Microsoft training “hundreds” of salesmen to improve Windows Phone sales

By Tom Warren, on 2nd Sep 11 2:09 pm with 92 Comments

Achim Berg, corporate vice president of Windows Phone Marketing

Microsoft is training “hundreds” of salesmen worldwide to demonstrate Windows Phone devices.

Microsoft’s head of Windows Phone marketing, Achim Berg, believes that the company will reclaim its lost market share thanks to a series of new marketing efforts Microsoft and HTC have planned. Berg believes that recent forecasts by IDC and Gartner, which predict 20% Windows Phone market share by 2015, are conservative estimates. Speaking at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin on Thursday, Berg revealed that Microsoft, HTC and others will run new advertising campaigns for the upcoming HTC Titan and Radar Windows Phone 7.5 devices.

HTC is planning to train salesmen alongside Microsoft to better demonstrate its Windows Phone products. Bloomberg reports that the plans involve “hundreds” of salesmen worldwide. Microsoft has witnessed success with female and young consumers and Berg revealed the company plans to build on this going forward. HTC revealed on Thursday that it is the number one seller of Windows Phones worldwide. The company offers five Windows Phone devices in the U.S. and three in Europe, excluding the recently announced Titan and Radar devices.

“We’re seeing an extremely positive response” to the Windows Phone operating system, HTC’s President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Florian Seiche, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We’re now thinking that this year is a great time to get that momentum accelerated, to reach out to a broader group of customers.” Berg explained that Microsoft’s slow Windows Phone growth is a long game. “This is a completely new platform, it takes time,” said Berg. “It took time with Android, it took time with Apple. We have to show that we’re very capable and that we have the fastest and easiest phone.”

Nokia is also set to announce its Windows Phone offerings in the coming months. Nokia’s entry is expected to accelerate Windows Phone adoption thanks to the company’s strong links with carriers and worldwide distribution channels.

  • Sumit Dutta

    It should have been started long back. But it is never late.

    • http://twitter.com/Translatethis27 Translatethis27

      It seems like nobody wants Wp7.

  • Sergio Iacobucci

    Definitely needed! Good move MS

  • Frylockns86

    That guy looked like Larry Paige for a second. I had to do a double take.

    • Aaron

      Haha, thats what I thought to.

    • Guest

      LOL. Maybe they should use that. I see a kickass series of viral Youtube videos featuring him jumping on private jets, dating beautiful women, being pursued by paparazzi, all while using his WP7 phone.” 

      Or maybe he could just sit around whining about the patents he got outbid on ;-)

  • http://twitter.com/adamUCF Adam

    It should be “thousands” IMO.

  • http://twitter.com/adamUCF Adam

    It should be “thousands” IMO.

    • http://www.winrumors.com Tom W

      Without a doubt but I am sure that’s the goal long term.

    • Srini R

      Very True

    • Guest

      80:20 rule applies, especially during this critical early stage. Once WP7 gains some momentum you can expect the carriers to start making more of an effort on their own.

    • http://www.facebook.com/richeymeister Mark Richey

      Maybe they are very quick sales people ; )

  • Delta470

    Should be “Thousands” instead of “Hundreds” people mock me for my WP7 w/Mango on it but then I start showing them everything I can do especially without an app and then they start to want one.   The only downfall is that with the stores hiring young people the younger people are stuck on the apples and googles since that’s what their generation is all about.

    Get the corporations that run exchange servers to get Windows Phones and then it’s all cheers from there.

    • Anonymous

      I’m 18 and work at Vodafone UK.. I find it much easier to sell windows phones to younger people than any other… It helps I use one and can show the integration in full glory because the dummy units are pathetic all bare. 

    • Anonymous

      ever since the wp7 was released, i’ve entered 5+ retail stores and non of them had anything good to say about wp7.
      I went back to the o2 store where i bought my HD7 and some dude was still telling me how crappy it was and that i should go for an android :O …

      thats untill i took out my HD7 and skooled him a bit.

    • http://www.facebook.com/logan.ny Logan del Sol

      I’ve noticed that every time I go to carrier shops to look at Windows Phones, I am dissuaded by the employees, despite the fact that I seem to be more familiar with it than they and at the very least am certain in what I’m looking for.

      Some of their points are warranted (slimmer market, no front facing camera or mobile hotspot… until Mango), but their overall tone and subsequent suggestions seem a little blind.

      Of course they have instructions to sell certain phones, but they seem to jump the gun before asking what people are actually looking for.

