Microsoft scaled back its presence at CES in January and it’s taking the same approach at this week’s Mobile World Congress, but does that mean Windows Phone and Windows 8 are slipping even further into the distance behind Apple and Google? Not necessarily.
While some experts think CES and MWC are missed opportunities for Microsoft to continue spreading its new Windows OS message, other, smaller events over the past few months suggest a growing grassroots movement of Windows fandom.
Despite not having a booth or giving a keynote at Mobile World Congress, Windows is sure to still have a presence. A couple new PC-tablet hybrids are expected to be shown off and it’s rumored that a few other phones, tablets and phablets might make an appearance. AMD, Nokia, LG and Huawei are among the manufactures that might be displaying devices running Windows 8.
Beyond the convention circuit, Windows has been making some reasonably significant strides lately. Nokia had a better Q4 of 2012 than predicted and the sale of 4.4 million Lumia handsets helped that. On top of that, sales of Windows Phones in Europe jumped over the past year, passing Blackberry, according to GigaOm.
- Great Britain: 5.9 percent, up from 2.2 percent
- Italy: 13.9 percent, up from 2.8 percent
- Spain: 1.8 percent, up from 0.4 percent
More recently, devices featuring the Windows OS were voted into the No. 1 spot of Engadget’s 2012 Readers’ Choice Awards in both the smartphone and tablet contest – beating out what are commonly thought of as the most popular iOS and Android devices (though the voting and campaigning makes these poll results a bit dicey). The Windows division of Microsoft also saw a revenue increase after the launch of Windows 8 – up 24% over 2011.
Though the Windows Phone Store doesn’t have nearly as many apps as Apple’s App Store or Google Play, Microsoft announced this week that they now have 130,000 apps and have seen significant increases – especially in terms of attracting new developers – since the release of Windows 8. From TechCrunch:
App downloads, the company says, have increased by 75% since the Windows Phone 8 launch late last year and paid app revenue has increased 91%.
The Windows Phone developer ecosystem, too, is growing quickly according to Microsoft. More than 40,000 new developers registered with the company in the first 90 days since the launch of Windows Phone 8 and there are now over 15,000 apps in the store that leverage features only available in Windows Phone 8. SDK downloads, too, are up and have now topped 500,000 since October 30, 2012.
While growing their app ecosystem, Windows might just be shaking up the app world. The TechCrunch article notes that the developer increase might be explained by the fact that for a few days surround the launch of Windows 8 Microsoft reduced the price of registering as a developer (from $99/year to $8 for the first year). While this may have artificially inflated the number of registered developers, it also gave interested and semi-interested developers an easy, low-cost in, which is a great way to attract developers who might have otherwise stuck to Android and Apple.
Windows Surface is also contributing to the HTML5-native app battle, which will put it in a good position if native apps end up subcoming to the openness of the web. Along with other tablets and Firefox OS’ new Marketplace, Windows Surface allows users to treat web apps like native apps. The “pin to start” feature of Windows Surface might make some popular native apps unnecessary. Here’s how it works, according to Derek Crockett of WinBeta:
Take Pandora as an example. Using either Surface tablet, open up Internet Explorer 10, navigate to the Pandora site, register or sign-in to your Pandora account, and choose the “Pin to start” option at the bottom of the screen. A small tile that you can use later for quick access to the Pandora site, will be placed on the start screen, giving you full access to the Pandora service; no app needed. …
Some sites, such as Facebook, change their services so often that their official app lags behind what they offer on the web. This makes the “Pin to start” method even more viable, because users will be accessing the most current version of the product.
It’s still up in the air whether Microsoft/Windows will ever give Apple and Google a real run for their money. Plenty of people out there are naysayers and the OS certainly has a lot of catching up to do. But keep your ear to the ground, if little wins like this keep cropping up, we could have a viable third place in the mobile OS race.