld PCs it's got
a physical keyboard the 480 by 240 by 2
bit per pixel screen serial court IR PC
card upgradable ROM two double-a
batteries so it's a pretty typical
handheld PC the operating system it ran
was known as Windows CE II which was
basically Windows 3 modified to function
on the lowest specifications possible
over the next decade Microsoft would add
features and develop this product line
extensively making another six full
releases between 2006 and 2008
Microsoft's mobile devices claimed a
fifteen percent market share greater
than any of their competitors except
Symbian by Nokia but this success is
exactly what blinded Microsoft to the
threat of the iPhone when Steve Ballmer
the CEO of Microsoft at the time was
asked about the iPhone his reaction well
let's say it hasn't aged very well Dave
let me ask you about the iPhone and the
zoom if I'm a Zune was getting some
traction and Steve Jobs goes to Macworld
and he pulls out this iPhone what was
your first reaction when you saw that
five hundred dollars fully subsidized
with the plan I said that isn't the most
expensive phone in the world and it
doesn't appeal to business customers
because it doesn't have a keyboard which
makes it not a very good email machine
what's even more priceless however is
the frankness of the next question how
do you compete with that though he
sucked out a lot of the spotlight in the
last few weeks because of what happened
it back to the math world not only with
the iPhone but with the new iPod if how
do you compete with that with the zoom
right now well let's take phones first
right now we're selling millions and
millions and millions of phones a year
Apple is selling zero phones a year
notice the stark difference between the
two men the reporter very clearly sees
the innovations of the iPhone as a
threat to the old smartphone
establishment but Microsoft CEO can
barely look past the sales numbers and
just in case you're thinking he's an
exception the CEOs of blackberry and
palm were equally skeptical of the new
iPhone it took Microsoft a full year of
declining market share to finally
realize that something had to be done
unlike Microsoft blackberry sales were
still increasing which gave them a sense
of confidence they never recovered from
now as they say is better late than
never and when Microsoft finally got
around to it their development was
actually pretty fast Microsoft began
developing a touchscreen based mobile
device in late 2008 and it took them
only two years to get it ready for
market what Steve Ballmer unveiled was
indeed a very unique product whose
advancement of smartphone design isn't
really widely recognized but it should
be at a time when the iPhone and Android
were stuck with static icons the Windows
Phone gave you tiles with live
information overall critics had much to
praise in terms of design the Windows
Phone user experience was right up there
next to Apple and because Microsoft had
very strict requirements for the
hardware used by phone manufacturers all
of the early windows phones were very
powerful machines for their time and yet
Microsoft ran into a big problem very
early on you see Microsoft was trying to
do something very difficult
it was emulating Apple in trying to
establish strict control over the user
experience in hardware but unlike Apple
it wasn't actually making it cell phones
this approach made the Windows Phone a
very refined product but the degree of
control Microsoft wanted made working
with them much more difficult for phone
manufacturers compared to working with
Android unsurprisingly most phone
manufacturers decided to partner up with
Google which left Microsoft in a very
bad position it had a great product and
no one to make it the only saving grace
for Microsoft was a lucky connection
when Nokia replaced their CEO in
September 2010 the new guy Stephen Elop
was a former Microsoft executive in the
first item on his agenda was to try to
restore Nokia's declining market share
by abandoning Symbian and pivoting
towards Windows Phone now you can tell
that this was a very premeditated plan
because this massive transition during
which Nokia completely changed their
product offerings happened in the span
of a single year Nokia started selling
their first Windows Phone in November
2011 and I can tell you right away that
this was possible thanks to the billions
of dollars Microsoft poured into Nokia
as platform support payments Nokia was
supposedly paying Microsoft licensing
fee but in reality it was actually
getting 250 million dollars back from
Microsoft every quarter which more than
made up for their expenses of course the
other phone manufacturers knew that this
was happening which pushed them even
farther away from Microsoft after all
why would they fund their own
development and pay a licensing fee to
Microsoft when Nokia was getting it all
for free
effectively Microsoft had gone all-in
with Nokia and there was no going back
but sadly for Microsoft it was far too
late by the time Microsoft solved his
production issue four years after the
introduction of the iPhone it had fallen
to a 2% market share
nobody was developing applications for
the Windows Phone and why would they
considering that Android and iOS were
clearly the winners here for its first
three years the Windows Phone app store
was empty
it didn't have Instagram it didn't have
YouTube it barely had anything by 2013
the stock price of Nokia had fallen by
75%
at which point angry shareholders were
threatening to just fire Stephen Elop
and get rid of Microsoft altogether in
the end that didn't happen Microsoft
instead just purchased Nokia's mobile
phone division for 7.2 billion dollars
in 2014
here's the funny thing though the very
next year Microsoft who wrote off their
investment for seven point six billion
dollars and then to top things off they
fired almost 8,000 employees Microsoft
kept Windows Phone on life support until
October 2017 but it was clearly dead a
long time before that
and yet it's easy to imagine the
different paths Windows Phone could have
taken had it only not been as greedy
with its original philosophy at
Microsoft being willing to compromise on
its control over production it would
have easily convinced the big
manufacturers to use Windows Phone
instead of Android afterall back then
Google had practically no ecosystem to
speak of while Microsoft had been a
software Titan for decades there is a
lesson to be learned here about the
importance of compromising in business
but there's one sphere in life where you
shouldn't compromise and that is keeping
all your passwords secure luckily for
you with dashlane managing your
passwords is a breeze - Lang can
generate strong passwords and can store
them safely across all of your devices
automatically filling them in when you
need them - Lane is available on every
popular desktop and mobile device and it
would have even been available on
Windows Phone if Microsoft hadn't
screwed it up
on top of managing your passwords - Lane
also offers the VPN for every one of
your devices and it also monitors the
dark rub to make sure your data hasn't
been
by hackers you're probably catching my
drift here but dashlane really is great
so great in fact that I'm gonna give you
a free trial of dashlane and 10% off
their premium service if your register
using the link in the description
use the code business-casual to get
started anyway thank you for watching
make sure to LIKE subscribe leave a
comment check out both my skill share
classes I just released a new one and
we're gonna be seeing each other again
in two weeks until then stay smart