      I have an Android now, and some of the visual inconsistency and choppy UX makes it seem mediocre. I love that it has a ton of capabilities (e.g. compare what you can attach to an MMS in iOS and WP7 to what Android is capable of from the get-go) and conveniences and that the market is pretty well-stocked. I also like being able to install custom ROMs on my phone, but then again this is partly due to the often-unsatisfactory built-in software options.

      Even so, Android tends to get the short end of the stick when it comes to applications. Some developers promise applications (e.g. Instagram) on the platform that take an eternity to find release, and when they do, they look half-hearted. It’s pathetic, and it isn’t entirely Android’s fault, but the myriad of devices and their respective OEM skins doesn’t help the situation.

      So as for the marketplace being anemic on WP7, I’m used to it. Besides, it’s growing quickly enough.

      As far as the rest of the user experience goes, WP7 (with Mango) trumps Android and arguably iOS as well. Sure, there are limitations when compared to Android, but that isn’t entirely the point. I’d like to use something that feels more whole, but I think that carrier shops tend to push the specs and big numbers more than anything else.

    • Anonymous

      ever since the wp7 was released, i’ve entered 5+ retail stores and non of them had anything good to say about wp7.
      I went back to the o2 store where i bought my HD7 and some dude was still telling me how crappy it was and that i should go for an android :O …

      thats untill i took out my HD7 and skooled him a bit.

    • Guest

      Another excellent example of something that people have been complaining about for months but still isn’t fixed. Why isn’t every single carrier demo unit fully loaded with sample data? How do you demo the advantages of WP7 while leaving out most of what makes it different? How friggin hard is it to create and standard image, get that out to every carrier, and then ride their ass to make sure it gets out to the retail store with a minimum of delay? Audit the stores and link having those units in place to coop marketing dollars.

    • http://www.facebook.com/richeymeister Mark Richey

      I agree. On one end of the store they had one with no photos, no fake accounts set up, no apps installed other than the preloaded. At the other end, there was content. At another shop they had a store XBox Live set up on one. Even though it was set so you couldn’t download (family safety set)  you at least got to play with the Avatar and see content and game points.

    • http://www.facebook.com/richeymeister Mark Richey

      Yeah, here in Japan I stopped in a shop just before the release of the Fujitsu phone to try it out. The sales guy tried as try to sell me on waiting for an iPhone 5, even though I told him I was witing for a Mango phone on my carrier. “How about this iphone 4. Great phone.” Told him my wife had one (she hates it) and that I had a 3GS. I hate it when you tell someone what you  want and they try to convince you you want something else. He did finally say, come back when you are ready to buy a phone cause he knew I was dead set on not another Apple and showed no interest in Android.

    • Dlf_oki_2011

      Similar here in Okinawa, except the salesmen genuinely seemed to enjoy playing with my Trophy. I went on the day of release and asked for a WP7. He didn’t try to dissuade me, but admitted he knew nothing about it. I’ll have to take a trip back down there to see what he says.

    • Morgan

      I agree. I had a sales person flat out tell me that I was nuts for getting WP7. She asked why I liked it. I showed her the phone and why and she was blown away. She had ZERO idea what this device and OS was capable of.

  • Delta470

    Should be “Thousands” instead of “Hundreds” people mock me for my WP7 w/Mango on it but then I start showing them everything I can do especially without an app and then they start to want one.   The only downfall is that with the stores hiring young people the younger people are stuck on the apples and googles since that’s what their generation is all about.

    Get the corporations that run exchange servers to get Windows Phones and then it’s all cheers from there.

  • Anonymous

    Not unless you woo the customers with the wooing handsets.

  • J A

    This Berg guy better do a better job at Windows Phone TV ads or lose his job. The TV ads they ran were all useless, never showed anything about Windows Phone everyday use but simply shows “how to glance and go” aka “how to put your phone away”. He had better deliver this time around be be axed, learn frmo iPhone ads, simple and straight to the point with lots of everyday use uncluttered visual scenarios.

    • Guest

      Yeah, talking a good story isn’t the same as delivering one. And so far both the WP7 marketing and adoption have been poor. So maybe he should promise less and do more. I’m also disappointed in how incredibly slow they’ve been to respond to this obvious issue which others have been complaining about for half a year now. And forget the slow response, why wasn’t it anticipated and included in the launch plans? They’ve been in this industry for a decade. Did MS really think carrier reps were suddenly going to promote WP over Android or iPhone? Could they be that out of touch? Apparently, yes.

