Microsoft's Windows Phone 7: When bad things happen to good phones
Windows Phone 7 devices began shipping last October to largely positive reviews. I had a chance to check one out and saw enough to like that I seriously considered making WP7 my first smartphone — and my first Windows phone.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's mobile restart has followed a clean arc so far: the fresh-start relaunch announced in October 2010, handsets reaching US shelves by early November, and then, unusually, praise crossing platform lines — including a take from a self-described iPhone lover who found enough to like in the software. For a company rebuilding credibility after years of mobile drift, that review pattern was the best-case opening.
First-order effects
- Microsoft now has to convert launch-window goodwill into sustained sales while patching whatever early gaps prompted the 'bad things' framing, with no user base to cushion slow momentum.
Second-order effects
- App developers sizing up a third ecosystem get a riskier signal: a well-reviewed platform with early turbulence raises the cost of committing engineering time alongside the iPhone.
- Retail and carrier partners carrying WP7 inventory from the November launch depend on how quickly Microsoft closes the shortfalls before shelf space gets reallocated to faster-moving phones.
Third-order effects
- If acclaim keeps failing to become share, the industry lesson hardens into an uncomfortable one for Microsoft: smartphone competition is decided by ecosystem gravity and distribution, not device quality — precisely the assumption its relaunch was built to challenge.
The trend: Windows Phone 7 is becoming the test case for whether review acclaim can overcome ecosystem inertia in a smartphone market already consolidated around entrenched platforms.