      WP is a good product that is being allowed to fail through mismanagement. I blame Andy Less, this marketing joker, and Steve Ballmer who is board-challenged to improve this area of their business and directly overseeing Lees, yet it’s been the typical MS clusterfuck so far: limited hardware availability at launch, poor communication, the update fiasco, limited to no carrier rep training, weird commercials that for the most part don’t show the product in action, etc.

    • BieberHole69

      sort of tough to show the best features when they all happen to be on Mango, not the 7.1 OS that shipped. Don’t get me wrong, but man the difference with Mango on the device is night and day.

      I tell anroid/iphone users about all the improvments and their reply is “oh my phone already has that.” I just let them bask in their ignorance.  

      tough sell without Mango.

    • Guest

      There’s some truth there. They released early because otherwise they knew they were done. And they were probably right. Nokia for example would have chosen Android.

      But it’s clear now that they weren’t ready and that Mango is actually their first real contender.

  • Anonymous

    I’m not sure if the HTC devices will be enough for HTC on this platform. While they are good phones, they lack a new and fresh look. It is good that HTC – different than Samsung – has its own style of product design but these two new devices don’t look fresh enough IMHO. The Radar for example does look like a Nexus One on some parts but still is much thicker. 

    • http://twitter.com/RobertCFP Robert Wade

      Ummm…. new and fresh look?  Exactly how?  Seriously, show me a single Android phone that has a “new and fresh look”.  You certainly can’t show that with the iPhone.  And this isn’t a slam, necessarily, against any of them.  There’s just only so many configurations/variations you can go with.  Let’s leave the slide-out/flip-down keyboard versions out of this for a second, and just look at the screen-only chassis. When it comes down those designing those, you have essentially two options: squared or rounded.  Oh, okay, two more options: bezel-less or not.  How do you differentiate there?  And where’s your market?  My point is that until the PUBLIC demands a new paradigm in design, about the only differentiation you’re going to see is going to be what you’ve already seen: subtle.

    • Guest

      Good points. It’s reasonable to expect the hardware market to coalesce at some not too distant point around a fairly common design and set of features. We’re maybe a year or two away from that, especially with smartphone prices expected to drop to around $350 on average by next year. Then most of the innovation will occur at the software level, as it has with PCs. There’ll probably always be someone pushing the design envelope and offering better quality materials at higher prices a la Macbook Pros, but that’s likely to be a niche player unless Apple suddenly decides to dump its 4x industry margins while continuing to innovate on the hardware side. But the rumor is they’re going to dump prices by offering a lower cost version of the 3GS or 4.  

    • Anonymous

      I’m not asking for a new paradigm. What I want is just a bit more innovation and freshness on the hardware side from HTC. Windows Phone is the most modern mobile OS but these phones do look like Android phones 2 years ago. And as I said, the Radar is even thicker than my 2 year old Android Nexus One and has the *exact* same shape without the cool features the Nexus One has like dock connectors, an LED trackball and two microphones.

      Samsung has invented two new display technologies in 2 years (Super AMOLED and SAMOLED Plus). They have very thin devices. Nokia will most likely introduce a device made out of one piece of poly carbonate that comes in vivid colors.

      Android devices now have 3D cameras, NFC, styluses, almost everything you can imagine on a smartphone

      I’m not saying that these two HTC devices are bad. I’m just asking myself if it will be enough? The only real new thing here are front-facing cameras which were much needed. Nothing else really new to say “wow”.

      And keep in mind, these Mango devices don’t have to compete against the actual Android devices or the iPhone 4, they have to compete against Ice Cream Sandwich devices, maybe a Nexus Prime and the next iPhone.

      I just have a bad feeling about what will happen to Windows Phone.

    • Anonymous

      I see what you’re saying.  Looks aside, why would a so called hardware partner not try to design a fresh  or more modern device especially for a revolutionary OS like WP Metro?

      I have two possibilities that may help with this:

      1) Everyone is waiting for Nokia to set the standard and then copy.

      2) OEM’s were not anxious to spend more money on new designs and features on a OS that didn’t 
          show any signs of initial market acceptance.  I think now the excitement of Mango and how well 
          it works, may convince OEM’s to invest more and take some more financial risks on the new OS.

    • Anonymous

      Let’s hope so! Because if you think about it, one could argue that HTC already gave up on Windows Phone in some way. They started with a decent set of 3 devices and the HTC Surround had some unique features. Now they have two “random” devices, IMO.

    • Guest

      I don’t think they’ve given up. These devices take a lot of time to get from design to market. HTC didn’t work too hard on their first WP devices and probably still isn’t. MistaWet’s #2 is accurate. OEMs were in wait and see mode and Android was selling gangbusters, so none of them cared too much.

      However, a lot depends on what happens with Nokia. If N can give WP some momentum, then that will make it more attractive to other OEMs. Also, Google’s recent MMI acquisition is not going to make Android OEMs comfortable. Nor is Apple’s success in having Android-based devices banned from markets. It’s certainly an uphill battle for MS now that they fucked up so badly. But it’s not over just yet.

    • Anonymous

      You can do it through different materials and different graphic design. Why are all the phones plastic black rectangle. Brushed aluminum would look good or adding color and graphic drawings wouldn’t be bad.Maybe it doesn’t matter since so many people put protective cases on the phones. 

    • Anonymous

      Thank you Wade for your great post.  I’ve been trying to convey this very message on other forums but just not as eloquently as you.  

  • Anonymous

    Well first they need to train the people who shows off the products at their product launches. The guy showing off the phones to Engadget said there was no Twitter integration on the HTC phones.

  • Anonymous

    ….this will  hopefully help sales personell to stop telling customers that Windows Mobile (!) is old, laggy technology when asked for WP7 devices…. I believe that incentives in cash also could help to “convince” the sales staff to have a closer look to WP7…..

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=11814278 Chris Woelfel

    It’s good that this is happening…they need to do this for the phone companies that SELL these products though.

  • Anonymous

    I’m curious, can you buy Windows Phones in these Microsoft Stores in the U.S.?

    • http://twitter.com/samsabri Sam Sabri

      Yes you can! I’ve been to three MS stores, the one in San Diego, Mission Viejo and Costa Mesa. Every time I’ve gone they have every single WP on display somewhere in the store. Plus really great laptops. 

    • Anonymous

      what did buy there ?

    • Anonymous

      Thx. Well then they should open stores in major cities around the world and focus a bit more on Windows Phones there. Impressive stores in London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo to spread the word. Shouldn’t be that difficult.

    • Anonymous

      “Shouldn’t be that difficult.”

      LOL!!!  I give up …

    • Drums

      Yes.  I have been to the Atlanta store – It’s great!  Several Windows Phones were on display.  The sales personnel were helpful and very knowledgeable.  I was there approximately one hour and several WP7 devices were sold.  However, there are only a few stores.

      I bought a laptop.

  • Andrew

    As much as I loath Apple and Sony, they both have fantastic advertising.
    MS could really do themselves a favor and mimic them as much as possible.

    MS ads always suck.

    • Guest

      Outside of Xbox, I agree. Xbox ads are generally well done.

    • Anonymous

      Vice versa here…not quite admiring apples or sony’s ads…matter of personal opinion, liking and creativity, I see…Plus You have to be a GENUINE M$ fan to like em M$ ads…diGG it..

  • Anonymous

    I have never seen a Windows Phone product placement. 

    • Guest

      They’re out there but not widespread. Certainly MS has nothing equivalent to Apple’s team, who seems to seed every blockbuster movie.

      http://www.phonearena.com/news/Windows-Phone-7-product-placement-continues-on-ABCs-Castle_id14691

    • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/6G3ZZJCHOLYP3S5CRCIHQ7WDSE MVIM

      They were in quite a few shows in the months after launch, but that quickly ended along with the extensive at&t promotion. To be accurate, you could say there has been no Windows Phone advertisement in months.

    • Anonymous

      There has been, on shows like Bones and Castle in particular.  But if you see one, find out what it is and then go into a carrier store to inquire about one … well, you know how it goes from here …

  • Anonymous

    Nokia is also planning $270million Euros not dollars i have $ on my keyboard and cant be bothered to go to character map
    I hope they succedd Gosh!!!

  • Anonymous

    OMG, that head of marketing guy is the one responsible for the biggest failure of marketing in the history of microsoft, after zune. why is microsoft still following this guy’s bs. fire him, poach some good people from apple marketing, give them all the $ they need and let them fix this mess.

    • Guest

      wtf are you talking about?

  • Guest

    “Berg explained that Microsoft’s slow Windows Phone growth is a long game. “This is a completely new platform, it takes time,” said Berg. “It took time with Android, it took time with Apple.”

    It took hardly any time with Apple and within a year of launch Android was already showing large gains. Again MS offers excuses when they should instead acknowledge the problem, identify what’s not working, and redouble their efforts.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VGQMRQOQYPZHFOGRIZ53F646KU Not ice_fusion.

      I assume it would take longer now than before since both iOS and Android were two completely different operating systems that filled a smartphone void that didn’t exist at the time. Now there are a ton of different options.

      With both OS’s firmly established, people just want to stick with what they know works, and that’s either iPhone or an Android phone. That and if they get curious and go into a store asking about Windows Phone, the rep goes and talks them right back into an Android (or iPhone, if sold there) and takes potshots at the new guy. It’s no wonder that it’s taking a long time.

      MS is going to have to keep throwing money at this thing to get Windows Phone’s presence out there, so more people will try it and tell their friends. It doesn’t look like they’re stopping anytime soon.

    • Guest

      “I assume it would take longer now than before since both iOS and Android were two completely different operating systems that filled a smartphone void that didn’t exist at the time.”

      No. They took over a smartphone market that existed and been building momentum for many years and helped shift that growth into overdrive.

    • Anonymous

      Exactly. They are even talking about  a “slow growth” when in fact their marked share is going down. And they already spend 500 million dollar on marketing…

    • Anonymous

      WinPho’s share is certainly not going down.

    • Anonymous

      WinPho’s share is certainly not going down.

    • Anonymous

      Oh yes it is.

    • Guest

      WP’s share can’t go down unless they stop selling completely. It started at zero. The decline in share is WinMo.

    • http://twitter.com/GriffinCoulter Griffin Coulter

      ^This would be correct.

    • Anonymous

      I think you know what I was trying to point out: That there is no reason why this PR guy should be happy and proud.

      And if you look at it this way, every product will be a success because everything starts at zero. 

      *sigh

    • http://twitter.com/GriffinCoulter Griffin Coulter

      You are part of the problem. You don’t seem to know the difference between Windows MOBILE and Windows PHONE. Microsoft’s market share is going down because they are losing WM user’s faster than they are gaining WP users. Its a very easy concept to grasp. Please, in the future do not comment on something you know absolutely nothing about.

    • Anonymous

      You seem to be such a smart guy!

      Sure I know the difference. And I know WHY Windows Phone was created. And however you wanne see it: they aren’t successful. They can’t even compete with their old Windows Mobile products. It does not help if you try to see something positive where is nothing positive.

    • Anonymous

      If you really knew the diference between Windows Phone and Windows Mobile you would have known Windows Phone share is not going down.

      WinPho doesn’t have the sales it wants yet but it is certainly a success. It has an amazing dev community and app marketplace. Its mindshare continues to rise. We
      are on the brink of Mango which will accelerate every aspect Windows Phone. The Nokia infusion is about to start in earnest. Plus Microsoft convinced about 7 million people to lay out their cold hard cash to buy into an open beta program so you
      could consider Windows Phone NoDo to be the most successful open beta of all
      time.

    • Anonymous

      No, Android took over a year and a half before it put a dent in iPhone’s stranglehold.  Now MS comes in having to fight against 2 (3 if you include Blackberry) well established platforms that are available on more carriers than when Android launched.

      As much as some of you may want to oversimply this process, it’s far more complex than you make it out to be.  And it’s definitely not (no pun intended) apples to apples.

  • Anonymous

    MS is serious now they hired former marketing exec from Disney for Windows 8
    Hiring hundreds is good, but thousands would be better
    Also, Push Nokia so that they shift the Nokia world from october to maybe 3 days after BUILD,
    New Mango phones should hit stores in october not november, november would be hot, QNX phones,Ice cream sandwich,iPhone5,and Mango
    In the stores, no WP7 unit, it needs a large display area like iPhone does, and the carriers promote iPhone or Andrioid , that has to stop !!!!

    • Guest

      “MS marketing” is an oxymoron.

    • Anonymous

      Troll be gone.

    • Guest

      Apple shill, stating the occasional unpleasant fact isn’t being a troll. If you’re confused, just look up your activity stream. That’s trolling.

    • Gusto

      Indeed. The reason why Apple and Android are doing so well is because they have trained thousands of sales people. And has nothing to do with the product, availability, and sales personnel’s confidence and enthusiasm for selling Apple/Android devices. Apple and Google paid sales people to sell their phones. So Microsoft is doing the same. 

  • Anonymous

    about time!

  • http://twitter.com/Vanno94 Divanno Davis

    they need to hire 5k people and just let them lose in cities around the world becuase from what ive seen i know some apple and android fanboys and even one blackberry guy all i had to do was let them use my phone for a few mins and they were hooked all 3 of them went a got a windows phone

  • http://twitter.com/GusGomez Gus Gomez

    IMO they’re taking way too long to hype Mango we should have had already commercials advertising it…nobody outside of tech blogs know anything about Mango….Microsoft needs to take a look at what Verizon does evertime a new Droid is coming….they build hype around it and thats exactly what microsoft should be doing instead of taking their sweet time…but that’s just my opinion…

    • Anonymous

      1) It makes no sense to advertise Mango when people can’t go into a store and purchase a Mango powered device.

      2) Verizon has a marketing relationship with Google similar to what Microsoft had with AT&T for the launch window.  Thus they have a vested interest in promoting new Droid devices.  If MS partners with carriers for marketing Mango devices, we could see similar promotions.  But who knows if they’ll be as ‘cool’ …

      3) For the record, we know far more about Mango than we do about Ice Cream Sandwich or iOS5.

    • Anonymous

      MSFT gets slammed for marketing Vaporware in the past, and now that they are holding their fire until real tangible Mango devices are out int he market they get slammed. MSFT just can’t win with the haters.

    • Guest

      “MSFT just can’t win with the haters.”

      Pot, meet kettle.     

    • Guester

      Exactly. And now, they just go around giving people “sneak peaks” of what will be in their future products, months ahead of its release. But it’s ok. It’s not an advertisement.

  • Anonymous

    I can’t get over how piss-poor of a marketing “guru” this guy really is.

    Failure #1
    It is All in the Name. By naming the platform “Windows Phone” people instantly connect it to their boring, laggy (because manufs threw underperforming hardware on $299 vista laptops). They also think of work. No one wants to use a phone that makes them think of work.

    Failure #2
    Giving the name a number, 7!
    By giving it the number 7, it instantly implies that there have been 6 versions prior, making people think of (surprise, surprise) Windows Mobile. First of all, changing the device’s name from “Windows Mobile” to  ”Windows Phone” was pathetic in it’s own right but for the love of god, don’t add 7 to it! People *hate* Windows Mobile, and for damn good reasons.

    Failure #3
    Commercials. Are you freaking kidding me? “Really!?” You guys went with “Really?”!?!? Was it witty? Yes. Was it a decent concept for a 3rd or 4th year/round of advertising? Possibly. But definitely not a first round, emerging campaign. It was pathetic, it did not spark any intrigue, and quite frankly, I don’t think many people cared – I sure didn’t.

    I could keep going but I’m going to stop before I write a blog post as a comment.

    • Guest

      Yes, it should never have been named Windows anything. For the reasons you mention and also because it’s, um, not Windows. Also agree about the number. Stupid. The only part I disagree with you is that he may have had no control over the first one. I suspect the group was told “you will put Windows in the name”. So blame Ballmer for that one.

    • http://www.facebook.com/richeymeister Mark Richey

      On some levels I agree, but MS is toutng the interconnected relationships between devices and we  have seen disasters with naming (Vista, Kin, Zune anyone?). That being said, I use my Zune HD constantly and they have now moved the phone and Windows 7 and soon 8 into a shared relationship and yet kept the XBOX, Kinect and Zune naming. Tought to see how trying all this to the OS that still dominates over 90% of the desktop market is all wrong. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out.

    • Guest

      Vista,Kin, Zune aren’t the best names but they failed due to product and execution issues, not naming shortcomings. Kinect isn’t a fantastic name either, but it’s done very well because there they got the product and execution right (mostly).

      I see no benefit whatsoever to including Windows in the phone OS. It’s not Windows and doesn’t run Windows apps. So it’s false advertising for one. And Windows carries a lot of baggage, none of which yells new and innovative. Let the Windows group work on rejuvenating the Windows brand after they fucked it up. W7 went some ways towards accomplishing that. Meanwhile free the mostly consumer focused mobile group from a stupid name that isn’t descriptive of what the the product is and isn’t memorable or catchy compared to ”iOs” or “Android”.

    • Guest

      Yes, it should never have been named Windows anything. For the reasons you mention and also because it’s, um, not Windows. Also agree about the number. Stupid. The only part I disagree with you is that he may have had no control over the first one. I suspect the group was told “you will put Windows in the name”. So blame Ballmer for that one.

  • Anonymous

    Set demo centers in every mall.

    • http://twitter.com/Translatethis27 Translatethis27

      It seems like nobody wants Wp7.

    • Guest

      It seems like you need some new material, shill.

    • Anonymous

      It seems nobody wants to like you..

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1521451503 Paul Hill

    It might work..